INTRODUCTION Indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) employing ethanol-fixed neutrophils (ethN) is still the method of choice for assessing antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCA) in ANCA-associated vasculitides (AAV). However, conventional fluorescence microscopy is subjective and prone to high variability. The objective of this study was to evaluate novel pattern recognition algorithms for the...

In this paper we report on the first edit ion of the HEp-2 Cells Classificat ion contest , held at the 2012 edit ion of the Internat ional Conference on Pattern Recognit ion, and focused on Indirect Immunofluorescence (IIF) image analysis. The IIF methodology is used to detect autoimmune diseases by searching for ant ibodies in the pat ient serum but, unfortunately, it is st ill a subject ive m...

INTRODUCTION Indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) is the gold standard method for the detection of antinuclear antibodies (ANA) which are essential markers for the diagnosis of systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases. For the discrimination of positive and negative samples, we propose here an original approach named Immunofluorescence for Computed Antinuclear antibody Rational Evaluation (ICARE) ba...

Objective Characterize the foci of visceral leishmaniasis infection in Neiva with a clinical and epidemiological approach. Materials and Methods Six children consulted medical services with hepatosplenomegaly. They were found to have anemia and leukopenia. The diagnosis was performed by bone marrow (five patients) and spleen (1 patient) aspiration. An active search for cases was carried out in ...

Antinuclear antibodies (ANAs) are significant biomarkers in the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases in humans, done by mean of Indirect ImmunoFluorescence (IIF) method, and performed by analyzing patterns and fluorescence intensity. This paper introduces the AIDA Project (autoimmunity: diagnosis assisted by computer) developed in the framework of an Italy-Tunisia cross-border cooperation and its p...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the prevalence and clinical significance of cathepsin G antibodies in patients affected with systemic sclerosis (SSc, scleroderma). METHODS 115 patients affected by SSc, 55 (47,8%) with diffuse scleroderma (dSSc) and 60 (52,2%) with limited scleroderma (lSSc), were tested for cathepsin G antibodies by ELISA method. Moreover these sera were evaluated by indirect immunofl...

Antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCAs)-associated vasculitis (AAV) is a group of potentially life-threatening conditions that require early and accurate diagnosis, most often based on a combination of clinical and serological features. Most of the therapeutic modalities have immune-suppressing activity and can result in serious consequences, especially if applied to patients without AAV,...

The diagnosis of Leishmania (Leishmania) infantum infection in children from birth may serve as a reference for the early identification of cases that would progress to classical visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in endemic areas. This study prospectively evaluated newborns of mothers living in the municipality of Paracatu, Minas Gerais, Brazil. The infants were followed up at 6-month intervals by cl...

For reaction–diffusion–advection equations, the stiffness from the reaction and diffusion terms often requires very restricted time step size, while the nonlinear advection term may lead to a sharp gradient in localized spatial regions. It is challenging to design numerical methods that can efficiently handle both difficulties. For reaction–diffusion systems with both stiff reaction and diffusi...

Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) are chromatin filaments decorated with enzymes from neutrophil cytoplasmic granules. Anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCAs) bind to enzymes from neutrophil cytoplasmic granules and are biomarkers for the diagnosis of systemic vasculitides. ANCA diagnostics are based on indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) of ethanol-fixed neutrophils. IIF shows a cytop...