OBJECTIVE: This study aims to develop an automated approach for estimating the vertical rotation of the thorax, which can be used to assess the technical adequacy of chest X-ray radiographs (CXRs).
METHODS: Total 800 chest radiographs were used to train and establish segmentation networks for outlining the lungs and spine regions in chest X-ray images. By measuring the widths of the left and right lungs between the central line of segmented spine and the lateral sides of the segmented lungs, the quantification of thoracic vertical rotation was achieved. Additionally, a life-size, full body anthropomorphic phantom was employed to collect chest radiographic images under various specified rotation angles for assessing the accuracy of the proposed approach.
RESULTS: The deep learning networks effectively segmented the anatomical structures of the lungs and spine. The proposed approach demonstrated a mean estimation error of less than 2° for thoracic rotation, surpassing existing techniques and indicating its superiority.
CONCLUSIONS: The proposed approach offers a robust assessment of thoracic rotation and presents new possibilities for automated image quality control in chest X-ray examinations.
CONCLUSIONS: This study presents a novel deep learning-based approach for the automated estimation of vertical thoracic rotation in chest X-ray radiographs. The proposed method enables a quantitative assessment of the technical adequacy of CXR examinations and opens up new possibilities for automated screening and quality control of radiographs.

BACKGROUND: Research in functional asymmetry of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) under different tasks is crucial for clinical diagnose.
METHODS: Fifty individuals with MDD and twenty healthy controls (HCS) were recruited for hemodynamic data collection under four fNIRS tasks (Emotional picture, Verbal fluency, Fingering and Negative emotional picture description task). Integral values and functional connectivity strength were employed to probe neural activation and functional connectivity in frontal and temporal lobes in MDD. Following, asymmetry characteristic of the frontal cortex between MDD and HCS under four tasks were carefully analyzed and compared.
RESULTS: Individuals with MDD demonstrated heightened connectivity between the frontal and right temporal lobes and reduced connectivity between the frontal and left temporal lobes compared to HCS in all tasks. Additionally, MDD exhibited attenuated activation in the left frontal lobes and exaggerated activation in the right frontal lobes, diverging from HCS. Furthermore, the disparities in left-right asymmetry characteristic of frontal cortex activation between MDD and HCS were more pronounced during the combined task.
CONCLUSIONS: Further research is required to grasp the neurophysiological mechanisms governing left-right asymmetry across various tasks and the influence of task-induced brain fatigue on cerebral cortex hemodynamics in MDD.
CONCLUSIONS: The left-right asymmetry feature provides valuable neurophysiological insights for diagnosing MDD clinically. Variations in activation patterns and functional connectivity features between MDD and HCS are closely tied to the task chosen. Thus, in clinical practice, carefully selecting appropriate fNIRS tasks and relevant features can significantly improve the diagnostic accuracy of MDD.

UNASSIGNED: Quadriceps and hamstring strength deficits are related to the increased risk of reinjury after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR).
UNASSIGNED: Knee angle-specific quadriceps and hamstring strength differences would be observed in patients with ACLR 6 and 12 months after surgery.
UNASSIGNED: Case-series.
UNASSIGNED: Level 4.
UNASSIGNED: A total of 23 postprimary unilateral ACLR patients followed-up at 6 and 12 months postoperatively and 25 controls were included. Isokinetic knee extension and flexion strength were evaluated at 60 deg/s from 20° to 90°. Statistical parametric mapping were performed to explore the angle-specific strength and the limb symmetry index (LSI).
UNASSIGNED: At 6 months postoperatively, the reconstructed leg demonstrated lower knee extension and flexion strength than the contralateral (20°-77°, 24°-90°) (P < 0.01) and control legs (22°-90°, 40°-82°) (P < 0.01). From 6 months to 12 months, knee extension (60°-90°) and flexion (20°-79°) strength improved in the reconstructed leg (P < 0.05), while LSI remained unchanged (P > 0.02). At 12 months, knee extension strength differences persisted in the reconstructed leg compared with the contralateral (20°-81°) and controls (25°-63°) (P < 0.01). ACLR patients had lower LSI of knee extension strength at 6 (20°-59°) and 12 (24°-57°) months postoperatively than the controls (P < 0.02).
UNASSIGNED: The reconstructed leg exhibited differences in knee extension strength compared with the contralateral and control legs. Although bilateral knee extension strength increased from 6 to 12 months postoperatively, LSI did not show improvement during this period.
UNASSIGNED: Quadriceps restoration was observed only in knee flexion angles greater than 60° compared with controls. Future studies should investigate whether knee extension strength, especially in lower flexion angles, can be enhanced through rehabilitation programs. Furthermore, assessing the impact of this improvement on long-term outcomes and reinjury risk in ACLR patients is warranted.

