Search Results (58)

Background/Objectives: Bone reconstruction using megaprostheses is increasingly performed following bone tumour resections, including sarcomas, to enhance patient outcomes and quality of life. However, this is a complex patient group, and there is little consensus as to postoperative rehabilitation and associated outcomes. Methods: A systematic search was conducted in MEDLINE and EMBASE databases according to the Implementing Prisma in Exercise, Rehabilitation, Sport medicine and SporTs science (PERSiST) guidelines. Studies describing rehabilitation protocols and functional outcomes following bone tumour resection and modular oncologic megaprosthesis reconstruction were included. All papers were individually assessed for methodological quality using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical appraisal tool. Results: The search generated 105 records, 28 underwent full-text review, and 13 studies were included. Available data reflect 371 patients with a mean age of 49.17 (S.D. 21.40) years and a mean postoperative follow-up of 41.88 (S.D. 32.88) months. Surgical indications were documented as sarcomas in 9 studies, and tumour metastasis to the bone in 10 studies. Rehabilitation protocols were reported in 5 studies following proximal humerus resection with a mean dislocation rate of 14.5% (S.D. 5.26). All protocols advised brace immobilisation for a period ranging between 10 days and 6 months. Superior Constant-Murley shoulder score was reported in patients with early active isometric exercises at 6 weeks. Six studies reported proximal femur prosthesis rehabilitation and functional outcomes, with a mean dislocation rate of 10% (S.D. 9.82). Enhanced outcomes were reported in studies employing early mobilisation. Two studies assessed distal femur prosthesis; both studies reported similar protocols with full weight bearing 3 weeks following surgery. The methodological quality of the studies varied, but was overall modest, with 10/13 studies meeting at least 50% of JBI reporting criteria. Conclusions: The existing literature on rehabilitation and outcomes in orthopaedic oncology patients following arthroplasty with megaprosthesis is limited, with rehabilitative protocols variably described. However, it seems that early active mobilisation does not increase the risk of joint dislocations or infections. Full article

This article reconstructs Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s (d. 1210) systematic treatment of the jinn in his Great Exegesis (al-Tafsīr al-Kabīr) and his summa The Sublime Objectives in Metaphysics (al-Maṭālib al-ʿĀliya min al-ʿIlm al-Ilāhī). In these works, al-Rāzī treats the jinn not as a marginal curiosity but as a test case for probing core metaphysical categories such as substance, embodiment, and divine action. His analysis unfolds through a sequence of guiding questions. Do the jinn exist at all? If not, we arrive at (1) the Denialist View. If they do exist, they must be either immaterial or material. The first yields (2) the Immaterialist View. The second raises the further question of whether bodies differ in essence or share a single essence. If they differ, we arrive at (3) the Non-Essentialist Corporealist View. Notably, these first three views are associated, in different ways, with various figures in the falsafa tradition. If they share a single essence, this produces the Essentialist Corporealist position, which then divides according to whether bodily structure is metaphysically necessary for life and agency. If not necessary, this produces (4) the Essentialist Corporealist—Structural Independence View, associated with the Ashʿarīs. If necessary, it leads to (5) the Essentialist Corporealist—Structural Dependence View, associated with the Muʿtazilīs. Al-Rāzī rejects (1) and (5), but he leaves (2), (3), and (4) as live possibilities. While he shows greater sympathy for (4), his broader purpose is not to settle the matter but to map the full range of theological and philosophical options. Al-Rāzī’s comprehensive exposition reflects the wider dialectic between falsafa, Ashʿarī theology, and Muʿtazilī theology, showcasing a sophisticated willingness to engage and entertain multiple metaphysical possibilities side by side. The result is an exercise in systematic metaphysics, where the question of the jinn, as liminal beings, becomes a means for interrogating broader ontological commitments in Islamic theology and philosophy. Full article

