1,721,018 research outputs found

    Clinical applications of EEG power spectra aperiodic component analysis: A mini-review

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    Objective: The present mini-review summarizes recent clinical findings related to the analysis of the aperiodic component of EEG (electroencephalographic) power spectra, making them quickly accessible to medical specialists and health researchers, with the aim of boosting related research. Methods: Based on our experience about clinicians’ literature-searching, we queried the PubMed database with terms related to EEG power spectra aperiodic component analysis and selected clinical studies that referenced such terms in the title/abstract, and were published in the last five years. Results: A total of 11 journal articles, dealing with 9 different neurologic and psychiatric conditions published between 1st January 2016 – April 1st 2021, were surveyed. Conclusions: All the reviewed studies focused on exploring the pathophysiological significance of the aperiodic component and its correlation with disease presence, stage, and severity. Despite the heterogeneity of pathologies, it was possible to cluster most of them according to the mechanism underlying slope alterations, namely hypo-/hyper-excitability. It was also possible to identify some counterintuitive findings, probably related to compensation mechanisms of disease-specific neurophysiological alterations. Significance: All the findings seem to support the role of the aperiodic activity as index of excitation/inhibition balance, with promising clinical applications that might challenge the traditional approach to pathologies diagnosis/treatment/follow-up

    Reproducibility and explainability in digital pathology: The need to make black-box artificial intelligence systems more transparent

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    Artificial intelligence (AI), and more specifically Machine Learning (ML) and Deep learning (DL), has permeated the digital pathology field in recent years, with many algorithms successfully applied as new advanced tools to analyze pathological tissues. The introduction of high-resolution scanners in histopathology services has represented a real revolution for pathologists, allowing the analysis of digital whole-slide images (WSI) on a screen without a microscope at hand. However, it means a transition from microscope to algorithms in the absence of specific training for most pathologists involved in clinical practice. The WSI approach represents a major transformation, even from a computational point of view. The multiple ML and DL tools specifically developed for WSI analysis may enhance the diagnostic process in many fields of human pathology. AI-driven models allow the achievement of more consistent results, providing valid support for detecting, from H&E-stained sections, multiple biomarkers, including microsatellite instability, that are missed by expert pathologists

    Eeg fingerprints under naturalistic viewing using a portable device

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    The electroencephalogram (EEG) has been proven to be a promising technique for personal identification and verification. Recently, the aperiodic component of the power spectrum was shown to outperform other commonly used EEG features. Beyond that, EEG characteristics may capture relevant features related to emotional states. In this work, we aim to understand if the aperiodic component of the power spectrum, as shown for resting-state experimental paradigms, is able to capture EEG-based subject-specific features in a naturalistic stimuli scenario. In order to answer this question, we performed an analysis using two freely available datasets containing EEG recordings from participants during viewing of film clips that aim to trigger different emotional states. Our study confirms that the aperiodic components of the power spectrum, as evaluated in terms of offset and exponent parameters, are able to detect subject-specific features extracted from the scalp EEG. In particular, our results show that the performance of the system was significantly higher for the film clip scenario if compared with resting-state, thus suggesting that under naturalistic stimuli it is even easier to identify a subject. As a consequence, we suggest a paradigm shift, from task-based or resting-state to naturalistic stimuli, when assessing the performance of EEG-based biometric systems

    [Tests on ionic release from glass-ionomer cements].

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    BACKGROUND: Dissolution process in oral liquids by the presence of glass-ionomer systems (due to surface corrosion, to diffusion through solutions and through mass) make an ionic release (particularly F, Al, Pb, As) which is a non secondary problem, due to the usual utilization of these materials in pedodontic and restorative dentistry. METHODS: In this work, considering the high toxicity of low quantity of Arsenic ion, a comparative research has been made in order to determine, by using high level liquid Cromatography (HPCL), the quantity in ppm of As hydro- and acid soluble given by five ionomeric products, in water and in nitric acid concentrated solution. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: The results show that in some products arsenical concentrations are higher then the quantity accepted by ISO-FDI; therefore, a better control in the production of these products is needed as well as a limited use in dentistry. It is suggested to use glass-ionomer systems in patients with dental dike and varnish on the surfaces that are in contact with oral liquids action

    On the variability of functional connectivity and network measures in source-reconstructed eeg time-series

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    The idea of estimating the statistical interdependence among (interacting) brain regions has motivated numerous researchers to investigate how the resulting connectivity patterns and networks may organize themselves under any conceivable scenario. Even though this idea has developed beyond its initial stages, its practical application is still far away from being widespread. One concurrent cause may be related to the proliferation of different approaches that aim to catch the underlying statistical interdependence among the (interacting) units. This issue has probably con-tributed to hindering comparisons among different studies. Not only do all these approaches go under the same name (functional connectivity), but they have often been tested and validated using different methods, therefore, making it difficult to understand to what extent they are similar or not. In this study, we aim to compare a set of different approaches commonly used to estimate the functional connectivity on a public EEG dataset representing a possible realistic scenario. As expected, our results show that source-level EEG connectivity estimates and the derived network measures, even though pointing to the same direction, may display substantial dependency on the (often ar-bitrary) choice of the selected connectivity metric and thresholding approach. In our opinion, the observed variability reflects the ambiguity and concern that should always be discussed when re-porting findings based on any connectivity metric

    Exploring the Correlation Between M/EEG Source–Space and fMRI Networks at Rest

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    Magneto/electro-encephalography (M/EEG) source connectivity is an emerging approach to estimate brain networks with high temporal and spatial resolutions. Here, we aim to evaluate the effect of functional connectivity (FC) methods on the correlation between M/EEG source–space and fMRI networks at rest. Two main FC families are tested: (i) FC methods that do not remove zero-lag connectivity including Phase Locking Value (PLV) and Amplitude Envelope Correlation (AEC) and (ii) FC methods that remove zero-lag connections such as Phase Lag Index (PLI) and two orthogonalisation approaches combined with PLV (PLVCol, PLVPas) and AEC (AECCol, AECPas). Methods are evaluated on resting state M/EEG signals recorded from healthy participants at rest (N = 74). Networks obtained by each FC method are compared with fMRI networks (obtained from the Human Connectome Project). Results show low correlations for all FC methods, however PLV and AEC networks are significantly correlated with fMRI networks (ρ = 0.12, p = 1.93 × 10–8 and ρ = 0.06, p = 0.007, respectively), while other methods are not. These observations are consistent for all M/EEG frequency bands and for different FC matrices threshold. Our main message is to be careful in selecting FC methods when comparing or combining M/EEG with fMRI. We consider that more comparative studies based on simulation and real data and at different levels (node, module or sub networks) are still needed in order to improve our understanding on the relationships between M/EEG source–space networks and fMRI networks at rest
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