Method For Assessing Function Research Articles

Anodal Block in Evaluation of Nerve Conduction Changes in Anesthetized Rats: Preclinical Non-Randomized Experimental Study

Background. There is currently no gold standard for functional assessment of nerve regeneration. Different researchers use various methods to assess the functionality of the regenerated nerve directly and indirectly. Indirect methods have the advantage of being minimally invasive, and the benefit of direct methods is recording the signal directly in the nerve.Objectives. To identify significant parameters of neurogram changes in the sciatic nerve in an anaesthetized rat when the anode block is applied and to evaluate neurography as a method for functional assessment of nerve regeneration.Methods. A series of experiments was performed on 10 anaesthetized rats. A DC anode was placed on the exposed sciatic nerve, more proximal and more distal to the recording electrodes, and a common cathode in the form of a needle was introduced into one of the forelimbs. Needle nichrome electrodes were introduced into the nerve using a manipulator. An original neurogram and a neurogram against anode activation were recorded by closing the DC circuit of different voltages to block the afferent signal, efferent signal and afferent and efferent signals simultaneously.Results. When the anodal block of different voltages was applied to the afferent signal, efferent signal, and afferent and efferent signals simultaneously in all 10 experiments, the frequency-amplitude characteristics of the neurogram changed significantly as compared to the original neurogram. The amplitude of the neurogram increased considerably, while the frequency decreased, though not so dramatically. The changes in amplitude and frequency parameters were revealed to depend on the voltage value. In most cases, this relationship was directly proportional to the amplitude and inversely proportional to the frequency.Conclusion. Considering the nature of the dynamics of the neurogram when exposed to the anodal block, the most significant parameter of its change is the amplitude. Changes in nerve fibre composition during its regeneration after damage cause changes in afferent and efferent signals, which is likely to be displayed in the neurogram as compared to the initial state. Thus, the anodal block can be used as a model of nerve damage, and the analysis of the dynamics of neurogram parameters — as a method for functional assessment of nerve regeneration.

New computational fluid dynamics-based method for morphological and functional assessment in cardiovascular skill training.

During cardiovascular surgical skill training, the direct quantification regarding surgical performance is still lacking, including transferring clinically relevant information. We introduced a novel computational fluid dynamics-based method in support of vascular surgical hands-on training, which applies continuous self-assessment in vascular anastomoses. The validation of the methodology was implemented in comparing with conventional training courses. The fifth and seventh consecutive anastomoses of the experimental group showed significantly improved results regarding anastomosis quality when compared with the control group. Consecutive demonstration of three-dimensional morphology and functional assessment of anastomoses results in improved practical performance among learners regarding anastomosis quality.

A forced cough sound based pulmonary function assessment method by using machine learning.

Pulmonary function testing (PFT) has important clinical value for the early detection of lung diseases, assessment of the disease severity, causes identification of dyspnea, and monitoring of critical patients. However, traditional PFT can only be carried out in a hospital environment, and it is challenging to meet the needs for daily and frequent evaluation of chronic respiratory diseases. In this study, we propose a novel method for accurately assessing pulmonary function by analyzing recorded forced cough sounds by mobile device without time and location restrictions. In the experiment, 309 clips of cough sound segments were separated from 133 patients who underwent PFT by using Audacity software. There are 247 clips of training samples and 62 clips of testing samples. Totally 52 features were extracted from the dataset, and principal component analysis (PCA) was used for feature reduction. Combined with biological attributes, the normalized features were regressed by using machine learning models with pulmonary function parameters (i.e., FEV1, FVC, FEV1/FVC, FEV1%, and FVC%). And a 5-fold cross-validation was applied to evaluate the performance of the regression models. As described in the experimental result, the result of coefficient of determination (R2) indicates that the support vector regression (SVR) model performed best in assessing FVC (0.84), FEV1% (0.61), and FVC% (0.62) among these models. The gradient boosting regression (GBR) model performs best in evaluating FEV1 (0.86) and FEV1/FVC (0.54). The result confirmed that the proposed method was capable of accurately assessing pulmonary function with forced cough sound. Besides, the cough sound sampling by a smartphone made it possible to conduct sampling and assess pulmonary function frequently in the home environment.