Digital dentistry is undergoing rapid evolution, with three-dimensional imaging technologies increasingly integrated into routine clinical workflows. Originally developed for accurate dental arch reconstruction, modern intraoral scanners have demonstrated expanding versatility in capturing intraoral mucosal as well as perioral cutaneous structures. Concurrently, photogrammetry has emerged as a powerful method for full-face digital reconstruction, particularly valuable in orthodontic and prosthodontic treatment planning. These advances offer promising applications in forensic sciences, where high-resolution, three-dimensional documentation of anatomical details such as palatal rugae, lip prints, and bite marks can provide objective and enduring records for legal and investigative purposes. This study explores the forensic potential of two digital acquisition techniques by presenting two cadaveric cases of animal bite injuries. In the first case, an intraoral scanner (Dexis 3600) was used in an unconventional extraoral application to directly scan skin lesions. In the second case, photogrammetry was employed using a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera and Agisoft Metashape, with standardized lighting and metric scale references to generate accurate 3D models. Both methods produced analyzable digital reconstructions suitable for forensic archiving. The intraoral scanner yielded dimensionally accurate models, with strong agreement with manual measurements, though limited by difficulties in capturing complex surface morphology. Photogrammetry, meanwhile, allowed for broader contextual reconstruction with high texture fidelity, albeit requiring more extensive processing and scale calibration. A notable advantage common to both techniques is the avoidance of physical contact and impression materials, which can compress and distort soft tissues, an especially relevant concern when documenting transient evidence like bite marks. These results suggest that both technologies, despite their different origins and operational workflows, can contribute meaningfully to forensic documentation of bite-related injuries. While constrained by the exploratory nature and small sample size of this study, the findings support the viability of digitized, non-destructive evidence preservation. Future perspectives may include the integration of artificial intelligence to assist with morphological matching and the establishment of digital forensic databases for pattern comparison and expert review. Full article

Three-dimensional environment reconstruction refers to the creation of mathematical models of three-dimensional objects suitable for computer representation and processing. This paper proposes a novel 3D environment reconstruction approach that addresses the field-of-view limitations commonly faced by LiDAR-based systems. A rotary-driven LiDAR mechanism is designed to enable uniform and seamless full-field-of-view scanning, thereby overcoming blind spots in traditional setups. To complement the hardware, a multi-sensor fusion framework—LV-SLAM (LiDAR-Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping)—is introduced. The framework consists of two key modules: multi-threaded feature registration and a two-phase loop closure detection mechanism, both designed to enhance the system’s accuracy and robustness. Extensive experiments on the KITTI benchmark demonstrate that LV-SLAM outperforms state-of-the-art methods including LOAM, LeGO-LOAM, and FAST-LIO2. Our method reduces the average absolute trajectory error (ATE) from 6.90 m (LOAM) to 2.48 m, and achieves lower relative pose error (RPE), indicating improved global consistency and reduced drift. We further validate the system in real-world indoor and outdoor environments. Compared with fixed-angle scans, the rotary LiDAR mechanism produces more complete reconstructions with fewer occlusions. Geometric accuracy evaluation shows that the root mean square error between reconstructed and actual building dimensions remains below 5 cm. The proposed system offers a robust and accurate solution for high-fidelity 3D reconstruction, particularly suitable for GNSS-denied and structurally complex environments. Full article

Background/Objectives: There is a great demand for novel, multipurpose, natural skin-care products in the global skin repair and sun protection markets. Within this framework, the potential benefits of topical Vitamin D2 (VD2) administration in combination with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were examined. Methods: Evaluating the efficacy of the VD2+AgNP cream in wound healing, skin irritation and UVB irradiation protection necessitated preclinical testing using reconstructed human skin equivalent models (prepared from human foreskins) containing both a fully stratified epidermal layer and underlying dermis. Results: Application of the cream significantly improved wound healing by stimulating keratinocyte re-epithelialization and dermal fibroblast migration in models subjected to full-thickness (scratch and biopsy punch) wounds, compared to untreated models. The VD2+AgNP cream, administered prior to the induction of skin irritation by 5% sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) afforded protection by ameliorating cell viability epidermal thickness and interleukin-1alpha levels. UVB exposure (50 mJ/cm²) significantly reduced cell viability and epidermal thickness (associated with increased epidermal breakage), as well as basal layer Ki67 and supra-basal layer involucrin expression, compared to the CTRL sham-irradiated models. The cream administered prior to UVB irradiation (protective capacity) showed greater efficacy in minimizing epidermal damage. This was reflected by significantly higher Ki67 and involucrin expression, as well as lower epidermal breakage, compared to models where the cream was applied following UVB irradiation (curative capacity). Conclusions: The VD2+AgNP cream shows multipurpose potential in skin protection. The underlying molecular mechanisms remain to be investigated. Full article

