No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The acoustic posterior shadowing effects of bubbles influence the accuracy for defining the location and range of ablated thermal lesions during focused ultrasound surgery when using ultrasonic monitoring imaging. This paper explored the feasibility of using Nakagami distribution to evaluate the ablated region induced by focused ultrasound exposures at different acoustic power levels in transparent tissue-mimicking phantoms. The mean value of the Nakagami parameter m was about 0.5 in the cavitation region and increased to around 1 in the ablated region. Nakagami images were not subject to significant shadowing effects of bubbles. Ultrasound-induced thermal lesions observed in the photos and Nakagami images were overshadowed by bubbles in the B-mode images. The lesion size predicted in the Nakagami images was smaller than that predicted in the photos due to the sub resolvable effect of Nakagami imaging at the interface. This preliminary study on tissue-mimicking phantom suggested that the Nakagami parameter m may have the potential use in evaluating the formation of ultrasound-induced thermal lesion when the shadowing effect of bubbles is strong while the thermal lesion was small. Further studies in vivo and in vitro will be needed to evaluate the potential application.

The angular distribution of W-[Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] X-rays induced by 13.1 keV bremsstrahlung has been measured at different emission angles from 110[Formula: see text] to 140[Formula: see text] at intervals of 10[Formula: see text]. The investigation of angular dependence of [Formula: see text] X-ray intensity ratios by bremsstrahlung is barely found in previous works. The [Formula: see text] X-ray yield shows isotropic emission, while the measured [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] X-ray yields are found to be spatially anisotropic. At last, the anisotropy parameters for [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] X-rays have been derived.

No abstract

BackgroundTuberculosis (TB) remains a serious epidemic in China. In the past five years, the number of TB infections in high school students is rising and thus high school students are becoming a high risk group of TB. Parents of children with TB have to endure high psychological pressures from the disease itself, children’s education, employment and life. The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychological pressure of parents with high school students suffering from TB.MethodsA total of 22 parents who have been taking care of their children suffering from TB were interviewed and a framework approach was used to analyze the interviews.ResultsIn our study, 21/22 parents had low levels of understanding about TB; 22/22 were under psychological stress; and 20/22 stated that their daily life was impacted on TB.ConclusionsParents need to be given appropriate knowledge on TB and psychological counseling. Authorities should not only implement the therapeutic measures, but also focus on solving the psychological problems of patients and their families when a similar outbreak occurs.