Development of technology for receiving enriched sugar

Carbohydrates play an important role in nutrition, especially sugar, it is an integral part of many products, both ready and raw. The norm of sugar consumption per day is 25 g (no more than 5 spoons per day). The issue of increasing the biological value of sugar is relevant, as it plays an important role in human nutrition. Almost no one is engaged in the production of enriched sugar in Ukraine, only a few developments of sugar with functional properties are presented. But this topic is quite relevant in the world, scientists are developing enrichment schemes with regional raw materials. The purpose of our research is to develop a technology for obtaining enriched sugar by using wild berries of regional importance, using the osmotic dehydration method. During the study, standard organoleptic and microbiological methods of functional sugar assessment were used. The article presents a technological scheme for the production of enriched sugar, determined the amount of osmotic syrup that should be used to obtain lump sugar to give it positive organoleptic indicators. Microbiological indicators were determined during long-term storage for 6 months. The presence of biologically active substances in sugar increases its chemical composition. Enriched sugar contains not only carbohydrates, but also amino acids, coloring and flavoring substances. According to organoleptic indicators, sea buckthorn sugar received the highest rating. All four types of enriched sugar have a high storage capacity, the development of harmful microflora is not observed after 6 months of storage. The results of the conducted research showed that the developed technology for the production of enriched sugar can be used at the production facilities of operating sugar factories. But on the condition of additional installation of the apparatus for carrying out osmotic dehydration. Functional sugar can be used as a sweetener for tea, coffee, water; and sweet connoisseurs can use it instead of candies.

Automatic Assessment System Based on IMUs and Machine Learning for Predicting Berg Balance Scale

The problem of decreased balance caused by injury, illness, or aging is becoming increasingly prevalent in society. The traditional functional balance assessment method is highly time-consuming and inefficient, as well as being susceptible to measurement errors caused by personal subjective factors. This study proposes a system that can rapidly, conveniently, and accurately predict a participant’s Berg balance scale (BBS) score without professional supervision. The proposed system uses a wearable inertial sensing device combined with machine learning to predict the BBS score of a test participant. In the beginning, the participants were asked to wear inertial sensing devices on seven parts of the body and perform 17 test tasks. The wearable device locations and the test tasks were ranked by importance and further reduced wearable devices and the test tasks. Eventually, the participant is only required to wear an inertial sensing device on their left thigh and perform two simple test tasks, namely “placing an alternate foot on a stool” and “standing on one foot (right foot),” to obtain their BBS score. In this study, the proposed system has a high level of accuracy for predicting BBS scores. The experimental results indicate that the mean absolute error (MAE) of the proposed system was 1.274. Moreover, this study provided some important information as a reference for future research on functional balance, including feature sets selection, regression model selection, wearable device locations ranking, and test tasks ranking. The researchers can use that information to design their experiment.

Characteristics and Trends of the Most Cited Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research Articles.

Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research is one of the most influential and reputable scientific journals in the field of orthopaedics. Some of the most reputable publications related to orthopaedic research can be attributed to this journal and it continues to have a significant impact on modern research. The purpose of this study is to identify the most influential articles, in terms of number of citations, published by Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research. The goal of analyzing the most cited articles in is to create a baseline for future researchers to build upon and to uncover any trends in orthopaedic research. Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews guidelines were used to structure the data collection and analysis of this study. The Scopus database was used to compile the publication data. Data was then exported to an excel sheet to be further analyzed via a multi-author review process. The most cited article was "A Clinical Method of Functional Assessment of the Shoulder" by Constant et al.. The 50 articles analyzed in this study were cited a total of 32,404 times, averaging 719 citations per year, per publication. The oldest article was published in 1971, and the newest in 2008. The United States was the country with the most attributable publications and The University of Florida was the most contributory institution. Our study recognizes Clinical Orthopaedics and Related research as having a strong predilection for older articles and a continued strength for modern publications.