The tribe Loteae (Papilioniodeae-Leguminosae), according to plastid data, belongs to the Robinioid clade, which also includes the tribes Robinieae and Sesbanieae. The tribe Loteae contains 16 genera and about two hundred seventy-five species, of which the plastid genomes of five species have been studied to date. The main objectives of our study were to obtain new information on the plastid genome structure of the Loteae representatives in order to assess plastid genome variability and reconstruct phylogenetic relationships within the tribe Loteae. We performed sequencing, assembly, structural and phylogenetic analyses of the Loteae plastid genomes. All assembled Loteae plastomes showed a quadripartite structure with an overall length ranging from 150,069 to 152,206 bp and showed relative stability of inverted repeat borders. The Loteae plastomes demonstrated full collinearity; the most variable sites of the studied plastomes were found in petN-trnC and rps16-accD spacers from the LSC region and in the ycf1 gene within the SSC. All inferred relationships attained maximal support with the Hippocrepis lineage separated first, followed by Coronilla and Anthyllis; Lotus is a sister group to the clade Acmispon + Ornithopus. In this study, completely resolved relationships representing a backbone of plastid phylogeny were produced. The obtained results demonstrated that plastid genomes in the tribe Loteae are structurally conservative in contrast to the closely related tribes Robinieae and Sesbanieae. Full article

Integrating LiDAR and photogrammetry offers significant potential for ensuring the accuracy and completeness of the 3D models of existing structures, which are essential for several applications in the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. This study has two primary objectives: the first is to demonstrate how LiDAR and photogrammetry complement each other, through the balance of LiDAR’s structural accuracy with photogrammetry’s rich texture data; the second is to validate the quality of the resulting mesh by using it for the CFD simulation of wind flow around a case study building. The integration method, though simple, is optimized to ensure high-quality point cloud registration, minimizing data quality impacts. To capitalize on the advantages of both manual and full point-cloud-based modeling methods, the study proposes a new hybrid approach. In the hybrid approach, the large-scale and simplified parts of the geometry are modeled manually, while the complex and detailed parts are reconstructed using high-resolution point cloud data from LiDAR and photogrammetry. Additionally, a novel region of constraints method (ROCM) is introduced to streamline wind flow simulations across varying scenarios without the need for multiple meshes. The results indicate that the integrated approach was able to capture the complete and detailed geometry of the case study building, including the complex window extrusions. The CFD simulations revealed differences in the wind flow patterns and pressure distributions when compared across different geometry modeling approaches. It was found that the hybrid approach is the best and balances efficiency, accuracy, and computational cost. Full article

This paper presents a new object of study—the so-called camerini, private rooms for study and reflection in the great stately palaces of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which contained riches and artistic heritage of inestimable value and were characterized by very dim lighting. Analysis of the camerini, true precursors of the modern museum, is not only study of a specific subject but also extremely relevant because it allows us to re-analyze the entire evolution of the museum type and its characteristics, discovering its origins, following its evolution, and critically reviewing its current features. Starting from the case study of the Quarto Camerino of the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, a superset of the specific features of this type of space and possible problems in its 3D reconstruction, this article presents a method and a workflow aimed at reconstruction and visualization, with high visual quality of these spaces and their features. Digital surveying technologies were integrated with advanced methods that allowed for the reproduction of the full optical properties of spatial surfaces and with tools for semantic modeling and visualization to generate a digital artifact that is consistent with the available information and its interpretations and that can be analyzed both perceptually and analytically. Full article

In this paper, we propose an active robotic 3D reconstruction methodology for achieving full object 3D reconstruction. Existing robotic 3D reconstruction approaches often struggle to cover the entire view space of the object or reconstruct occluded regions, such as the bottom or back side. To address these limitations, we introduce a two-stage robotic active 3D reconstruction pipeline, named See-Then-Grasp (STG), that employs a robot manipulator for direct interaction with the object. The manipulator moves toward the points with the highest uncertainty, ensuring efficient data acquisition and rapid reconstruction. Our method expands the view space of the object to include the entire perspective, including occluded areas, making the previous fixed view candidate approach time-consuming for identifying uncertain regions. To overcome this, we propose a gradient-based next best view pose optimization method that efficiently identifies uncertain regions, enabling faster and more effective reconstruction. Our method optimizes the camera pose based on an uncertainty function, allowing it to identify the most uncertain regions in a short time. Through experiments with synthetic objects, we demonstrate that our approach effectively addresses the next best view selection problem, achieving significant improvements in computational efficiency while maintaining high-quality 3D reconstruction. Furthermore, we validate our method on a real robot, showing that it enables full 3D reconstruction of real-world objects. Full article

