(C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.”
“Under the framework of computer-aided diagnosis, this paper presents an accurate and efficient optic disc (OD) detection and segmentation technique. A circular transformation is designed to capture both the circular shape of the OD and the image variation across the OD boundary simultaneously. For each retinal image pixel, it evaluates the image variation along multiple evenly-oriented radial line segments of specific length. The pixels with the maximum variation along all radial line segments are determined, which can be further exploited

to locate both the OD center and the OD boundary accurately. Experiments show that OD detection accuracies of 99.75%, 97.5%, and 98.77% are obtained for the STARE dataset, the ARIA dataset, and the MES-SIDOR dataset,

respectively, and the OD center error lies around six BIX01294 pixels for the STARE dataset and the ARIA dataset which is CHIR-99021 clinical trial much smaller than that of state-of-the-art methods ranging 14-29 pixels. In addition, the OD segmentation accuracies of 93.4% and 91.7% are obtained for STARE dataset and ARIA dataset, respectively, that consists of many severely degraded images of pathological retinas that state-of-the-art methods cannot segment properly. Furthermore, the algorithm runs in 5 s, which is substantially faster than many of the state-of-the-art methods.”
“We report a case of multiple abnormalities with eustachian tube obstruction by a protruded internal carotid artery. A 10-year-old male presented with multiple abnormalities including anomalous

pinna, poor eyesight, facial palsy, GW786034 moderate conductive deafness, and otitis media with effusion. Temporal bone computed tomography demonstrated obstruction of the right eustachian tube by a protruded internal carotid artery. Insertion of a tympanostomy tube did not improve his hearing, indicating a possible ossicular chain anomaly. Although tympanoplasty is necessary to improve the patients’ hearing, the poor drainage function makes this difficult. Knowledge of this vascular anomaly is important when performing myringotomy or tympanoplasty. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Impulsivity towards food has been recognized as a potential factor leading to increased food intake in obesity. Patients suffering from binge eating disorder (BED) form a specific subgroup of obese people that might be characterized by increased impulsivity. These assumptions, although, have yet to be verified. Therefore, this review evaluates evidence for food-related impulsivity in obese people with and without BED and examines possible differences between both populations. More precisely, evidence for the two components of impulsivity is analyzed separately: evidence for reward sensitivity, specifically, the urge for appetitive stimuli and evidence for rash-spontaneous behaviour such as acting disinhibited with no regard for the consequences.