Coronary CT angiography derived fractional flow reserve: the consideration and practice of functional evaluation for cerebral arterial diseases

Cerebrovascular disease is a significant global public health concern, despite the diagnosis and treatment of stroke has made great progress in recent years, however, its mainly guided by anatomical indicators, which still needs to be further improved, and there is an urgent need to explore a more accurate and comprehensive functional imaging assessment method. Rapid development of coronary CT angiography derived fractional flow reserve (CT-FFR) has become an important technique for noninvasive evaluation of coronary artery disease, and these successful application experiences inspiried neurologists to explore the functional evaluation technique of cerebral arteries and demonstrated broad application prospects. In this paper, by analyzing and comparing the coronary CT-FFR technology, the progress, existing problems and possible solutions of the functional evaluation for cerebral arterial stenosis are discussed from the aspects of coronary CT-FFR study, cerebral artery functional evaluation study, and the comparison and consideration of cerebral arterial and coronary CT-FFR.

A critical review and normalization of the life cycle assessment outcomes in the naval sector. Articles description

Most of the actual industrial research efforts are aimed at reducing environmental burdens associated with human activities in the context of sustainable development. This trend has become increasingly prevalent in the naval transportation sector shown by a growing number of scientific publications dealing with life cycle assessments of maritime-related activities. However, the life cycle assessment framework provides practitioners with a variety of alternatives for conducting the analyses, giving room for defining key factors, such as functional units, system boundaries, and impact assessment methods, among others. This lack of standardization resulted in a wide range of assumptions and findings that are seldom comparable. The goal of this review is providing a systematic literature analysis, focusing on the characteristics of life cycle assessments dealing with the environmental impacts of various maritime vessel categories. In the first part, a qualitative analysis of the available scientific literature has been performed, providing a bibliometric analysis and a general overview of the characteristics of the studies (i.e., life cycle impact assessment methodologies, background data, and software tools used). The outcomes of the bibliometric analysis are then summarized and discussed to understand current practices and future trends in this field, providing the basis for the normalization phase of the results. The second section of the paper offers advice for naval practitioners on how to perform results normalization to produce comparable analyses. Two approaches for normalization have been proposed in the frame of this study: an “horizontal” one, which is based on vessel features and allows a comparison among different vessel typologies, and a “vertical” one that enables to fairly compare vessels of the same category to one another. In addition, each section reports the outcomes of greenhouse gas-related impact categories, which have been subjected to the proposed normalization procedure, along with the order of magnitude of the results for each life cycle phase. The overall work provides an overview of LCA impact results as well as a collection of procedures and recommendations for future life cycle assessments based on specific vessel types, in terms of functional unit selection, system boundary definition, impact assessment approach, presentation of the outcomes, and normalization basis.

A swim test for functional assessment of rodent peripheral nerve regeneration

• Video motion analysis of functional recovery in a sciatic nerve injury and repair model in rats. • Dynamic analysis of swimming motion in contrast to static sciatic index. • Simple setup, fast testing sessions and lower costs compared to other locomotion systems. • Functional assessment method to study new treatments to improve peripheral nerve regeneration.

Research progress on intelligent assessment system for upper limb function of stroke patients

At present, the upper limb function of stroke patients is often assessed clinically using a scale method, but this method has problems such as time-consuming, poor consistency of assessment results, and high participation of rehabilitation physicians. To overcome the shortcomings of the scale method, intelligent upper limb function assessment systems combining sensors and machine learning algorithms have become one of the hot research topics in recent years. Firstly, the commonly used clinical upper limb functional assessment methods are analyzed and summarized. Then the researches on intelligent assessment systems in recent years are reviewed, focusing on the technologies used in the data acquisition and data processing parts of intelligent assessment systems and their advantages and disadvantages. Lastly, the current challenges and future development directions of intelligent assessment systems are discussed. This review is hoped to provide valuable reference information for researchers in related fields.

Fully automated quantification of cardiac chamber and function assessment in 2-D echocardiography: clinical feasibility of deep learning-based algorithms