The success of rotator cuff tendon repair relies on both tendon healing and muscle recovery. The objective of this descriptive study was to investigate the regenerative potential of the supraspinatus muscle in rotator cuff tear conditions by quantifying the expression of Pax7, MyoD, and myogenin, basic factors that regulate myogenesis. Muscle biopsies were collected from thirty-three patients aged 34 to 73 years who underwent surgery for a rotator cuff tear affecting the supraspinatus muscle. Among these patients, twenty-seven percent were women, and the age of the lesions ranged from 2 to 72 months post-initial trauma. Biopsies were harvested from the supraspinatus muscle at the end closest to the tendon, and control biopsies were harvested from the ipsilateral deltoid muscle. The densities of immunohistochemically stained Pax7⁺, MyoD⁺, and myogenin⁺ nuclei/mm² were used to estimate the myogenic potential of the muscle. Adjustments were made for patient age and lesion age. We found increased density of MyoD⁺ and myogenin⁺ cells in supraspinatus muscles compared to deltoid muscles (p < 0.001 and p = 0.003, respectively). Regression analyses that combined the density of positive nuclei with patient age showed a continuous increase in Pax7 with age but also a reduction of MyoD and myogenin in older patients. When combined with lesion age, there was a decline in the density of all myogenic markers after an initial rise. Pax7 density continued to be higher in supraspinatus compared to the deltoid muscle, but the density of MyoD and myogenin terminally dropped to a density lower than in the deltoid. Our findings suggest that the supraspinatus muscle in tear conditions showed signs of initial activation of muscle regeneration. When compared to the unaffected deltoid muscle, an apparent reduction in capacity to progress to full muscle fiber maturity was also demonstrated. This pattern of inhibited myogenesis seemed to increase with both patient age and lesion age. Our results on muscle regenerative capacity indicate that younger patients with rotator cuff tears have better chances of muscle recovery and may benefit from early surgical reconstruction. Full article

Spatiotemporal models for the 3-D shape and motion of objects allowed large progress in the 1980s in visual perception of moving objects observed from a moving platform. Despite the successes demonstrated with several vehicles, the “4-D approach” has not been accepted generally. Its advantage is that only the last image of the sequence needs to be analyzed in detail to allow the full state vectors of moving objects, including their velocity components, to be reconstructed by the feedback of prediction errors. The vehicle carrying the cameras can, thus, together with conventional measurements, directly create a visualization of the situation encountered. In 1994, at the final demonstration of the project PROMETHEUS, two sedan vehicles using this approach were the only ones worldwide capable of driving autonomously in standard heavy traffic on three-lane Autoroutes near Paris at speeds up to 130 km/h (convoy driving, lane changes, passing). Up to ten vehicles nearby could be perceived. In this paper, the three-layer architecture of the perception system is reviewed. At the end of the 1990s, the system evolved from mere recognition of objects in motion, to understanding complex dynamic scenes by developing behavioral capabilities, like fast saccadic changes in the gaze direction for flexible concentration on objects of interest. By analyzing motion of objects over time, the situation for decision making was assessed. In the third-generation system “EMS-vision” behavioral capabilities of agents were represented on an abstract level for characterizing their potential behaviors. These maneuvers form an additional knowledge base. The system has proven capable of driving in networks of minor roads, including off-road sections, with avoidance of negative obstacles (ditches). Results are shown for road vehicle guidance. Potential transitions to a robot mind and to the now-favored CNN are touched on. Full article

