Wen-Lin Wu | PubMed Health

PubMed2005

Surveillance and control of post-transmission schistosomiasis in Jiaxing prefecture, Zhejiang province, China.

A surveillance system has been put in place in the Zhejiang province since achieving there the criteria for transmission interruption of schistosomiasis japonica. Suspected patients and special high-risk groups (e.g. the so called 'floating population' and children under 14 years of age) are screened for Schistosoma japonicum using serological tests. Those with positive serological result are subjected to faecal examination and if S. japonicum eggs are found they are treated with praziquantel and followed by regular re-examination until complete cure, i.e. absence of S. japonicum eggs in faecal samples. Patients with advanced schistosomiasis japonica are continuously followed-up. Implementation of the surveillance system from 1995 to 2002 detected two S. japonicum-infected persons; one came from Anhui province and the other from Jiangsu province, but no new infection occurred among local residents. The number of patients with advanced schistosomiasis japonica decreased from 1524 in 1995 to 906 by the end of 2002; a reduction of 40.6%. However, post-transmission schistosomiasis still continues to weigh on the medial resources. We conclude that the surveillance system in Zhejiang province is effective and a useful means for monitoring the endemic situation of schistosomiasis. Hence, it is recommended to be pursued in the years to come.

Adult↗

PubMed2003

3-D breast ultrasound segmentation using active contour model.

In this study, we made use of the discrete active contour model to overcome the natural properties of ultrasound (US) images, speckle, noise and tissue-related textures, to segment the breast tumors precisely. Determination of the real tumor boundary with the snake-deformation process requires an initial contour estimate. However, the manual way to sketch an initial contour is very time-consuming. Thus, we propose an automatic initial contour-finding method that not only maintains the tumor shape, but also is close to the tumor boundary and inside the tumor. During the deformation process, to prevent the snake trapping into the false position caused by tissue-related texture or speckle, we added the edge information as an image feature to define the external force. In addition, because the 3-D volume of a tumor is essentially constructed by a sequence of 2-D images, our method for finding boundaries of a tumor can be extended to 3-D cases. By precisely counting the volume of the 3-D images, we can get the volume of tumor. Finally, we will show that the proposed techniques have rather good performance and lead to a satisfactory result in comparison with the estimated volume and physician's estimate.

Breast Neoplasms↗