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A series of 8 cases of elastofibroma is reported, and the clinical, pathological and imaging features and different therapeutic modalities are reviewed. On this basis, we suggest an algorithm for the diagnosis and treatment of elastofibroma. Briefly, marginal excision is the treatment of choice in symptomatic patients, while followup appears to be a good solution in asymptomatic ones.

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Recent neural-network-based architectures for image segmentation make extensive usage of feature forwarding mechanisms to integrate information from multiple scales. Although yielding good results, even deeper architectures and alternative methods for feature fusion at different resolutions have been scarcely investigated for medical applications. In this work we propose to implement segmentation via an encoderdecoder architecture which differs from any other previously published method since (i) it employs a very deep architecture based on residual learning and (ii) combines features via a convolutional Long Short Term Memory (LSTM), instead of concatenation or summation. The intuition is that the memory mechanism implemented by LSTMs can better integrate features from different scales through a coarse-to-fine strategy; hence the name Coarse-to-Fine Context Memory (CFCM). We demonstrate the remarkable advantages of this approach on two datasets: the Montgomery county lung segmentation dataset, and the EndoVis 2015 challenge dataset for surgical instrument segmentation. * Maximilian Baust is now working for

Purpose We present a fully image-based visual servoing framework for neurosurgical navigation and needle guidance. The proposed servo-control scheme allows for compensation of target anatomy movements, maintaining high navigational accuracy over time, and automatic needle guide alignment for accurate manual insertions. Method Our system comprises a motorized 3D ultrasound (US) transducer mounted on a robotic arm and equipped with a needle guide. It continuously registers US sweeps in real time with a pre-interventional plan based on CT or MR images and annotations. While a visual control law maintains anatomy visibility and alignment of the needle guide, a force controller is employed for acoustic coupling and tissue pressure. We validate the servoing capabilities of our method on a geometric gel phantom and real human anatomy, and the needle targeting accuracy using CT images on a lumbar spine gel phantom under neurosurgery conditions. Results Despite the varying resolution of the acquired Oliver Zettinig and Benjamin Frisch have contributed equally to this work. Yu-Mi Ryang and Nassir Navab have contributed equally to this work.B Oliver Zettinig 3D sweeps, we achieved direction-independent positioning errors of 0.35±0.19 mm and 0.61 • ±0.45 • , respectively. Our method is capable of compensating movements of around 25 mm/s and works reliably on human anatomy with errors of 1.45 ± 0.78 mm. In all four manual insertions by an expert surgeon, a needle could be successfully inserted into the facet joint, with an estimated targeting accuracy of 1.33±0.33 mm, superior to the gold standard. Conclusion The experiments demonstrated the feasibility of robotic ultrasound-based navigation and needle guidance for neurosurgical applications such as lumbar spine injections.

We confirmed that intra-operative navigation using augmented reality provides an alternative way to perform distal locking in a safe and timely manner.

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