No abstract

The quality of egg is mainly influenced by the dirt adhering to its shell. Even with good farm-management practices and careful handling, a small percentage of dirty eggs will be produced. The purpose of this research was to detect the egg stains by using image processing technique. Compared to the color values, the local texture was found to be much more adept at accurately segmenting of the complex and miscellaneous dirt stains on the egg shell. Firstly, the global threshold of the image was obtained by two-peak method. The irrelevant background was removed by using the global threshold and the interested region was acquired. The local texture information extracted from the interested region was taken as the input of fuzzy C-means clustering for segmentation of the dirt stains. According to the principle of projection, the area of dirt stains on the curved egg surface was accurately calculated. The validation experimental results showed that the proposed method for classifying eggs in terms of stain has the specificity of 91.4% for white eggs and 89.5% for brown eggs.

This systematic review and meta-analysis of conventional enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were conducted to evaluate the diagnostic performance of imaging features of microvascular invasion (MVI) prediction in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). METHODSRelevant studies on diagnosing MVI in HCC by MRI were searched in the MEDLINE, PUBMED, EMBASE, Cochrane library, and Web of Science databases. The pooled mean sensitivity and specificity were calculated using a random effects model. The corresponding positive likelihood ratio (PLR), negative likelihood ratio (NLR), and pooled diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) were calculated. The summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curve was used to summarize the overall diagnostic accuracy. Diagnostic performance was evaluated by determining the area under the curve (AUC). Regression analysis by subgroup and sensitivity analysis were used to explore potential sources of heterogeneity. RESULTSA total of 19 studies comprising 1920 HCC patients with 2033 tumors were ultimately enrolled. For the signs of the presence of peritumoral enhancement in the arterial phase, peritumoral hypointensity in the hepatobiliary phase, irregular non-smooth margin, and rim-like enhancement in the arterial phase, the pooled sensitivity values, the pooled specificity values, the pooled PLR values, the pooled NLR values, the pooled DOR values, and the values of the AUC of SROC curves were determined. CONCLUSIONThe conventional MRI features for predicting MVI showed poor diagnostic performance in HCC. Only signs of the presence of peritumoral enhancement in the arterial phase showed a moderate diagnostic accuracy. I n hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), microvascular invasion (MVI), which is considered microscopic evidence of cancer embolism in the portal vein or vascular space lined by endothelial cells, is a prognostic factor for poor overall survival and recurrence after hepatectomy or liver transplantation. 1,2 For patients with HCC who underwent curative surgical resection, detection of MVI plays an important role in clinical decision-making. Subsequent treatment approaches, such as postoperative adjuvant transcatheter arterial chemoembolization, are recently recommended for patients with MVI-positive HCC to prevent recurrence and improve the prognosis. 3,4 Unfortunately, with a high positive incidence rate of up to 57%, MVI can only be confirmed by postoperative pathological examination after extensive resection of the tumor, 5,6 which makes it difficult to predict MVI preoperatively.As a non-invasive examination, enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), especially hepat obili ary-s pecifi c contrast-enhanced MRI, is currently used for detecting MVI. 7 Incomplete tumor capsules, irregular non-smooth margin, rim-like enhancement on the arterial phase, peritumoral enhancement on the arterial phase, and peritumoral hypointensity on the hepatobiliary phase (HBP) are considered as possible radiographic signs for MVI detection. 8 Rim-like enhancement is defined as the irregular rim-like periphera...