This paper describes a way to develop magneto-optical waveguides via sol-gel process. They are made of cobalt ferrite nanoparticles embedded in a silica/zirconia matrix. Thin films are coated on glass substrate using the dip-coating technique. Annealing and UV treatment are applied to finalize sample preparation. Therefore, planar waveguides combining magneto-optical properties with a low refractive index (≈1,5) are obtained. M-lines and free space ellipsometry measurements show a specific Faraday rotation of 250°/cm and a modal birefringence of 1×10−4 at 820 nm. Thus, the mode conversion efficiency can reach a maximum value around 56%.

The analysis of biomedical signals demonstrating complexity through recurrence plots is challenging. Quantification of recurrences is often biased by sojourn points that hide dynamic transitions. To overcome this problem, time series have previously been embedded at high dimensions. However, no one has quantified the elimination of sojourn points and rate of detection, nor the enhancement of transition detection has been investigated. This paper reports our on-going efforts to improve the detection of dynamic transitions from logistic maps and fetal hearts by reducing sojourn points. Three signal-based recurrence plots were developed, i.e. embedded with specific settings, derivative-based and m-time pattern. Determinism, cross-determinism and percentage of reduced sojourn points were computed to detect transitions. For logistic maps, an increase of 50% and 34.3% in sensitivity of detection over alternatives was achieved by m-time pattern and embedded recurrence plots with specific settings, respectively, and with a 100% specificity. For fetal heart rates, embedded recurrence plots with specific settings provided the best performance, followed by derivative-based recurrence plot, then unembedded recurrence plot using the determinism parameter. The relative errors between healthy and distressed fetuses were 153%, 95% and 91%. More than 50% of sojourn points were eliminated, allowing better detection of heart transitions triggered by gaseous exchange factors. This could be significant in improving the diagnosis of fetal state.

Segmentation is often required for the analysis of dynamic positron emission tomography (PET) images. However, noise and low spatial resolution make it a difficult task and several supervised and unsupervised methods have been proposed in the literature to perform the segmentation based on semi-automatic clustering of the time activity curves of voxels. In this paper we propose a new method based on spectral clustering that does not require any prior information on the shape of clusters in the space in which they are identified. In our approach, the p-dimensional data, where p is the number of time frames, is first mapped into a high dimensional space and then clustering is performed in a low-dimensional space of the Laplacian matrix. An estimation of the bounds for the scale parameter involved in the spectral clustering is derived. The method is assessed using dynamic brain PET images simulated with GATE and results on real images are presented. We demonstrate the usefulness of the method and its superior performance over three other clustering methods from the literature. The proposed approach appears as a promising pre-processing tool before parametric map calculation or ROI-based quantification tasks.

The strength conferred to a mesh by fixing it with laparoscopic staples and the effects of tissue incorporation have never been quantified. Eighteen dogs were divided into three groups sacrificed at 2 days (5 dogs), 2 weeks (6 dogs), and 2 months (7 dogs). One 3.5- by 5-cm piece of abdominal wall was removed from each side through a median laparotomy, leaving the skin intact. A polypropylene mesh (5 by 7 cm) was fixed over one defect with four Endopath EMS staples (Ethicon Endo-surgery) and over the other with 16 EMS staples. At sacrifice, bursting strength (BS) was measured with an Instron tester and specimens were studied histologically. One-way analysis of variance and the Newmann-Keuls multiple-comparison test were used. BS tests showed that for each period studied, the strength of the repair performed with 16 staples was significantly higher than that obtained when four staples were applied. They also showed that tensile strength increased significantly in both groups as time elapsed. Light microscopy supported the conclusion that the initial strength of the repair was related to the number of clips and was significantly increased by cellular infiltration at 2 weeks and significantly more by collagen deposition at 2 months. At 2 months, BS was significantly higher in the 16-staples group, suggesting that initial fixation still plays a significant role.

We investigated the in vitro ultrasound-triggered delivery of paclitaxel, a well known anti-cancerous drug, encapsulated in an emulsion and in the presence of CT26 tumor cells.