Optimization-Based Tuberculosis Image Segmentation by Ant Colony Heuristic Method

Tuberculosis (TB) is a worldwide health crisis and is the second primary infectious disease that causes death next to human immunodeficiency virus. In this work, an attempt has been made to detect the presence of bacilli in sputum smears. The smear images recorded under standard image acquisition protocol are subjected to hybrid Ant Colony Optimization (ACO)-morphological based segmentation procedure. This method is able to retain the shape of bacilli in TB images. The segmented images are validated with ground truth using overlap, distance and probability-based measures. Significant shape-based features such as area, perimeter, compactness, shape factor and tortuosity are extracted from the segmented images. It is observed that this method preserves more edges, detects the presence of bacilli and facilitates direct segmentation with reduced number of redundant searches to generate edges. Thus this hybrid segmentation technique aid in the diagnostic relevance of TB images in identifying the objects present in them.

PRIASE 2021 guidelines for reporting animal studies in Endodontology: explanation and elaboration

Laws and ethics require that before conducting human clinical trials, a new material, device or drug may have to undergo testing in animals in order to minimize health risks to humans, unless suitable supporting grandfather data already exist. The Preferred Reporting Items for Animal Studies in Endodontology (PRIASE) 2021 guidelines were developed exclusively for the specialty of Endodontology by integrating and adapting the ARRIVE (Animals in Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments) guidelines and the Clinical and Laboratory Images in Publications (CLIP) principles using a validated consensus-based methodology. Implementation of the PRIASE 2021 guidelines will reduce potential sources of bias and thus improve the quality, accuracy, reproducibility, completeness and transparency of reports describing animal studies in Endodontology. The PRIASE 2021 guidelines consist of a checklist with 11 domains and 43 individual items and a flowchart. The aim of the current document is to provide an explanation for each item in the PRIASE 2021 checklist and flowchart and is supplemented with examples from the literature in order for readers to understand their significance and to provide usage guidance. A link to the PRIASE 2021 explanation and elaboration document and PRIASE 2021 checklist and flowchart is available on the Preferred Reporting Items for study Designs in Endodontology (PRIDE) website (http://pride-endodonticguidelines.org/priase/).

PRIASE 2021 guidelines for reporting animal studies in Endodontology: a consensus-based development

Animal testing is crucial in situations when research on humans is not allowed because of unknown health risks and ethical concerns. The current project aims to develop reporting guidelines exclusively for animal studies in Endodontology, using an established consensus-based methodology. The guidelines have been named: Preferred Reporting Items for Animal Studies in Endodontology (PRIASE) 2021. Nine individuals (PD, VN, AK, PM, MN, JF, EP, JJ and SJ), including the project leaders (PD, VN) formed a steering committee. The steering committee developed a novel checklist by adapting and integrating their animal testing and peer review experience with the Animals in Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines and also the Clinical and Laboratory Images in Publications (CLIP) principles. A PRIASE Delphi Group (PDG) and PRIASE Online Meeting Group (POMG) were also formed. Thirty-one PDG members participated in the online Delphi process and achieved consensus on the checklist items and flowchart that were used to formulate the PRIASE guidelines. The novel PRIASE 2021 guidelines were discussed with the POMG on 9 September 2020 via a Zoom online video call attended by 21 individuals from across the globe and seven steering committee members. Following the discussions, the guidelines were modified and then piloted by several authors whilst writing a manuscript involving research on animals. The PRIASE 2021 guidelines are a checklist consisting of 11 domains and 43 individual items together with a flowchart. The PRIASE 2021 guidelines are focused on improving the methodological principles, reproducibility and quality of animal studies in order to enhance their reliability as well as repeatability to estimate the effects of endodontic treatments and usefulness for guiding future clinical studies on humans.

PRICE 2020 guidelines for reporting case reports in Endodontics: explanation and elaboration

Case reports play a key role in showcasing new, unusual or rare disease(s), and the impact of newer therapeutic approaches or interventions. The Preferred Reporting Items for Case reports in Endodontics (PRICE) 2020 guidelines are being introduced exclusively for Endodontics by adapting and integrating the CAse REport (CARE) guidelines and Clinical and Laboratory Images in Publications principles. The PRICE 2020 guidelines have been developed to help authors improve the completeness, accuracy and transparency of case reports in Endodontics and thus enhance the standard of manuscripts submitted for publication. The aim of this document is to provide a comprehensive explanation for each item in the PRICE 2020 checklist along with examples from the literature that demonstrate compliance with these guidelines. This information will highlight the importance of each item and provide practical examples to help authors understand the necessity of providing comprehensive information when preparing case reports. A link to this PRICE 2020 explanation and elaboration document is available on the Preferred Reporting Items for study Designs in Endodontology website at http://www.pride-endodonticguidelines.org.

