AIM: The aim of the present study was to determine sex of human mandible from morphology, morphometric measurements as well as discriminant function analysis from the CT scan.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present retrospective study comprised 79 subjects (48 males, 31 females), with age group between 18 and 74 years, and were obtained from the post mortem computed tomography data in the Hospital Kuala Lumpur. The parameters were divided into three morphologic and nine morphometric parameters, which were measured by using Osirix MD Software 3D Volume Rendering.
RESULTS: The Chi-square test showed that men were significantly association with square-shaped chin (92%), prominent muscle marking (85%) and everted gonial glare, whereas women had pointed chin (84%), less prominent muscle marking (90%) and inverted gonial glare (80%). All parameter measurements showed significantly greater values in males than in females by independent t-test (p< 0.01). By discriminant analysis, the classification accuracy was 78.5%, the sensitivity was 79.2% and the specificity was 77.4%. The discriminant function equation was formulated based on bigonial breath and condylar height, which were the best predictors.
CONCLUSION: In conclusion, the mandible could be distinguished according to the sex. The results of the study can be used for identification of damaged and/or unknown mandible in the Malaysian population.
METHODS: In this work, we introduce a fully automated liver tumour segmentation approach in contrast-enhanced CT datasets. The method is a multi-stage technique which starts with contrast enhancement of the tumours using anisotropic filtering, followed by adaptive thresholding to extract the initial mask of the tumours from an identified liver region of interest. Localised level set-based active contours are used to extend the mask to the tumour boundaries.
RESULTS: The proposed method is validated on the IRCAD database with pathologies that offer highly variable and complex liver tumours. The results are compared quantitatively to the ground truth, which is delineated by experts. We achieved an average dice similarity coefficient of 75% over all patients with liver tumours in the database with overall absolute relative volume difference of 11%. This is comparable to other recent works, which include semiautomated methods, although they were validated on different datasets.
CONCLUSIONS: The proposed approach aims to segment tumours inside the liver envelope automatically with a level of accuracy adequate for its use as a tool for surgical planning using abdominal CT images. The approach will be validated on larger datasets in the future.
MATERIAL AND METHODS: This study included 472 CT scans (236 males and 236 females; age range, 18-72 years). The foramen magnum shapes were classified into 8 types: oval, egg, round, hexagonal, pentagonal, tetragonal, irregular (A) and irregular (B). The intraobserver and interobserver test was done to calculate the reliability of the measurement. Eight dimensions of the FM and occipital condyle were evaluated to determine the sexual dimorphism using an independent t-test. Sex determination was estimated using discriminate function analysis.
RESULTS: The commonest shape of FM was hexagonal and the tetragonal shape was the least common type. Coefficient of reliability (R) was high, ranging between 0.89 and 0.99, which indicates the measurements are reliable and sufficiently precise. All the eight measurements, the FM length and width, FM index, FM area, the width and length of right and left occipital condyles were significantly greater in males than the female. Univariate discriminant function showed an accuracy rate varying from 61% to 66.6% based on FM or occipital condyles measurements. The multivariate analysis of FM and occipital condyle measurements increased the overall accuracy rate of sex determination to 71.6%.
CONCLUSION: The univariate analysis of FM and occipital condyle measurements indicates, that the FM area (66.1%), FML (62.5%), FMW (62.5%) and ROCL (62.1%) could be reliable individual variables in sex determination. The multivariate analysis including all the eight variables of FM and occipital condyle increased the accuracy rate of sex determination to 71.6% in determining the sex as male (73.3%) or female (69.9%). The shape of the FM is not useful in sex estimation. The results obtained showed a low degree of sexual dimorphism in the basicranium, the use of this method in forensic anthropology could be helpful for assessment on highly fragmented skull bases.
METHODS: A retrospective analysis was performed on post-bariatric surgery patients who underwent laparoscopy for diagnosis and treatment of chronic abdominal pain at a single academic center. Only patients with both negative preoperative CT scan and upper endoscopy were included.
RESULTS: Total of 35 post-bariatric surgery patients met the inclusion criteria, and all had history of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass. Twenty out of 35 patients (57%) had positive findings on diagnostic laparoscopy including presence of adhesions (n = 12), chronic cholecystitis (n = 4), mesenteric defect (n = 2), internal hernia (n = 1), and necrotic omentum (n = 1). Two patients developed post-operative complications including a pelvic abscess and an abdominal wall abscess. Overall, 15 patients (43%) had symptomatic improvement after laparoscopy; 14 of these patients had positive laparoscopic findings requiring intervention (70% of the patients with positive laparoscopy). Conversely, 20 (57%) patients required long-term medical treatment for management of chronic abdominal pain.
CONCLUSION: Diagnostic laparoscopy, which is a safe procedure, can detect pathological findings in more than half of post-bariatric surgery patients with chronic abdominal pain of unknown etiology. About 40% of patients who undergo diagnostic laparoscopy and 70% of patients with positive findings on laparoscopy experience significant symptom improvement. Patients should be informed that diagnostic laparoscopy is associated with no symptom improvement in about half of cases.