CT and MRI Medical Image Fusion Using Noise-Removal and Contrast Enhancement Scheme with Convolutional Neural Network

Medical image fusion (MIF) has received painstaking attention due to its diverse medical applications in response to accurately diagnosing clinical images. Numerous MIF methods have been proposed to date, but the fused image suffers from poor contrast, non-uniform illumination, noise presence, and improper fusion strategies, resulting in an inadequate sparse representation of significant features. This paper proposes the morphological preprocessing method to address the non-uniform illumination and noise by the bottom-hat–top-hat strategy. Then, grey-principal component analysis (grey-PCA) is used to transform RGB images into gray images that can preserve detailed features. After that, the local shift-invariant shearlet transform (LSIST) method decomposes the images into the low-pass (LP) and high-pass (HP) sub-bands, efficiently restoring all significant characteristics in various scales and directions. The HP sub-bands are fed to two branches of the Siamese convolutional neural network (CNN) by process of feature detection, initial segmentation, and consistency verification to effectively capture smooth edges, and textures. While the LP sub-bands are fused by employing local energy fusion using the averaging and selection mode to restore the energy information. The proposed method is validated by subjective and objective quality assessments. The subjective evaluation is conducted by a user case study in which twelve field specialists verified the superiority of the proposed method based on precise details, image contrast, noise in the fused image, and no loss of information. The supremacy of the proposed method is further justified by obtaining 0.6836 to 0.8794, 0.5234 to 0.6710, and 3.8501 to 8.7937 gain for QFAB, CRR, and AG and noise reduction from 0.3397 to 0.1209 over other methods for objective parameters.     

Graphene-Oxide-Based Fluoro- and Chromo-Genic Materials and Their Applications

Composite materials and their applications constitute a hot field of research nowadays due to the fact that they comprise a combination of the unique properties of each component of which they consist. Very often, they exhibit better performance and properties compared to their combined building blocks. Graphene oxide (GO), as the most widely used derivative of graphene, has attracted widespread attention because of its excellent properties. Abundant oxygen-containing functional groups on GO can provide various reactive sites for chemical modification or functionalization of GO, which in turn can be used to develop novel GO-based composites. This review outlines the most recent advances in the field of novel dyes and pigments encompassing GO as a key ingredient or as an important cofactor. The interactions of graphene with other materials/compounds are highlighted. The special structure and unique properties of GO have a great effect on the performance of fabricated hybrid dyes and pigments by enhancing the color performance of dyes, the anticorrosion properties of pigments, the viscosity and rheology of inks, etc., which further expands the applications of dyes and pigments in dyeing, optical elements, solar-thermal energy storage, sensing, coatings, and microelectronics devices. Finally, challenges in the current development as well as the future prospects of GO-based dyes and pigments are also discussed. This review provides a reference for the further exploration of novel dyes and pigments.     

Development of Yttrium and Iron Oxide Thin Films via AACVD Method for Photooxidation of Water

Russian Journal of Applied Chemistry - Owing to high stability, metal oxide-based ceramic thin films are of great interest for photocatalytic oxidation of water. Therefore, the current research is...     

In-vitro drug–drug interaction studies of diltiazem with floroquinolones

Diltiazem is an established cardiovascular drug mainly used for the management of hypertension specifically for the angina pectoris. Fluoroquinolones are widely prescribed against the treatment of severe infections. In vitro relations of diltiazem with fluoroquinolones (ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, norfloxacin, and ofloxacin) were examined using spectrophotometric and separation techniques, i.e., RP-HPLC. Diltiazem’s availabilities were observed to be predisposed highly in the presence of fluoroquinolones. To investigate the mechanism of interaction in a variety of dissolution environments, i.e., simulating body environments with regard to pH on these interactions has been studied. Moreover, complex of diltiazem–fluoroquinolones were prepared and elucidated through IR spectroscopy and confirmed by computational molecular modeling.     

Harmonic and intermodulation performance of hearing aids under large sound pressure levels

A mathematical model for the input-output functions of the hearing aids is presented. The model, basically a sine-series function, can easily yield closed-form expressions for the amplitudes of the harmonic and intermodulation components of the output when the input is formed of multitone large sound pressure levels. The special case of two-tone equal-amplitude incident pressure level is considered in detail. The results show that the third-order intermodulation component is always higher than the third-harmonic component. The results also show that the input-output functions exhibiting peak clipping exhibit the worst harmonic and intermodulation performance for large sound pressure levels. The simple wide-dynamic range compression (WDRC) input-output function exhibits the best harmonic and intermodulation distortion performance under large sound pressure levels. These results are consistent with the previously reported observations and reveal that there is a correlation between intelligibility of high-level speech and the harmonic and intermodulation performance of the hearing aid under large sound pressure levels.     

Coupled nonlinear waves in a composite magnetic-semiconducting medium

In this Letter we investigate the propagation of coupled nonlinear Alfven-spin and helicon-spin waves in a composite medium having the properties of both magnetic and semiconducting materials. We arrive at the nonlinear evolution equations for these coupled waves using the reductive perturbation method for which we obtain soliton solutions. We also discuss the limiting cases for the two materials separately.     

Synthesis of quinine and quinidine using sulfur ylide-mediated asymmetric epoxidation as a key step

The epoxidation of meroquinene aldehyde with a chiral sulfur ylide as the key step in the synthesis of quinine and quinidine is described. The epoxidation reactions proceed under reagent control with high selectivity and good yield. The effect of sulfide and ylide substituents on the stereochemical outcome of the reaction is discussed.     

Synthesis and biological studies of complexes of 2- amino-<Emphasis Type="Italic">N</Emphasis>(2-aminobenzoyl) benzohydrazide with Co(II), Ni(II), and Cu(II)

The present work is concerned with the synthesis and coordination compounds of 2-amino-N(2-aminobezoyl) benzohydrazide (ABH). The ligand was synthesized by the reaction of methylanthranilate and hydrazine in 2:1 molar ratio. It can be viewed as a modified form of hydrazide. The ligand was characterized by ¹H-NMR, ¹³C-NMR, mass spectrometry, elemental analysis, and infrared studies. The ligand has got -NH₂ moeity, the site for chelation. The complexes of Co(II), Ni(II), and Cu(II) chlorides and bromides were prepared. These complexes were characterized by elemental analysis, infrared, conductance, and magnetic susceptibility studies. Infrared spectra studies confirmed the formation of complexes, while elemental studies suggested the complexation of [M(ABH)X₂] (where X = Cl⁻ or Br⁻) composition.