Surgery Versus Stereotactic Radiosurgery for Single Synchronous Brain Metastasis from Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Objective： The aim of this study is to compare the effectiveness of surgery with stereotactic radiosurgery （SRS） for patients with a single synchronous brain metastasis from successfully treated non-small cell lung cancer. Methods： Between 1995 and 2002, 53 patients underwent resection of both primary non-small cell lung cancer and the associated single brain metastasis. There were 33 men and 20 women with a mean age of 57 years （range, 32-85 years）. At the time of diagnosis, 42 patients experienced lung cancer related symptoms, whereas 11 patients experienced brain metastases-related symptoms. 42 patients had received thoracic surgery first, and 11 patients had undergone neurosurgery or radiosurgery first. Pneumonectomy was performed in 9 out of 42 patients （21.4%）, lobectomies in 30 （71.4%）, and wedge resection in 3 （7.2%）. 48 patients （90.5%） underwent complete lymphadenectomy. 35 patients underwent brain metastasectomy. 18 underwent SRS. Results： There was no postoperative mortality and severe complications after either lung or brain surgery. Histology showed 34 adenocarcinomas, 16 squamous cell carcinomas, and 3 large cell lung cancers. 15 patients （28.3%） had no evidence of lymph node metastases （No）, 20 patients （37.7%） had hilar metastases （N1）, and 18 patients （34%） had mediastinal metastases （N2）. The 1-, 2-, 3- and 5-year overall survival rates were 49%, 19%, 10%, and 5%, respectively. The corresponding data for neurosurgery group were 55%, 17%, 11%, and 6%, respectively. The median survival time was 13 months. For SRS group the corresponding data were 44.8%, 20.9% 10.5%, and 2%, respectively. The median survival time was 14 months. The differences between the two groups were not significant （P〉0.05）. In lymph node negative patients （No）, the overall 5-year survival rate was 10%, as compared with a 1% survival rate in patients with lymph node metastases （N1-2）. The difference was significant （P〈0,01）. For adenocarcinomas, the 5-year survival rate was 5%. The correspondent data for squamous cell lung cancers was 3%. The difference was not significant （P〉0.05）. Conclusion： Although the overall survival rate for patients who have brain metastases from NSCLC is poor, surgical resection or radiosurgery may be beneficial in a select group of patients with synchronous brain metastases and lung cancer without lymph node metastases.

A prototype scalable readout system for micro-pattern gas detectors

A scalable readout system （SRS） is designed to provide a general solution for different micro-pattern gas detectors in various applications. The system mainly consists of three kinds of modules： the ASIC card, the adapter card and the front-end card （FEC）. The ASIC cards, mounted with particular ASIC chips, are designed for receiving detector signals. The adapter card is in charge of digitizing the output signals from several ASIC cards. The FEC, edged-mounted with the adapter, has field-programmable gate array （FPGA）-based reconfigurable logic and I/O interfaces, allowing users to choose different ASIC cards and adapters for different experiments, which expands the system to various applications. The FEC transfers data through Gigabit Ethernet protocol realized by a TCP processor （SiTCP） IP core in FPGA. By assembling a flexible number of FECs in parallel through Gigabit Ethernet, the readout system can be tailored to specific sizes to adapt to the experiment scales and readout requirements. In this paper, two kinds of multi-channel ASIC chip, VA140 and AGET, are applied to verify the scalability of this SRS architecture. Based on this VA140 or AGET SRS, one FEC covers 8 ASIC （VA140） cards handling 512 detector channels, or 4 ASIC （AGET） cards handling 256 detector channels, respectively. More FECs can be assembled in crates to handle thousands of detector channels.

Impact of polarization mode dispersion and nonlinearities on 2-channel DWDM chaotic communication systems

This paper has designed 2-channel dense wavelength division multiplexing （DWDM） chaotic sys- tem at the frequencies of 193.1 and 193,2THz, respec- tively. The optical chaotic signals were produced by using the semiconductor laser that is numerically modeled by employing laser rate equations. These two channels were multiplexed and then propagated through single mode optical fiber （SMF） of 80kin length with dispersion compensating fiber of 16 km length. Erbium doped fiber amplifier （EDFA） was used to compensate the power losses in the SMF. In lhis paper, we investigated the effects of polarization mode dispersion （PMD） and nonlinearities especially stimulated Raman scattering （SRS） on 2 channel DWDM chaotic communication system by varying the length of the SMF and value of differential group delay （DGD）.