We aimed to compare the segmentation performance of the current prominent deep learning (DL) algorithms with ground-truth segmentations and to validate the reproducibility of the manually created 2D echocardiographic four cardiac chamber ground-truth annotation. Recently emerged DL based fully-automated chamber segmentation and function assessment methods have shown great potential for future application in aiding image acquisition, quantification, and suggestion for diagnosis. However, the performance of current DL algorithms have not previously been compared with each other. In addition, the reproducibility of ground-truth annotations which are the basis of these algorithms have not yet been fully validated. We retrospectively enrolled 500 consecutive patients who underwent transthoracic echocardiogram (TTE) from December 2019 to December 2020. Simple U-net, Res-U-net, and Dense-U-net algorithms were compared for the segmentation performances and clinical indices such as left atrial volume (LAV), left ventricular end diastolic volume (LVEDV), left ventricular end systolic volume (LVESV), LV mass, and ejection fraction (EF) were evaluated. The inter- and intra-observer variability analysis was performed by two expert sonographers for a randomly selected echocardiographic view in 100 patients (apical 2-chamber, apical 4-chamber, and parasternal short axis views). The overall performance of all DL methods was excellent [average dice similarity coefficient (DSC) 0.91 to 0.95 and average Intersection over union (IOU) 0.83 to 0.90], with the exception of LV wall area on PSAX view (average DSC of 0.83, IOU 0.72). In addition, there were no significant difference in clinical indices between ground truth and automated DL measurements. For inter- and intra-observer variability analysis, the overall intra observer reproducibility was excellent: LAV (ICC = 0.995), LVEDV (ICC = 0.996), LVESV (ICC = 0.997), LV mass (ICC = 0.991) and EF (ICC = 0.984). The inter-observer reproducibility was slightly lower as compared to intraobserver agreement: LAV (ICC = 0.976), LVEDV (ICC = 0.982), LVESV (ICC = 0.970), LV mass (ICC = 0.971), and EF (ICC = 0.899). The three current prominent DL-based fully automated methods are able to reliably perform four-chamber segmentation and quantification of clinical indices. Furthermore, we were able to validate the four cardiac chamber ground-truth annotation and demonstrate an overall excellent reproducibility, but still with some degree of inter-observer variability.

Quantification of Global Myoelectric Spatial Activations to Delineate Normal Hamstring Function at Progressive Running Speeds: A Technical Report.

Schlink, BR, Nordin, AD, Diekfuss, JA, and Myer, GD. Quantification of global myoelectric spatial activations to delineate normal hamstring function at progressive running speeds: A technical report. J Strength Cond Res 36(3): 867-870, 2022-Hamstring function is critical to maintain sport performance, and strain injuries to the biceps femoris muscle commonly force an athlete to withdraw from their sport while the muscle heals. Current mechanistic understanding of underlying injury and return-to-play (RTP) guidelines has limited prognostic value because of limitations in technology and nonfunctional assessment strategies to guide clinical care. Integrated structural and functional determinants and dynamic assessment methods are needed to guide advanced rehabilitation strategies for safe and rapid return to sport. A potential solution for assessment of hamstring function is high-density electromyography (EMG), which can noninvasively measure spatial muscle activity in dynamic environments. In this study, we demonstrated the utility of high-density EMG by measuring spatial myoelectric activity from the biceps femoris from a group of recreational athletes running at a range of speeds. The level of significance set for this study was p < 0.05. During the late swing phase of running, we observed increased EMG amplitudes in the central and distal portions of the muscle. There were no changes in this pattern of EMG activation across speed, suggesting that running speed does not affect the general neuromuscular recruitment in the biceps femoris. Applying these methods to athletes with hamstring strains may lead to a more complete understanding of muscle function during rehabilitation and adjunctively support current methods to enhance RTP decision-making.

Rules for a routine electroencephalogram recording

Electroencephalography (EEG) is the primary method for functional assessment of the brain bioelectrical activity. It is the most effective for epilepsy diagnosing, and also used for localization of the epileptogenic zone in presurgical evaluation for pharmaco-resistant epilepsy and in critical care medicine. In practice, the most common type is a 'routine' EEG, the informative value of which depends largely on the accuracy of its performance. The paper briefly outlines the rules for performing a routine EEG and lists the most common mistakes that can affect its interpretation.

Blood perfusion and diameter of bovine corpus luteum as predictors of luteal function in early pregnancy.

