Quantification of the hip cartilages is clinically important. In this study, we propose an automatic technique for segmentation and visualization of the acetabular and femoral head cartilages based on clinically obtained multi-slice T1-weighted MR data and a hybrid approach. We follow a knowledge based approach by employing several features such as the anatomical shapes of the hip femoral and acetabular cartilages and corresponding image intensities. We estimate the center of the femoral head by a Hough transform and then automatically select the volume of interest. We then automatically segment the hip bones by a self-adaptive vector quantization technique. Next, we localize the articular central line by a modified canny edge detector based on the first and second derivative filters along the radial lines originated from the femoral head center and anatomical constraint. We then roughly segment the acetabular and femoral head cartilages using derivative images obtained in the previous step and a top-hat filter. Final masks of the acetabular and femoral head cartilages are automatically performed by employing the rough results, the estimated articular center line and the anatomical knowledge. Next, we generate a thickness map for each cartilage in the radial direction based on a Euclidian distance. Three dimensional pelvic bones, acetabular and femoral cartilages and corresponding thicknesses are overlaid and visualized. The techniques have been implemented in C++ and MATLAB environment. We have evaluated and clarified the usefulness of the proposed techniques in the presence of 40 clinical hips multi-slice MR images.

In this letter, we propose a sample and hold circuit (S/H circuit) with the clock boost technique and the input signal tracking technique. The proposed circuit block generates the clock with the amplitude of VDD + vin, and the clock is used to control the MOS switch. By applying this circuit to a S/H circuit, we can deal with the rail-to-rail signal with maintaining low distortion. Furthermore, the hold error caused by the charge injection and the clock feedthrough can be also reduced by using the dummy switch. The Star-HSPICE simulation results are reported in this letter.

We describe a technique for the registration of three dimensional (3D) knee femur surface points from MR image data sets; it is a technique that can track local cartilage thickness changes over time. In the first coarse registration step, we use the direction vectors of the volume given by the cloud of points of the MR image to correct for different knee joint positions and orientations in the MR scanner. In the second fine registration step, we propose a global search algorithm that simultaneously determines the optimal transformation parameters and point correspondences through searching a six dimensional space of Euclidean motion vectors (translation and rotation). The present algorithm is grounded on a mathematical theory - Lipschitz optimization. Compared with the other three registration approaches (ICP, EM-ICP, and genetic algorithms), the proposed method achieved the highest registration accuracy on both animal and clinical data.

The insoluble Prussian-blue (PB) pigment becomes possible to disperse in aqueous solution by covering their surfaces with ferrocyanide anions. The thin film fabricated with these water-dispersible PB nanoparticles shows evident electrochromic color changes between +0.8 V to -0.4 V on an ITO substrate. The mass change of the thin film during an electrochemical reaction is measured by means of electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance (EQCM). According to the EQCM analysis, the filling rate of water-dispersible PB nanoparticles in the film is 37.7% as compared with an assumed perfect crystal PB film.

In this paper, a low-voltage, wide-common-mode-range and high-CMRR OTA is presented. The proposed OTA consists of two circuit blocks; one is the input stage and operates as a differential level shifter, and the other is a highly linear output stage. Furthermore, the OTA can be operated in both weak and strong inversion regions. The proposed OTA is evaluated through Star-HSPICE with 0.18 µm CMOS device parameters (LEVEL53). Simulation results demonstrate a CMRR of 158 dB, a common-mode-input-range of 65 mV to 720 mV and a current consumption of 1.2 µA when VDD=0.8 V.

Accurate thickness measurement of sheet-like structure such as articular cartilage in CT images is required in clinical diagnosis as well as in fundamental research. Using a conventional measurement method based on the zero-crossing edge detection (zero-crossings method), several studies have already analyzed the accuracy limitation on thickness measurement of the single sheet structure that is not influenced by peripheral structures. However, no studies, as of yet, have assessed measurement accuracy of two adjacent sheet structures such as femoral and acetabular cartilages in the hip joint. In this paper, we present a model of the CT scanning process of two parallel sheet structures separated by a small distance, and use the model to predict the shape of the gray-level profiles along the sheet normal orientation. The difference between the predicted and the actual gray-level profiles observed in the CT data is minimized by refining the model parameters. Both a one-by-one search (exhaustive combination search) technique and a nonlinear optimization technique based on the Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm are used to minimize the difference. Using CT images of phantoms, we present results showing that when applying the one-by-one search method to obtain the initial values of the model parameters, Levenberg-Marquardt method is more accurate than zero-crossings and one-by-one search methods for estimating the thickness of two adjacent sheet structures, as well as the thickness of a single sheet structure.

In this letter, two OTAs with MOSFETs operating in the weak inversion region are proposed. One of the OTAs uses the exponential-logarithm transformation algorithm. Furthermore, the other realizes the high-linearity characteristics due to a small fluctuation of the common-terminal voltage of differential pair. The performance of the proposed OTAs was confirmed by HSPICE simulation.