Papers by Keyword: Cervical

Abstract: Cervical cancer is a common cancer that affects women around the world, and it is also the most common cancer in the developing countries. The cancer burden has increased due to several factors, such as population growth and ageing. In the early century, the systematization of cervical cancer cells takes some time to process manually, and the result that comes out is also inaccurate. This article presents a new nucleus segmentation on pap smear cell images based on structured analysis or morphological approach. Morphology is a broad set of image processing operations that process images based on shape, size and structure. This operation applies a structural element of the image to create an output image of the same size. The most basic of these operations are dilation and erosion. The results of the numerical analysis indicate that the proposed method achieved about 94.38% (sensitivity), 82.56% (specificity) and 93% (accuracy). Also, the resulting performance was compared to a few existing techniques such as Bradley Method, Nick Method and Sauvola Method. The results presented here may facilitate improvements in the detection method of the pap smear cell image to resolve the time-consuming issue and support better system performance to prevent low precision result of the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) stages. The main impact of this paper is will help the doctor to identify the patient disease based on Pap smear analysis such as cervical cancer and increase the percentages of accuracy compared to the conventional method. Successful implementation of the nucleus detection techniques on Pap smear image can become a standard technique for the diagnosis of various microbiological infections such as Malaria and Tuberculosis.

Abstract: Cervical disc herniations represent the most frequent cervical-level pathology in patients aged 40 and above. Symptoms usually include C6-C7 radiculopathy, which has a prevalence of 3.3/1000 individuals. There still is a debate on whether any gender is more frequently affected, as some authors report women are more frequently affected [2, 3] while others claim both genders are equally affected. Ever since the 1950s the standard treatment for such patients was represented by Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion (ACDF), however, concern for the development of adjacent level degeneration after the fusion of mobile vertebral segments has increased the interest in developing new dynamic disc prostheses designed to mimic the functions and natural motion of the spine. The purpose of this paper is to summarize, in a comprehensive literature-review-type article, the existing data regarding the ProDisc-C spinal implant within the OVID, SCOPUS and MEDLINE databases while at the same time presenting the personal experience of the authors using the above-mentioned implant.

Abstract: In this paper the biomechanical behavior and numerical evaluation results of three C3-C5 porcine cervical models created with different modeling techniques are shown. The objective of this evaluation is to know the differences between the biomechanical effects on a bone graft, which replaces a damaged C4 vertebral body, a titanium alloy (Ti-6A1-4V) cervical plate, used to isolate the C4 damaged vertebra, and the influence on the compressive loads on the complete and instrumented C3-C5 cervical model. The biomechanical integrity of the healthy C3 and C5 vertebral body after the fixation of the cervical plate using titanium alloy screws is considered. Besides, 2-D Computer Tomography classic technique, 3-D Scanner Z-Corp 700 and a CT scanning Philips Brilliance system was used to create the three FEM models. In addition, 3-D Software as Pro-E Wildfire 4.0, ScanIP 3.1, UGS NX-4 and Geomagics R 10.0 was used to create specific numerical model. Main displacements and von Misses stresses between the upper and lower surfaces of the vertebral bodies and the bone graft and the influence of the titanium alloy (Ti-6A1-4V) screws on the vertebral body of C3 and C5 were evaluated. The contribution of this study is to optimize the actual surgical technique once the numerical results on the FEM model have been analyzed. In other words, the numerical disparity between classic CT techniques versus 3-D modern techniques is established.

Abstract: The main results of a static analysis with a finite element model of the cervical section between C3 – C5 of a human spine are reported. In this case, it is assumed that the element C4 is completely damaged and has to be replaced. Therefore, a bone graft was installed between the anterior side of C3 and C5. Besides, a cervical plate of 55 mm. was fixed at the same side with 4 expansive screws. The resultant stresses caused by compression loads were analyzed and the displacements between the graft and adjacent vertebrae were calculated. Three loading conditions were applied: 80 N, 637.5 N and 6374.5 N. The first one corresponds to the head weight. In the second case, it is assumed that the average patient weight is supported by those vertebrae, while in the last one; the compression load failure is applied on the vertebrae. Results show that displacements were lower than 3 mm between the graft and the adjacent vertebrae. In accordance with the concept of spine stability after Müller [1], the arrangement is a stable one. Another advantage is that no wires are used in this surgical technique. Two more issues should be noticed. There is no risk that the plate may be broken and the geometry of the bone graft allows bone regeneration. These results are on line with those observed in preliminary experimental tests with porcine vertebrae.