A feasible and non-invasive luteal function assessment which enables timely intervention to improve progesterone (P4) support at early pregnancy is not well-established. The aim of this study was to determine the correlation among morphological and functional assessment methods of corpus luteum (CL) on Day 5 (D5) following timed-artificial insemination effect on luteal blood perfusion (LBP), CL diameter and serum P4 concentration. Beef heifers (n=89) were synchronized and inseminated (D0). On D5, CL was scanned by colour-Doppler ultrasonography using an LBP score (0 = absent; 3 = high blood perfusion); CL diameter was obtained and blood was collected. Diameter of CL had a positive linear effect on P4 concentration (p<.001); and larger CL diameter increased the probability to become pregnant (p<.05; odds ratio =1.21). Heifers with a CL larger than 14.95mm had a higher pregnancy rate than heifers with a 14.95mm or smaller CL (p<.05). Animals with LBP 2 and 3 had larger CL when compared to scores 0 and 1 (p<.001). Scores 1, 2 and 3 can accurately estimate heifers with higher P4 (accuracy =0.79, 0.72 and 0.61 respectively). In conclusion, LBP on Day 5 post-TAI allows to estimate heifers with higher P4 and larger CL size, and a larger CL diameter was positively associated with pregnancy rate.

Machine Learning Method for Functional Assessment of Retinal Models.

Challenges in the field of retinal prostheses motivate the development of retinal models to accurately simulate Retinal Ganglion Cells (RGCs) responses. The goal of retinal prostheses is to enable blind individuals to solve complex, reallife visual tasks. In this paper, we introduce the functional assessment (FA) of retinal models, which describes the concept of evaluating the performance of retinal models on visual understanding tasks. We present a machine learning method for FA: we feed traditional machine learning classifiers with RGC responses generated by retinal models, to solve object and digit recognition tasks (CIFAR-10, MNIST, Fashion MNIST, Imagenette). We examined critical FA aspects, including how the performance of FA depends on the task, how to optimally feed RGC responses to the classifiers and how the number of output neurons correlates with the model's accuracy. To increase the number of output neurons, we manipulated input images - by splitting and then feeding them to the retinal model and we found that image splitting does not significantly improve the model's accuracy. We also show that differences in the structure of datasets result in largely divergent performance of the retinal model (MNIST and Fashion MNIST exceeded 80% accuracy, while CIFAR-10 and Imagenette achieved ∼40%). Furthermore, retinal models which perform better in standard evaluation, i.e. more accurately predict RGC response, perform better in FA as well. However, unlike standard evaluation, FA results can be straightforwardly interpreted in the context of comparing the quality of visual perception.

Life cycle assessment of combustion-based electricity generation technologies integrated with carbon capture and storage: A review

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the key technology to reduce CO2 emissions from the conventional power systems. CCS has the flexibility, compatibility, and great potential to reduce emissions when combined with the current energy infrastructure. Through quantifying the environmental benefits of the combustion-based electricity generation system with CCS by life cycle assessment (LCA), decision-makers can grasp the contribution of upstream and downstream processes to various environmental impacts, a better trade-off between climate change and non-climate impact categories. This work reviews the LCA research on the combustion-based electricity generation system integrated with CCS in the past 10 years. These studies show that CCS can reduce the direct CO2 emissions from power plants by nearly 90%. While CCS effectively mitigates climate change, it also increases other environmental impacts to varying degrees and results in energy penalty of 15–44%. The actual greenhouse gas of the power plant is reduced by 40–80%. We further analyze a series of key issues involved in the LCA of the combustion-based electricity generation system integrated with CCS, including the functional unit, basic assumptions, system boundaries and assessment methods. Time span and the leakage need to be considered by researchers in LCA. The perspective of research needs to shift from the specific application of a single CCS to the impact assessment of large-scale deployment, and a single environment or economic discipline to interdisciplinary assessment. It is more cost-effective to realize the coordinated emission reduction between the power plant and the upstream and downstream supply chain.

