Assessment of clinical data of nonlinear stochastic deconvolution versus block-circulant singular value decomposition for quantitative dynamic susceptibility contrast magnetic resonance imaging

Dynamic susceptibility contrast magnetic resonance imaging (DSC-MRI) allows the noninvasive assessment of brain hemodynamics alterations by quantifying, via deconvolution, the cerebral blood flow (CBF) and mean transit time (MTT). Singular value decomposition (SVD) and block-circulant SVD (cSVD) are the most widely adopted deconvolution method, although they bear some limitations, including unphysiological oscillations in the residue function and bias in the presence of delay and dispersion between the tissue and the arterial input function. A nonlinear stochastic regularization (NSR) has been proposed, which performs better than SVD and cSVD on simulated data both in the presence and absence of dispersion. Moreover, NSR allows to quantify the dispersion level. Here, cSVD and NSR are compared for the first time on a group of nine patients with severe atherosclerotic unilateral stenosis of internal carotid artery before and after carotid stenting to investigate the effect of arterial dispersion. According to region of interest-based analysis, NSR characterizes the pathologic tissue more accurately than cSVD, thus improving the quality of the information provided to physicians for diagnosis. In fact, in 7 (78%) of the 9 subjects, CBF and MTT maps provided by NSR allow to correctly identify the pathologic hemisphere to the physician. Moreover, by emphasizing the difference between pathologic and healthy tissues, NSR may be successfully used to monitor the subject's recovery after the treatment and/or surgery. NSR also generates dispersion level and non-dispersed CBF and MTT maps. The dispersion level provides information on CBF and MTT estimates reliability and may also be used as a clinical indicator of pathological tissue state complementary to CBF and MTT, thus increasing the clinical information provided by DSC-MRI analysis.     

A cut finite element method for a Stokes interface problem

We present a finite element method for the Stokes equations involving two immiscible incompressible fluids with different viscosities and with surface tension. The interface separating the two fluids does not need to align with the mesh. We propose a Nitsche formulation which allows for discontinuities along the interface with optimal a priori error estimates. A stabilization procedure is included which ensures that the method produces a well conditioned stiffness matrix independent of the location of the interface.     

The first eigenvalue of the p‐Laplace operator under powers of mean curvature flow

In this paper, we show the following main results. Let (Mⁿ,g(t)), t ∈ [0,T), be a solution of the unnormalized H^k ? flow on a closed manifold, and λ_1,p(t) be the first eigenvalue of the p‐Laplace operator. If there exists a nonnegative constant ε such that in M × [0,T) and in M × [0,T),then λ_1,p(t) is increasing and the differentiable almost everywhere along the unnormalized H^k ? flow on [0,T). At last, we discuss some useful monotonic quantities. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Analysis of a combined mixed finite element and discontinuous Galerkin method for incompressible two‐phase flow in porous media

We analyze a combined method consisting of the mixed finite element method for pressure equation and the discontinuous Galerkin method for saturation equation for the coupled system of incompressible two‐phase flow in porous media. The existence and uniqueness of numerical solutions are established under proper conditions by using a constructive approach. Optimal error estimates in L²(H¹) for saturation and in L ^∞ (H(div)) for velocity are derived. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Homogenization of the Incompressible Navier-Stokes Fluid With Oscillation Coefficient

We study the homogenization of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations with periodic oscillating coefficient in a bounded non-homogeneous media. To do that, we introduce a generalized compensate compactness result and a suitable class of test function to this problem. By passing the limit, we obtain the homogenized model of this problem.     

Modeling,simulation and validation of material flow on conveyor belts

In this paper a model comparison approach based on material flow systems is investigated that is divided into a microscopic and a macroscopic model scale. On the microscopic model scale particles are simulated using a model based on Newton dynamics borrowed from the engineering literature. Phenomenological observations lead to a hyperbolic partial differential equation on the macroscopic model scale. Suitable numerical algorithms are presented and both models are compared numerically and validated against real-data test settings.     

A new kernel function for SPH with applications to free surface flows

Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is a popular meshfree Lagrangian particle method, which uses a kernel function for numerical approximations. The kernel function is closely related to the computational accuracy and stability of the SPH method. In this paper, a new kernel function is proposed, which consists of two cosine functions and is referred to as double cosine kernel function. The newly proposed double cosine kernel function is sufficiently smooth, and is associated with an adjustable support domain. It also has smaller second order momentum, and therefore it can have better accuracy in terms of kernel approximation. SPH method with this double cosine kernel function is applied to simulate a dam-break flow and water entry of a horizontal circular cylinder. The obtained SPH results agree very well with the experimental results. The double cosine kernel function is also comparatively studied with two frequently used SPH kernel functions, Gaussian and cubic spline kernel functions.