This article is devoted to solving full-wave electromagnetic inverse scattering problems (EM-ISPs), which determine the geometrical and physical properties of scatterers from the knowledge of scattered fields. Due to the intrinsic ill-posedness and nonlinearity of EM-ISPs, traditional non-iterative and iterative methods struggle to meet the requirements of high accuracy and real-time reconstruction. To overcome these issues, we propose a two-step contrast source learning approach, cascading convolutional neural networks (CNNs) into the inversion framework, to tackle 2D full-wave EM-ISPs. In the first step, a contrast source network based on the CNNs architecture takes the determined part of the contrast source as input and then outputs an estimate of the total contrast source. Then, the recovered total contrast source is directly converted into the initial contrast. In the second step, the rough initial contrast obtained beforehand is input into the U-Net for refinement. Consequently, the EM-ISPs can be quickly solved with much higher accuracy, even for high-contrast objects, almost achieving real-time imaging. Numerical examples have demonstrated that the proposed two-step contrast source learning approach is able to improve accuracy and robustness even for high-contrast scatterers. The proposed approach offers a promising avenue for advancing EM-ISPs by integrating strengths from both traditional and deep learning-based approaches, to achieve real-time quantitative microwave imaging for high-contrast objects. Full article

Three-dimensional dense reconstruction involves extracting the full shape and texture details of three-dimensional objects from two-dimensional images. Although 3D reconstruction is a crucial and well-researched area, it remains an unsolved challenge in dynamic or complex environments. This work provides a comprehensive overview of classical 3D dense reconstruction techniques, including those based on geometric and optical models, as well as approaches leveraging deep learning. It also discusses the datasets used for deep learning and evaluates the performance and the strengths and limitations of deep learning methods on these datasets. Full article

The natural color of biological specimens plays a crucial role in body protection, signaling, physiological adaptations, etc. Full-color optical sectioning structured illumination microscopy (OS-SIM) color is a promising approach that can reconstruct biological specimens in three-dimension meanwhile maintaining their natural color. Full-color OS-SIM takes the advantages of rapid imaging speed, compatibility with fluorescence and non-fluorescence samples, compact configuration, and low cost. However, the commonly used HSV-RMS reconstruction algorithm for full-color OS-SIM faces two issues to be improved. One is the RMS (root-mean-square) OS reconstruction algorithm is prone to background noise, and the other is the reconstruction is bound in RGB and HSV color spaces, consuming more reconstructing time. In this paper, we propose a full-color Fourier-OS-SIM method that allows for the OS reconstruction using the high-frequency spectrum of the sample and thus is immune to the low-frequency background noise. The full-color Fourier-OS-SIM directly runs in the RGB color space, providing an easy way to restore the color information. Simulation and experiments with various samples (pollen grains and tiny animals) demonstrate that the full-color Fourier-OS-SIM method is superior to the HSV-RMS method regarding background noise suppression. Moreover, benefiting from the background noise suppression merit, the quantitative morphological height map analysis with the full-color Fourier-OS-SIM method is more accurate. The proposed full-color Fourier-OS-SIM method is expected to find broad applications in biological and industrial fields where the 3D morphology and the color information of objects both need to be recovered. Full article

Faced with the problem of incompatibility between traditional information acquisition mode and spaceborne earth observation tasks, starting from the general mathematical model of compressed sensing, a theoretical model of block compressed sensing was established, and a full-process adaptive coding and decoding compressed sensing framework for remote sensing images was proposed, which includes five parts: mode selection, feature factor extraction, adaptive shape segmentation, adaptive sampling rate allocation and image reconstruction. Unlike previous semi-adaptive or local adaptive methods, the advantages of the adaptive encoding and decoding method proposed in this paper are mainly reflected in four aspects: (1) Ability to select encoding modes based on image content, and maximizing the use of the richness of the image to select appropriate sampling methods; (2) Capable of utilizing image texture details for adaptive segmentation, effectively separating complex and smooth regions; (3) Being able to detect the sparsity of encoding blocks and adaptively allocate sampling rates to fully explore the compressibility of images; (4) The reconstruction matrix can be adaptively selected based on the size of the encoding block to alleviate block artifacts caused by non-stationary characteristics of the image. Experimental results show that the method proposed in this article has good stability for remote sensing images with complex edge textures, with the peak signal-to-noise ratio and structural similarity remaining above 35 dB and 0.8. Moreover, especially for ocean images with relatively simple image content, when the sampling rate is 0.26, the peak signal-to-noise ratio reaches 50.8 dB, and the structural similarity is 0.99. In addition, the recovered images have the smallest BRISQUE value, with better clarity and less distortion. In the subjective aspect, the reconstructed image has clear edge details and good reconstruction effect, while the block effect is effectively suppressed. The framework designed in this paper is superior to similar algorithms in both subjective visual and objective evaluation indexes, which is of great significance for alleviating the incompatibility between traditional information acquisition methods and satellite-borne earth observation missions. Full article