286 research outputs found
Novel technique radio frequency identification (RFID) based to manage patient flow in a radiotherapy departmentProceedings of 2012 IEEE-EMBS International Conference on Biomedical and Health Informatics
Risk stratification in prostate cancer treated with radiation therapy: A window of opportunity for new clinical trials
Inter-patient image registration algorithms to disentangle regional dose bioeffects
Radiation therapy (RT) technological advances call for a comprehensive reconsideration of the definition of dose features leading to radiation induced morbidity (RIM). In this context, the voxel-based approach (VBA) to dose distribution analysis in RT offers a radically new philosophy to evaluate local dose response patterns, as an alternative to dose-volume-histograms for identifying dose sensitive regions of normal tissue. The VBA relies on mapping patient dose distributions into a single reference case anatomy which serves as anchor for local dosimetric evaluations. The inter-patient elastic image registrations (EIRs) of the planning CTs provide the deformation fields necessary for the actual warp of dose distributions. In this study we assessed the impact of EIR on the VBA results in thoracic patients by identifying two state-of-the-art EIR algorithms (Demons and B-Spline). Our analysis demonstrated that both the EIR algorithms may be successfully used to highlight subregions with dose differences associated with RIM that substantially overlap. Furthermore, the inclusion for the first time of covariates within a dosimetric statistical model that faces the multiple comparison problem expands the potential of VBA, thus paving the way to a reliable voxel-based analysis of RIM in datasets with strong correlation of the outcome with non-dosimetric variables
Systemic Risks and Multilayer Financial Networks: from Contagion to Mitigation
The global financial system's interconnectedness has increased due to globalization, technological advancements and the integration of financial markets. Financial institutions and markets across different countries are more closely linked than ever before; while this interconnectedness facilitates global trade and investment, it also means that financial turmoil can quickly spread from one country to another.
Systemic risk is the possibility that an event at the company level could trigger severe instability or collapse an entire industry or economy. The fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008 showed that the failure of a single entity could have far-reaching effects on the global financial system.
This chapter innovatively interprets the financial system as a complex network formed by the relationships among various “nodes”: banks, financial institutions, markets, and consumers. These networks are intricate and opaque, making it challenging to understand and predict how risks and failures in one part of the system can affect the rest with a domino impact.
In managing systemic risk, regulators and policymakers play a vital role, implementing stricter regulatory frameworks, overseeing financial institutions more closely, and developing mechanisms to identify and mitigate risks early.
This chapter shows that effective strategies to mitigate systemic risk involve better risk assessment models, more robust regulatory frameworks, and international cooperation among regulatory bodies. Stress testing, capital adequacy requirements, and monitoring of “too big to fail” institutions, as well as of “too interconnected to fail” ones, are part of these strategies, that may usefully consider network theory to link economic agents to their edging patterns
Asprilio Pacelli in Poland : compositions, techniques, reception
Asprilio Pacelli (post 1560-1623) was the longest active Italian chapel master at the Polish royal court. His artistic personality obviously may have influenced the generation of Polish composers born ca. 1600 (such as Adam Jarzębski or Franciszek Lilius), whose education might have started under the chapel master’s wing, as well as those working contemporaneously alongside him, such as Mikołaj Zieleński. The article concentrates on the types of music Pacelli composed in Poland, compared with his earlier output. Although he generally maintained stylistic traits used before his arrival at the Polish royal court, he introduced some important innovations after he had settled in Poland. He distinguished himself as the author of motets and psalms for one chorus, motets and masses for two-five choirs, spiritual madrigals and religious songs. The most intriguing part of his music embraces compositions with elements of the concertato technique as the origin of this new technique in the Commonwealth is still vague and unclear, due to the lack of musical sources. Moreover, German reissues of Pacelli’s Italian publications confirm considerable interest in his music in German-speaking countries after 1607
PACE: A Probabilistic Atlas for Normal Tissue Complication Estimation in Radiation Oncology
In radiation oncology, the need for a modern Normal Tissue Complication Probability (NTCP) philosophy to include voxel-based evidence on organ radio-sensitivity (RS) has been acknowledged. Here a new formalism (Probabilistic Atlas for Complication Estimation, PACE) to predict radiation-induced morbidity (RIM) is presented. The adopted strategy basically consists in keeping the structure of a classical, phenomenological NTCP model, such as the Lyman-Kutcher-Burman (LKB), and replacing the dose distribution with a collection of RIM odds, including also significant non-dosimetric covariates, as input of the model framework. The theory was first demonstrated in silico on synthetic dose maps, classified according to synthetic outcomes. PACE was then applied to a clinical dataset of thoracic cancer patients classified for lung fibrosis. LKB models were trained for comparison. Overall, the obtained learning curves showed that the PACE model outperformed the LKB and predicted synthetic outcomes with an accuracy >0.8. On the real patients, PACE performance, evaluated by both discrimination and calibration, was significantly higher than LKB. This trend was confirmed by cross-validation. Furthermore, the capability to infer the spatial pattern of underlying RS map for the analyzed RIM was successfully demonstrated, thus paving the way to new perspectives of NTCP models as learning tools
Allestimento di una metodica in PCR per la diagnosi di aborto infettivo da EHV-1 nel cavallo.
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