Functional assessment and rehabilitation protocol in acute patients affected by SARS-CoV-2 infection hospitalized in the Intensive Care Unit and in the Medical Care Unit.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is characterized by different clinical pictures that may require prolonged hospitalization and produce disabilities challenging the recovery of previous independence. The aim is to evaluate the impact of an early assisted rehabilitation program on the functional status of an acutely hospitalized population affected by COVID-19. Single-institution retrospective longitudinal study. Inpatient intensive care units (ICU) and medical care units (MCU). Acute COVID-19 patients. General information was collected; age-adjusted Charlson Comorbidity Index was used for comorbidities. Duration of hospital stay, the length of stay in ICU and/or MCU, the length of the rehabilitative treatment, and the destination at the discharge were collected. Evaluation was performed when patients were clinically stable (T0), and at hospital discharge (T1); for subjects enrolled in ICU functional status was assessed at the time of transfer to the MCU. Muscle strength of the four limbs was measured with the Medical Research Council (MRC) sum-score. Functional status was assessed using the 3-item Barthel Index (BI-3) and the General Physical Mobility Score (GPMS). Early assisted-tailored rehabilitation protocol was applied in ICU and in MCU: the aims were the maintenance (or recovery) of the range of motion and of the strength and the recovery of sitting/standing position and gait. We evaluated 116 patients (mean age 65, SD 11) (65% male), 68 in ICU (mean age 60, SD 10), 48 in MCU (mean age 73, SD 9). At discharge, BI-3 and GPMS significantly improved in both ICU (P<0.001) and MCU (P<0.001) subgroups of patients. MRC sum-score significantly improved in ICU patients (P<0.001). Patients hospitalized in ICU had a significantly longer hospital stay. At discharge, patients admitted to the ICU reach a functional state that is close to that of patients admitted to the MCU. The results suggest that an early assisted rehabilitation program may be helpful in improving the short-term functional status of an acutely hospitalized population affected by COVID-19, with discharge at home of 48% CLINICAL REHABILITATION IMPACT: this study focuses on a functional assessment method to be used to identify the rehabilitation needs and verify the results of an early rehabilitation protocol applied to the acute COVID-19 patient admitted to ICU and MCU.

A reproducible method for biochemical, histological and functional assessment of the effects of ischaemia\u2013reperfusion syndrome in the lower limbs

Current methodology described to mimic lower limb ischaemia–reperfusion injury (LL-IRI) does not accurately define the procedures and pressures exerted to induce and maintain ischaemia. In this piece of work, we propose a well-defined and detailed rat model that simulates the conditions established in clinical practice guidelines for tourniquet application and allows us to test treatments that aim to prevent/reduce LL-IRI. Eighty-six male WAG/RijHsd rats were subjected to hind limb IRI (LL-IRI), using a mechanical system applying a 1 kg tension to induce and maintain ischemia for 2 or 3 h, and assessed the damage caused by reperfusion at biochemical and muscular levels at different time points. At the biochemical level, both 2 and 3 h of ischemia induced changes (except for electrolyte levels); 3 h of ischemia induced greater changes in specific markers of muscular damage: creatine kinase (CK) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). At the histopathological level, 3 h of ischemia and 24 h of reperfusion was associated with an increase in hind limb girth, cross-sectional area, and weight and presence of neutrophils, as well as histological damage in more than 60% of muscle fibres. Our model allows to reliably reproduce the damage associated with the use of a pneumatic tourniquet. CK and LDH, as well as measures of tissue damage, allow to define and characterize the response to LL-IRI-related damage. A period of 3 h of ischemia followed by 3 h of reperfusion caused only local damage but showed greater sensitivity to detect differences in future studies on prophylactic treatments against LL-IRI.

P–379 Human platelet lysate improves trophoblast spheroid attachment to primary endometrial epithelial cells from patients with recurrent implantation failure

