In vitro diagnostics (IVD) has huge potential. Primary drivers in the global market are the patient's awareness of infectious diseases, the introduction of advanced molecular and tissue diagnostic tests for patient-stratified and targeted anti-cancer therapy and, last but not least, the growing geriatric population. Rapid progress in device miniaturization and information technology (IT) offers...

Two models of capillary blood prothrombin time (PT) monitoring systems were evaluated for analytical performance and then compared with two routine PT systems using the reference manual technique and a high-sensitivity thromboplastin. Two sets of 60 and 80 plasmas were analyzed from anticoagulated patients stabilized over 3 months in an INR range 2-3.5 for therapy. Capillary PT determination wa...

Pre-neutron fragment-yield distributions are calculated for the U(n, f) and Pu(n, f) reactions using a time-dependent fully microscopic approach. These yields are calculated as a function of incident neutron energy from thermal to 5 MeV. We show that our calculations are in good agreement with experimental results, and competitive in accuracy with more phenomenological approaches. Further impro...

This paper demonstrates the advantages of using on-line arithmetic for traditional and advanced detection algorithms for communication systems. Detection is one of the core computationallyintensive physical layer operations in a communication receiver and determines the communication data rates. Detection algorithms typically involve hard decisions (sign based testing) to find the sign of the t...

Measurement of lactate levels is important in the care of critically ill adult and pediatric patients. We compared 3 whole blood lactate methods (Radiometer ABL 725, Radiometer Medical A/S, Bronshoj, Denmark; i-STAT, i-STAT, East Windsor, NJ; and Nova Lactate Plus, Nova Biomedical, Waltham, MA) with 2 plasma-based methods (Roche Integra, Roche Diagnostics, Indianapolis, IN; and Vitros, Ortho Cl...

The discovery of diverse driver mutations in lung cancer has heralded a new era of personalized medicine in thoracic oncology, with targeted therapies approved for specific subgroups of patients. The increasing number of patient subgroups that may respond to targeted therapy has resulted in a greater reliance upon effective and increasingly complex diagnostics, which must be interpreted in an i...

Two unrelated patients underwent coronary angiography and a percutaneous intervention. At the end of the procedures, blood was collected (Vacutainer® SSTTM; BD) for troponin, creatine kinase (CK), and CK-MB isoenzyme analysis. After centrifugation with the Roche Modular Pre-Analytics system (Roche Diagnostics), pipetting error alerts were triggered on the aliquoting module of the Pre-Analytics ...

To be accurate and equivalent, laboratory results should be traceable to higher-order references. Furthermore, their quality should fulfill acceptable measurement uncertainty as defined to fit the intended clinical use. With this aim, in vitro diagnostics (IVD) manufacturers should define a calibration hierarchy to assign traceable values to their system calibrators and to fulfill during this p...

We show that the scaling procedure, recently proposed for the evaluation of the temperature variation of the normalized upper critical field of type-II superconductors, may easily be modified in order to take into account a possible temperature dependence of the Ginzburg-Landau parameter κ. As an example we consider κ(T ) as it follows from the microscopic theory of superconductivity.