We characterized pit and mound (PM) topography resulting from catastrophic wind in the Coweeta Basin, and located 48 PMs a across a variety of forest types. Our measurements included pit length, width, and depth; and mound height, thickness, and width. Species of fallen trees were identified, and DBH (diameter at breast height, 1.37 m) was measured for biomass determination. We identified five ...

PURPOSE Detection of subtle microcalcifications in digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) is a challenging task because of the large, noisy DBT volume. It is important to enhance the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) of microcalcifications in DBT reconstruction. Most regularization methods depend on local gradient and may treat the ill-defined margins or subtle spiculations of masses and subtle microca...

UNLABELLED Overfill of tissue expanders is a commonly used modality to achieve customized dimensions in breast reconstruction. Little formal study of the dynamics of hyperexpansion of these devices has been performed to date, however. METHODS Overfill trials were performed using both Natrelle 133 MV and Mentor 8200 tissue expanders of indicated capacities ranging from 250 to 800 mL. Each expa...

BACKGROUND It is now recognized that Cimicifuga foetida (C. foetida) extract is effective in alleviating menopausal symptoms. But the durations reported were usually short. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of C. foetida extract therapy and different estrogen and progesterone sequential therapies, on the breasts of early postmenopausal women. METHODS This was a prospective ...

BACKGROUND Bra straps are a primary source of discomfort during sport and exercise, particularly for women with large breasts. This study aimed to investigate the effects of altering bra strap orientation and design on bra strap comfort, pressure and breast support in women with large breasts. This is a descriptive laboratory study. METHODS Bra strap discomfort (visual analogue scale, 0 to 10...

BACKGROUND Patient outcomes in aesthetic breast surgery are highly dependent on breast measurements used in preoperative planning. OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study is to determine the reliability of anthropometric breast measurements. METHODS Four raters measured 28 women using 7 measurements: sternal notch to nipple distance (Sn-N), nipple to midline (N-M), nipple to inframammary-fold ...

PURPOSE This study was designed to evaluate the dose coverage of axillary areas during whole breast irradiation with simplified intensity modulated radiation therapy (s-IMRT) and field-in-field IMRT (for-IMRT) in early stage breast cancer patients. METHODS Sixty-one consecutive patients with breast-conserving surgery and sentinel lymph node biopsy were collected. Two plans were created for ea...

Recent research based on numerical modeling (Bond, 2003; Xu, 2001) that ignored hardware characteristics and simple experiments using homogenous breast phantoms (Sill, 2005; Xu, 2004) have shown the potential of ultra-wideband to detect early stage breast cancer. However, clutter interference from heterogeneous breast tissues and hardware characteristics like pulse jitter, finite dynamic range ...