Objective: The aim of this study was to describe the stages of learning Kohonen's self-organizing maps applied to scintigraphy imaging in order to perform classification for medical diagnostic aid. Method: To achieve these goals, the neurons, arranged on a regular grid, are connected to each other by a neighbor relationship, which creates the topology of the map. The input layer consisted of pixels from the scintigraphy images. Results: During the iteration rounds of learning, we have seen a deployment of neurons on the nodes of the map that becomes more and more important. And it is the same for the winning neurons. After 750 iterations, the Davies Bouldin index attests to the end of the training with a quantization error that goes from 0.175 at the beginning of the training to 0.0225 at the end of the training. After this study, we find that neurons 41, 62, 121, 101 and 145 have captured most of the data with a peak uptake achieved by neuron 41 which has captured 1048 data. This individualizes the class of high intensities undoubtedly corresponding to metastatic hyperfixations. Conclusion: This innovative method could undoubtedly be integrated into the link in the chain highlighting periarticular metastases in developing countries, most of which do not have a SPECT-CT.

Cardiac amyloidosis presents a picture of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. It is largely underdiagnosed, especially in black Africans, and therefore falls under the category of heart disease classified as idiopathic. Light chain amyloidosis (AL) is mainly found in Caucasian subjects and the mutant variant of transthyretin (TTRm) in negroid subjects. Numerous studies have shown that ATTRm was found predominantly in black American and black British patients. In African countries the entity of idiopathic heart failure is quite important because of lack of diagnosis, ETT, MRI and immuno-histochemistry are expensive or not available. We can probably assume that the proportion of cardiac amyloidosis is quite important in black Africans. The question is if 99m Tc-DPD really easy to perform, can probably help to investigate in the nuclear medicine department in Africa. No large-scale study has been able to demonstrate the prevalence or not of cardiac amyloidosis in black-African subjects and by extension reduce this nosological entity of idiopathic heart disease. The 99m Tc-DPD scintigraphy using Perrugini's visual sore allows localization and classification of amyloid damage. The mechanism of binding of 99m Tc-DPD to amyloid fibril deposits is not well known, its binding to TTR-type (mutated or wild type) amyloidosis is greater than the AL variant. In the diagnostic algorithm, endomyocardial biopsy is the gold standard but remains invasive, ETT with the strain allows a presumptive diagnosis and remains an operative examination dependent and is not reproducible. Cardiac MRI allows some localization of amyloid deposits but still remains less sensitive than scintigraphy. In addition, performing the whole-body MRI is very restrictive (time, antenna change and cost). The aim of this literature review was to show the superiority of How to cite this paper:

Introduction: Determination of dry weight is one of the daily goals to achieve in hemodialysis. The aim of this study was to validate the use of bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) in estimation of dry weight in a population of Senegalese chronic hemodialysis patients. Patients and methods: A 9-week cross-sectional study was carried out at the hemodialysis unit of Aristide Le Dantec University Hospital. Adult patients with no previous hospital history were included. The total body water (TBW) was measured with a single frequency bioelectric impedance foot-to-foot analyzer, before and after six successive hemodialysis sessions. These results were compared with those from clinical measurements with the Watson equation using a Student’s t-test and Bland-Altman analysis. Results: 264 measurements were made in 22 patients (46.6 years, 54.5% men, 92.3 months on dialysis, 62.7 kg mean dry weight). A significant reduction in weight (ΔWeight = 2.0 ± 1.1 kg; p < 0.0001) and in TBW measured by the BIA (ΔTBWBIA = 3.3 ± 1.0 liters; p < 0.0001)) or calculated by Watson’s equation (ΔTBWWatson = 0.5 ± 0.2 liter; p = 0.0001) was observed. There was a strong linear correlation and agreement between the 2 TBW measurements in pre-dialysis. In post-dialysis the concordance diagram indicated a bias = –2.2 and wide agreement limits. Conclusion: The BIA allows reproducible and reliable measurements and a fair estimate of the TBW in pre-dialysis.