Abstract Study question Could non-autologous platelet lysate (PL) increase attachment of HTR–8 spheroids in vitro to primary endometrial epithelial cells (EECs) from patients with recurrent implantation failure (RIF)? Summary answer Increased quantity of HTR–8 spheroids attached to primary EECs, isolated from patients with RIF, suggests in vitro treatment with non-autologous PL could improve endometrial receptivity. What is known already Inadequate endometrial receptivity and thickness are major causes for RIF. Recent studies suggest that platelet-rich plasma (PRP) may improve pregnancy outcomes for RIF and/or thin endometrium (TE) patients. Our previous results show that a commercially sourced and non-autologous human PRP/PL (HPL) promotes EC proliferation in vitro, suggesting that HPL may help to standardize future clinical treatments. In addition to EC proliferation, HPL treatment may improve embryo attachment to primary EECs isolated from patients with a history of RIF. In vitro attachment assays with trophoblast spheroids (embryo model) could help elucidate the effect of HPL on endometrial receptivity in RIF patients. Study design, size, duration Endometrial tissue was collected from nine RIF patients at the CReATe Fertility Centre, Toronto, Canada (Veritas REB#16580): five with (RIF+TE) and four without a TE (RIF only). Primary EECs were enzymatically isolated and treated with serum-free culture media (SFM) or 1% HPL in SFM for 48 hours before performing the attachment assay. Trophoblast cells (HTR–8/SVneo) were grown in suspension on a rocker to form 70–100 uM spheroids over 24 hours before use in the assay. Participants/materials, setting, methods Spheroids were fluorescently labelled with calcein-AM for 30 minutes and size-selected to capture spheroids similar in size to a human blastocyst. Spheroids were seeded on top of EEC monolayers and calcein fluorescence was immediately measured by a spectrophotometer. Following the 1-hour incubation, unattached spheroids were aspirated, and fluorescence was measured again. Spheroids were also individually quantified by fluorescent microscopy and ImageJ™ software. The percentage of spheroid attachment was calculated for calcein fluorescence and ImageJ™ quantification. Main results and the role of chance The HTR–8/SVneo cell line, derived from human first-trimester extravillous trophoblast cells (EVT), has been shown to be a suitable cell line to assess adhesion and invasion in vitro. Trophoblast spheroids generated from this cell line visually resembled a blastocyst and maintained expression of the EVT and implantation biomarkers: GATA3, ITGA5, and LIF. Primary EECs, treated for 48 hours with SFM supplemented with 1% commercially sourced and non-autologous HPL, overall exhibited increased attachment to HTR–8 spheroids. The percentage of spheroid attachment, as measured by fluorescence alone, significantly increase from 47.98% to 64.27% (P &amp;lt; 0.01) of seeded spheroids in RIF+TE EEC cultures, and from 48.12% to 85.77% (P &amp;lt; 0.001) of seeded spheroids in RIF only EEC cultures. Quantification by fluorescent microscopy and ImageJ™ software for individual calcein-stained spheroids, revealed a significant increase in spheroid attachment, from 57.52% to 86.5% (P &amp;lt; 0.01) in RIF+TE EEC cultures, and from 42.58% to 68.90% (P &amp;lt; 0.01) in RIF only EEC cultures. Limitations, reasons for caution Although there was a positive correlation between calcein fluorescence and spheroid quantity, quantification by fluorescence alone may be unreliable due to the variable numbers of cells in each spheroid. Our data suggest a more precise increase in attachment is detected when quantified by fluorescent microscopy and ImageJ™ software. Wider implications of the findings: We report a method for functional assessment of endometrial receptivity in vitro. HPL appears to promote implantation in RIF patients in a model of embryo attachment. We predict that the observed increase in attachment is due to increased endometrial receptivity gene expression, which will be our next investigative avenue. Trial registration number N/A

Clinical Translation of Three-Dimensional Scar, Diffusion Tensor Imaging, Four-Dimensional Flow, and Quantitative Perfusion in Cardiac MRI: A Comprehensive Review.

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging is a versatile tool that has established itself as the reference method for functional assessment and tissue characterisation. CMR helps to diagnose, monitor disease course and sub-phenotype disease states. Several emerging CMR methods have the potential to offer a personalised medicine approach to treatment. CMR tissue characterisation is used to assess myocardial oedema, inflammation or thrombus in various disease conditions. CMR derived scar maps have the potential to inform ablation therapy—both in atrial and ventricular arrhythmias. Quantitative CMR is pushing boundaries with motion corrections in tissue characterisation and first-pass perfusion. Advanced tissue characterisation by imaging the myocardial fibre orientation using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), has also demonstrated novel insights in patients with cardiomyopathies. Enhanced flow assessment using four-dimensional flow (4D flow) CMR, where time is the fourth dimension, allows quantification of transvalvular flow to a high degree of accuracy for all four-valves within the same cardiac cycle. This review discusses these emerging methods and others in detail and gives the reader a foresight of how CMR will evolve into a powerful clinical tool in offering a precision medicine approach to treatment, diagnosis, and detection of disease.