IntroductionUpper limb evaluation of patients with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is crucially important to evaluations of efficacy of new treatments in non-ambulant patients. In patients who have lost ambulation, there are few validated and informative outcome measures. In addition, longitudinal data demonstrating sensitivity to clinical evolution of outcome measures over short-term periods are lacking.Patients and MethodsWe report here the results of a one-year multicenter study using specifically designed tools to assess grip, pinch strength, and hand function in wheelchair-bound patients. Our study assessed 53 non-ambulant patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy aged 17.1 ± 4.8 years (range: 9 – 28.1 years). The average Brooke functional score of these patients was 4.6 ± 1.1. The average forced vital capacity was 44.5% predicted and 19 patients used non-invasive ventilation. Patients were assessed at baseline, 6 months, and one year using the Motor Function Measure and innovative devices (namely the MyoSet composed of MyoGrip, MyoPinch, and MoviPlate).ResultsOur study confirmed preliminary data previously reported regarding feasibility of use and of reliability of the MyoSet and the correlation at baseline between distal strength and clinical outcomes such as FVC, Brooke score, age, and duration since loss of ambulation. A significant correlation was observed between the distal upper limb strength and clinical variables. The sensitive dynamometers (MyoGrip and MyoPinch) and MoviPlate captured a 12-month change in non-ambulant Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients of all ages.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT00993161 NCT00993161

Assessment of the upper limb strength in non-ambulant neuromuscular patients remains challenging. Although potential outcome measures have been reported, longitudinal data demonstrating sensitivity to clinical evolution in spinal muscular atrophy patients are critically lacking. Our study recruited 23 non-ambulant patients, 16 patients (males/females = 6/10; median age 15.4 years with a range from 10.7 to 31.1 years) with spinal muscular atrophy type II and 7 patients (males/females = 2/5; median age 19.9 years with a range from 8.3 to 29.9 years) with type III. The Brooke functional score was on median 3 with a range from 2 to 6. The average total vital capacity was 46%, and seven patients required non-invasive ventilation at night. Patients were assessed at baseline, 6 months, and 1 year using the Motor Function Measure and innovative devices MyoGrip, MyoPinch, and MoviPlate, which assess handgrip strength, key pinch strength, and hand/finger extension-flexion function, respectively. The study demonstrated the feasibility and reliability of these measures for all patients, and sensitivity to negative changes after the age of 14 years. The younger patients showed an increase of the distal force in the follow-up period. The distal force measurements and function were correlated to different functional scales. These data represent an important step in the process of validating these devices as potential outcome measures for future clinical trials.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT00993161

Ghost imaging is a fascinating process, where light interacting with an object is recorded without resolution, but the shape of the object is nevertheless retrieved, thanks to quantum or classical correlations of this interacting light with either a computed or detected random signal. Recently, ghost imaging has been extended to a time object, by using several thousands copies of this periodic object. Here, we present a very simple device, inspired by computational ghost imaging, that allows the retrieval of a single non-reproducible, periodic or non-periodic, temporal signal. The reconstruction is performed by a single shot, spatially multiplexed, measurement of the spatial intensity correlations between computer-generated random images and the images, modulated by a temporal signal, recorded and summed on a chip CMOS camera used with no temporal resolution. Our device allows the reconstruction of either a single temporal signal with monochrome images or wavelength-multiplexed signals with color images.

Spatially entangled twin photons provide a test of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox in its original form of position (image plane) versus impulsion (Fourier plane). We show that recording a single pair of images in each plane is sufficient to safely demonstrate an EPR paradox. On each pair of images, we have retrieved the fluctuations by subtracting the fitted deterministic intensity shape and then have obtained an intercorrelation peak with a sufficient signal to noise ratio to safely distinguish this peak from random fluctuations. A 95% confidence interval has been determined, confirming a high degree of paradox whatever the considered single pairs. Last, we have verified that the value of the variance of the difference between twin images is always below the quantum (poissonian) limit, in order to ensure the particle character of the demonstration. Our demonstration shows that a single image pattern can reveal the quantum and non-local behavior of light, without any need of averaging after repeating the experiment.Statistical properties of fluctuations in quantum mechanics are described by ensemble averages, which are often estimated by time averages if the signal is stationary in time, but which can also be estimated by spatial averages if the signal is stationary in space on a sufficiently large area. Most of the experiments in quantum imaging record averages of temporal coincidences, i.e. characterize the spatial repartition of temporal averages, rather than spatial averages, with accent on the high dimensionality of the underlying entanglement, in order to demonstrate that an image conveys a great number of spatially correlated quantum (temporal) channels in parallel [1][2][3]. However, patterns in an image are pure spatial information, without any time aspect, that is ultimately degraded by spatial fluctuations of quantum origin in very weak images. Studying these fluctuations involve the use of cameras and needed so far the use of several images to exhibit quantum features. The sub shot-noise nature of the correlation between twin images issued from spontaneous down-conversion has been demonstrated either for a mean of several photons per pixel with low noise charge coupled devices [4,5] or in the photon-counting regime with electron-multiplying charge coupled devices (EM-CCD) [6]. These correlations were subsequently used to improve imaging [7]. In that work, the fluctuations of the idler image were subtracted from the signal image, resulting in an improvement of the image only for a degree of correlation higher than 0.5., attained for slightly more than half of the images. Hence, though the improvement was purely spatial, the use of a set of numerous images was necessary in this experiment, leaving open the question of demonstrating pure spatial quantum effects in single images, without the need of either temporal averages or averages of set of images.The same remark can be applied to our recent demonstration of spatial Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox [8]. EPR showed [9] that quantum me...

We use twin photons generated by spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC) to perform temporal ghost imaging of a single time signal. The retrieval of a binary signal containing eight bits is performed with an error rate below 1%.