Fetal brain development involves the development of the neuro-vegetative (autonomic) control that is mediated by the autonomic nervous system (ANS). Disturbances of the fetal brain development have implications for diseases in later postnatal life. In that context, the fetal functional brain age can be altered. Universal principles of developmental biology applied to patterns of autonomic control may allow a functional age assessment. The work aims at the development of a fetal autonomic brain age score (fABAS) based on heart rate patterns. We analysed n = 113 recordings in quiet sleep, n = 286 in active sleep, and n = 29 in active awakeness from normals. We estimated fABAS from magnetocardiographic recordings (21.4–40.3 weeks of gestation) preclassified in quiet sleep (n = 113, 63 females) and active sleep (n = 286, 145 females) state by cross-validated multivariate linear regression models in a cross-sectional study. According to universal system developmental principles, we included indices that address increasing fluctuation range, increasing complexity, and pattern formation (skewness, power spectral ratio VLF/LF, pNN5). The resulting models constituted fABAS. fABAS explained 66/63% (coefficient of determination R2 of training and validation set) of the variance by age in quiet, while 51/50% in active sleep. By means of a logistic regression model using fluctuation range and fetal age, quiet and active sleep were automatically reclassified (94.3/93.1% correct classifications). We did not find relevant gender differences. We conclude that functional brain age can be assessed based on universal developmental indices obtained from autonomic control patterns. fABAS reflect normal complex functional brain maturation. The presented normative data are supplemented by an explorative study of 19 fetuses compromised by intrauterine growth restriction. We observed a shift in the state distribution towards active awakeness. The lower WGA dependent fABAS values found in active sleep may reflect alterations in the universal developmental indices, namely fluctuation amplitude, complexity, and pattern formation that constitute fABAS.

The monitoring of free flaps, free transplants or organs for transplantation still poses a problem in medicine. Available systems for the measurement of perfusion and oxygenation can only perform localized measurements and usually need contact with the tissue. Contact free hyperspectral imaging and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) for the analysis of tissue oxygenation and perfusion have been used in many scientific studies with good results. But up to now the clinical and scientific application of this technology has been hindered by the lack of hyperspectral measurement systems usable in clinical practice. We will introduce the application of a new hyperspectral camera system for the quick and robust recording of remission spectra in the combined VIS and NIR spectral range with high spectral and spatial resolution. This new system can be applied for the clinical monitoring of free flaps and organs providing high quality oxygenation and perfusion images.

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U. Fetal development of complex autonomic control evaluated from multiscale heart rate patterns. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 304: R383-R392, 2013. First published December 26, 2012 doi:10.1152/ajpregu.00120.2012.-Development of the fetal autonomic nervous system's integrative capacity in relation to gestational age and emerging behavioral pattern is reflected in fetal heart rate patterns. Conventional indices of vagal and sympathetic rhythms cannot sufficiently reflect their complex interrelationship. Universal behavioral indices of developing complex systems may provide additional information regarding the maturating complex autonomic control. We investigated fetal magnetocardiographic recordings undertaken at 10-min intervals in active (n ϭ 248) and quiet (n ϭ 111) states between 22 and 39 wk gestational age. Standard deviation of heartbeat intervals, skewness, contribution of particular rhythms to the total power, and multiscale entropy were analyzed. The multiscale entropy methodology was validated for 10-min data sets. Age dependence was analyzed by linear regression. In the quiet state, contribution of sympathovagal rhythms and their complexity over a range of corresponding short scales increased with rising age, and skewness shifted from negative to positive values. In the active state, age dependencies were weaker. Skewness as the strongest parameter shifted in the same direction. Fluctuation amplitude and the complexity of scales associated with sympathovagal rhythms increased. We conclude that in the quiet state, stable complex organized rhythms develop. In the active state, however, increasing behavioral variability due to multiple internal coordinations, such as movement-related heart rate accelerations, and external influences develop. Hence, the state-selective assessment in association with developmental indices used herein may substantially improve evaluation of maturation age and early detection and interpretation of developmental problems in prenatal diagnosis. autonomic nervous system; complexity; developmental biology; fetal maturation; fetal behavioral patterns THERE IS INCREASING CONSENSUS that a certain number of diseases such as cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, atherosclerosis, Type 2 diabetes, learning difficulties, hyperkinetic disorders, as well as cognitive, behavioral, and emotional problems in late postnatal age are associated with adverse influences during fetal development that became permanently programmed (1,2,4,10,11,19,20,23,24,26,31,32,39,40,44,47). However, early identification of fetal developmental problems is a challenging topic of prenatal diagnosis due to the extremely limited number of observable variables from the fetus. During the fetal maturation the emerging complex behavioral patterns are associated with an increasing functional integration in the organism. In that connection the autonomic nervous system (ANS) plays a predominant role for complex coordinated control of multiple vitally important physiological subsystems in the organism. Sin...

Abstract. As dental caries is one of the most common diseases, the early and noninvasive detection of carious lesions plays an important role in public health care. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) with its ability of depth-resolved, high-resolution, noninvasive, fast imaging has been previously recognized as a promising tool in dentistry. Additionally, polarization sensitive imaging provides quantitative measures on the birefringent tissue properties and can be utilized for imaging dental tissue, especially enamel and dentin. By imaging three exemplary tooth samples ex vivo with proximal white spot, brown spot, and cavity, we show that the combination of polarization sensitive OCT and the degree of polarization uniformity (DOPU) algorithm is a promising approach for the detection of proximal carious lesions due to the depolarization contrast of demineralized tissue. Furthermore, we investigate different sizes of the DOPU evaluation kernel on the resulting contrast and conclude a suitable value for this application. We propose that DOPU provides an easy to interpret image representation and appropriate contrast for possible future screening applications in early caries diagnostics. © The Authors.Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.