Preferred Reporting Items for Animal Studies in Endodontology: a development protocol

The regulated use of animals in endodontic research is often necessary to investigate the biological mechanisms of endodontic diseases and to measure the preclinical efficacy, biocompatibility, toxicology and safety of new treatments, biomaterials, sealers, drugs, disinfectants, irrigants, devices and instruments. Animal testing is most crucial in situations when research on humans is not ethical, practical or has unknown health risks. Currently, there is a wide variability in the quality of manuscripts that report the results of animal studies. Towards the goal of improving the quality of publications, guidelines for preventing disability, pain, and suffering to animals, and enhanced reporting requirements for animal research have been developed. These guidelines are referred to as Animals in Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE). Henceforth, causing any form of animal suffering for research purposes is not acceptable and cannot be justified under any circumstances. The present report describes a protocol for the development of welfare and reporting guidelines for animal studies conducted in the specialty of Endodontology: the Preferred Reporting Items for Animal Studies in Endodontology (PRIASE) guidelines. The PRIASE guidelines will be developed by adapting and modifying the ARRIVE guidelines and the Clinical and Laboratory Images in Publication (CLIP) principles. The development of the new PRIASE guidelines will include a five-step consensus process. An initial draft of the PRIASE guidelines will be developed by a steering committee. Each item in the draft guidelines will then be evaluated by members of a PRIASE Delphi Group (PDG) for its clarity using a dichotomous scale (yes or no) and suitability for its inclusion using a 9-point Likert scale. The online surveys will continue until each item achieves this standard, and a set of items are agreed for further analysis by a PRIASE Face-to-face Consensus Meeting Group (PFCMG). Following the consensus meeting, the steering committee will finalize and confirm the PRIASE guidelines taking into account the responses and comments of the PFCMG. The PRIASE guidelines will be published and disseminated internationally and updated periodically based on feedback from stakeholders.

Occurrence and characterization of hitherto unknown Streptomyces species in semi-arid soils

Streptomyces the predominant genus of Actinobacteria and plays an important role in the recycling of soil organic matter and production of important secondary metabolites. The occurrence and diversity assessment of Streptomyces species revealed alkaline and poor nutrient status of soils of semi-arid region of Jodhpur, Rajasthan. The morphological and biochemical characterization of 21 Streptomyces isolates facilitated Genus level identification but were insufficient to designate species. Species designation based on 16S rRNA gene delineated 21 isolates into 14 Streptomyces species. Upon BLAST search, the test isolates exhibited 98 to 100% identities with that of the best aligned sequences of the NCBI database. The GC content of 16S rRNA gene sequences of all the Streptomyces isolates tested ranged from 59.03% to 60.94%. The multiple sequence alignment of all the 21 Streptomyces isolates generated a phylogram with high bootstrap values indicating reliable grouping of isolates based on nucleotide sequence variations by way of insertion, deletion and substitutions and 16S rRNA length polymorphism. Some of the Streptomyces species molecularly identified under present study are reported for the first time from semi-arid region of Jodhpur.

Frailty Analysis of SEMG Signals for Different Hand Movements Based on Temporal and Spectral Approach

Surface electromyography (sEMG) signal is the electrical manifestation of neuromuscular activities. It is an intricate signal that depends on the anatomical and physiological properties of the contracting muscles beneath the skin. In this work, a single channel surface EMG amplifier is designed to acquire the signals non-invasively from the skin by using bio-potential electrodes for three different hand movements. Subjects of age group 1 (18-30 years) and group 2 (60-78 years) are considered for this analysis. The recorded signals are pre-processed using Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) method to remove unwanted noises. Various error measures and performance index are calculated from the pre-processed sEMG signals to compare the performance of EMD with conventional digital filters. Relevant time and frequency domain features are extracted from the pre-processed signals. It is observed that the statistical analysis performed over the extracted features show distinct variation between the age groups. Thus the methodology proposed in this work could be useful for the analysis of frailty especially for the subjects above 60 years.

Differentiation of digital tb images using texture analysis and rbf classifier

In this work, differentiation of positive and negative images of Tuberculosis (TB) sputum smear has been attempted using statistical method based on Gray Level Co-occurrence Matrix (GLCM). The sputum smear images (N=100) recorded under standard image acquisition protocol are considered for this work. Second order statistical texture analysis is performed on the acquired images using GLCM method and a set of nineteen features are derived. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is then employed to reduce feature sets, to enhance the efficiency of differentiation and to reduce the redundancy. These feature sets are further classified using Radial Basis Function (RBF) classifier. Results show that GLCM is able to differentiate positive and negative TB images. Correlation is found to be high for many of the parameters. Application of PCA reduced the number of features to four which had maximum magnitude in the first principal component. Higher classification accuracy is achieved using RBF classifier. It appears that this method of texture analysis could be useful to develop automated system for characterization and classification of digital TB sputum smear images.