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IntroductionPenetrating injury to the forearm may cause an isolated radial or ulnar artery injury, or a complex injury involving other structures including veins, tendons and nerves. The management of forearm laceration with arterial injury involves both operative and nonoperative strategies. An evolution in management has emerged especially at urban trauma centers, where the multidisciplinary resource of trauma and hand subspecialties may invoke controversy pertaining to the optimal management of such injuries. The objective of this review was to provide an evidence-based, systematic, operative and nonoperative approach to the management of isolated and complex forearm lacerations. A comprehensive search of MedLine, Cochrane Library, Embase and the National Guideline Clearinghouse did not yield evidence-based management guidelines for forearm arterial laceration injury. No professional or societal consensus guidelines or best practice guidelines exist to our knowledge.DiscussionThe optimal methods for achieving hemostasis are by a combination approach utilizing direct digital pressure, temporary tourniquet pressure, compressive dressings followed by wound closure. While surgical hemostasis may provide an expedited route for control of hemorrhage, this aggressive approach is often not needed (with a few exceptions) to achieve hemostasis for most forearm lacerations. Conservative methods mentioned above will attain the same result. Further, routine emergent or urgent operative exploration of forearm laceration injuries are not warranted and not cost-beneficial. It has been widely accepted with ample evidence in the literature that neither injury to forearm artery, nerve or tendon requires immediate surgical repair. Attention should be directed instead to control of bleeding, and perform a complete physical examination of the hand to document the presence or absence of other associated injuries. Critical ischemia will require expeditious surgical restoration of arterial perfusion. In a well-perfused hand, however, the presence of one intact artery is adequate to sustain viability without long-term functional disability, provided the palmar arch circulation is intact. Early consultation with a hand specialist should be pursued, and follow-up arrangement made for delayed primary repair in cases of complex injury.ConclusionManagement in accordance with well-established clinical principles will maximize treatment efficacy and functional outcome while minimizing the cost of medical care.

The MODIS vegetation continuous fields (VCF) product has a percent tree cover layer; hence it could potentially be used to detect hotspots of deforestation and forest degradation, if data accuracy is high. This paper assesses the accuracy of the VCF percent tree cover layer by comparing it with land cover maps in two areas in Mexico. Specifically, we assess whether it can (1) differentiate forest from non-forest and (2) detect forest degradation. The VCF percent tree cover layer is considered accurate if the percent tree cover value of forest is markedly higher than non-forest, and the value of conserved forest higher than degraded forest. Our results show that VCF percent tree cover can accurately differentiate forest from non-forest except from the case of tropical dry forest. It also discriminate primary forest from open secondary forest; however, secondary forest with regrowth shows higher percent tree cover value than primary forest. Based on the obtained results, the VCF percent tree cover seems to be a promising product for deforestation and degradation detection. However, a quantitative assessment incorporating other areas with more vegetation types is recommended before its application for forest cover change analysis in Mexico.Keywords-MODIS vegetation continuous fields, percent tree cover, deforestation, forest degradation, tropical dry forest, temperate forest I.

Masks are used in optical image processing. They are used to generate gradient maps. These maps are applicable to the enhancement of feature extraction and edge detection. Lagrange mask is presented in this letter and criteria for the characterizations of mask performance are given. Through an illustration the performance of the presented mask is demonstrated where it is compared to that of Gabor mask. Results from the illustration support the applicability and suitability of Lagrange mask for the generation of gradient maps from a noise corrupted optical image.