Background With an aggravated social ageing level, the number of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) is gradually increasing, and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is considered to be an early form of Alzheimer...Background With an aggravated social ageing level, the number of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) is gradually increasing, and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is considered to be an early form of Alzheimer's disease. How to distinguish diseases in the early stage for the purposes of early diagnosis and treatment is an important topic. Aims The purpose of our study was to investigate the differences in brain cortical thickness and surface area among elderly patients with AD, elderly patients with amnestic MCI (aMCI) and normal controls (NC). Methods 20 AD patients, 21 aMCIs and 25 NC were recruited in the study. FreeSurfer software was used to calculate cortical thickness and surface area among groups. Results The patients with AD had less cortical thickness both in the left and right hemisphere in 17 of the 36 brain regions examined than the patients with aMCI or NC. The patients with AD also had smaller cerebral surface area both in the left and right hemisphere in 3 of the 36 brain regions examined than the patients with aMCI or NC. Compared with the NC, the patients with aMCI only had slight atrophy in the inferior parietal lobe of the left hemisphere, and no significant difference was found. Conclusion AD, as well as aMCI (to a lesser extent), is associated with reduced cortical thickness and surface area in a few brain regions associated with cognitive impairment. These results suggest that cortical thickness and surface area could be used for early detection of AD.展开更多
In the Lagrangian meshless(particle)methods,such as the smoothed particle hydrodynamics(SPH),moving particle semi-implicit(MPS)method and meshless local Petrov-Galerkin method based on Rankine source solution(MLPG_R),...In the Lagrangian meshless(particle)methods,such as the smoothed particle hydrodynamics(SPH),moving particle semi-implicit(MPS)method and meshless local Petrov-Galerkin method based on Rankine source solution(MLPG_R),the Laplacian discretisation is often required in order to solve the governing equations and/or estimate physical quantities(such as the viscous stresses).In some meshless applications,the Laplacians are also needed as stabilisation operators to enhance the pressure calculation.The particles in the Lagrangian methods move following the material velocity,yielding a disordered(random)particle distribution even though they may be distributed uniformly in the initial state.Different schemes have been developed for a direct estimation of second derivatives using finite difference,kernel integrations and weighted/moving least square method.Some of the schemes suffer from a poor convergent rate.Some have a better convergent rate but require inversions of high order matrices,yielding high computational costs.This paper presents a quadric semi-analytical finite-difference interpolation(QSFDI)scheme,which can achieve the same degree of the convergent rate as the best schemes available to date but requires the inversion of significant lower-order matrices,i.e.3×3 for 3D cases,compared with 6×6 or 10×10 in the schemes with the best convergent rate.Systematic patch tests have been carried out for either estimating the Laplacian of given functions or solving Poisson’s equations.The convergence,accuracy and robustness of the present schemes are compared with the existing schemes.It will show that the present scheme requires considerably less computational time to achieve the same accuracy as the best schemes available in literatures,particularly for estimating the Laplacian of given functions.展开更多
基金Collaborative Innovation Center for Translational Medicine at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine TM201728National Nature Science Foundation of China 81571298+2 种基金Shanghai health system excellent talent training program (excellent subject leader) project 2017BR054Shanghai Municipal Education Commission-Gaofeng Clinical Medicine Grant Support 20172029Shanghai Pujiang Program 17PJD038.
文摘Background With an aggravated social ageing level, the number of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) is gradually increasing, and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is considered to be an early form of Alzheimer's disease. How to distinguish diseases in the early stage for the purposes of early diagnosis and treatment is an important topic. Aims The purpose of our study was to investigate the differences in brain cortical thickness and surface area among elderly patients with AD, elderly patients with amnestic MCI (aMCI) and normal controls (NC). Methods 20 AD patients, 21 aMCIs and 25 NC were recruited in the study. FreeSurfer software was used to calculate cortical thickness and surface area among groups. Results The patients with AD had less cortical thickness both in the left and right hemisphere in 17 of the 36 brain regions examined than the patients with aMCI or NC. The patients with AD also had smaller cerebral surface area both in the left and right hemisphere in 3 of the 36 brain regions examined than the patients with aMCI or NC. Compared with the NC, the patients with aMCI only had slight atrophy in the inferior parietal lobe of the left hemisphere, and no significant difference was found. Conclusion AD, as well as aMCI (to a lesser extent), is associated with reduced cortical thickness and surface area in a few brain regions associated with cognitive impairment. These results suggest that cortical thickness and surface area could be used for early detection of AD.
文摘In the Lagrangian meshless(particle)methods,such as the smoothed particle hydrodynamics(SPH),moving particle semi-implicit(MPS)method and meshless local Petrov-Galerkin method based on Rankine source solution(MLPG_R),the Laplacian discretisation is often required in order to solve the governing equations and/or estimate physical quantities(such as the viscous stresses).In some meshless applications,the Laplacians are also needed as stabilisation operators to enhance the pressure calculation.The particles in the Lagrangian methods move following the material velocity,yielding a disordered(random)particle distribution even though they may be distributed uniformly in the initial state.Different schemes have been developed for a direct estimation of second derivatives using finite difference,kernel integrations and weighted/moving least square method.Some of the schemes suffer from a poor convergent rate.Some have a better convergent rate but require inversions of high order matrices,yielding high computational costs.This paper presents a quadric semi-analytical finite-difference interpolation(QSFDI)scheme,which can achieve the same degree of the convergent rate as the best schemes available to date but requires the inversion of significant lower-order matrices,i.e.3×3 for 3D cases,compared with 6×6 or 10×10 in the schemes with the best convergent rate.Systematic patch tests have been carried out for either estimating the Laplacian of given functions or solving Poisson’s equations.The convergence,accuracy and robustness of the present schemes are compared with the existing schemes.It will show that the present scheme requires considerably less computational time to achieve the same accuracy as the best schemes available in literatures,particularly for estimating the Laplacian of given functions.