Only a small number of studies have assessed structural differences between the two hemispheres during childhood and adolescence. However, the existing findings lack consistency or are restricted to a particular brain region, a specific brain feature, or a relatively narrow age range. Here, we investigated associations between brain asymmetry and age as well as sex in one of the largest pediatric samples to date (n = 4265), aged 1-18 years, scanned at 69 sites participating in the ENIGMA (Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis) consortium. Our study revealed that significant brain asymmetries already exist in childhood, but their magnitude and direction depend on the brain region examined and the morphometric measurement used (cortical volume or thickness, regional surface area, or subcortical volume). With respect to effects of age, some asymmetries became weaker over time while others became stronger; sometimes they even reversed direction. With respect to sex differences, the total number of regions exhibiting significant asymmetries was larger in females than in males, while the total number of measurements indicating significant asymmetries was larger in males (as we obtained more than one measurement per cortical region). The magnitude of the significant asymmetries was also greater in males. However, effect sizes for both age effects and sex differences were small. Taken together, these findings suggest that cerebral asymmetries are an inherent organizational pattern of the brain that manifests early in life. Overall, brain asymmetry appears to be relatively stable throughout childhood and adolescence, with some differential effects in males and females.

Antiferromagnets are competitive candidates for the next generation of spintronic devices owing to their superiority in small-scale and low-power-consumption devices. The electrical manipulation of the magnetization and exchange bias (EB) driven by spin-orbit torque (SOT) in ferromagnetic (FM)/antiferromagnetic (AFM) systems has become focused in spintronics. Here, the realization of a large perpendicular EB field in Co/IrMn and the effective manipulation of the magnetic moments of the magnetic Co layer and EB field by SOT in Pt/Co/IrMn system is reported. During the SOT-driven switching process, an asymmetrically manipulated state is observed. Current pulses with the same amplitude but opposite directions induce different magnetization states. Magneto-optical Kerr measurements reveal that this is due to the coexistence of stable and metastable antiferromagnetic domains in the AFM. Exploiting the asymmetric properties of these FM/AFM structures, five spin logic gates, namely AND, OR, NOR, NAND, and NOT, are realized in a single cell via SOT. This study provides an insight into the special ability of SOT on AFMs and also paves an avenue to construct the logic-in-memory and neuromorphic computing cells based on the AFM spintronic system.

The existence of Virtual Reality Motion Sickness (VRMS) is a key factor restricting the further development of the VR industry, and the premise to solve this problem is to be able to accurately and effectively detect its occurrence. In view of the current lack of high-accuracy and effective detection methods, this paper proposes a VRMS detection method based on entropy asymmetry and cross-frequency coupling value asymmetry of EEG. First of all, the EEG of the four selected pairs of electrodes on the bilateral brain are subjected to Multivariate Variational Mode Decomposition (MVMD) respectively, and three types of entropy values on the low-frequency and high-frequency components are calculated, namely approximate entropy, fuzzy entropy and permutation entropy, as well as three types of phase-amplitude coupling features between the low-frequency and high-frequency components, namely the mean value, standard deviation and correlation coefficient; Secondly, the difference of the entropies and the cross-frequency coupling features between the left electrodes and the right electrodes are calculated; Finally, the final feature set are selected via t-test and fed into the SVM for classification, thus realizing the automatic detection of VRMS. The results show that the three classification indexes under this method, i.e., accuracy, sensitivity and specificity, reach 99.5 %, 99.3 % and 99.7 %, respectively, and the value of the area under the ROC curve reached 1, which proves that this method can be an effective indicator for detecting the occurrence of VRMS.

OBJECTIVE: Current handgrip strength (HGS) protocols employ a variety of criteria, affecting the assessment of asymmetric HGS. The impact of these different criteria on fall prediction is understudied. This study was devised to compare the relative performance of average and maximum HGS asymmetry criteria as tools to predict fall incidence among middle-aged or older adults in China.
METHODS: 9627 Chinese adults 50 + years of age who were participants in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (2013-2015 waves) were evaluated. The measurement of HGS was achieved based on either the maximum recorded value (HGSmax) or the average (HGSave), and these values were employed for the calculation of HGS asymmetry. Fall incidence over a 2-year period was evaluated based on self-reported data. Logistic regression analyses were utilized to determine the predictive performance of HGSmax asymmetry or HGSave asymmetry when gaging 2-year fall risk.
RESULTS: Significant differences in overall rates of HGS asymmetry and the rates of subdivisions thereof were observed when comparing the HGSmax and HGSave criteria, with moderate consistency (kappa = 0.599, p < 0.001). Over the 2-year follow-up period, 1743 fall incidents were recorded. Adjusted logistic regression models indicated that only HGSmax asymmetry > 30.0% was significantly related to fall risk (p = 0.034, odds ratio = 1.36, 95% confidence interval: 1.02-1.81).
CONCLUSIONS: These findings highlight the importance of HGS criteria in detecting HGS asymmetry, and suggest that HGSmax is a more robust criterion for predicting fall risk among Chinese adults 50 + years of age.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate interocular asymmetry (IA) of retinal structure and vessel density in patients with Parkinson\'s disease (PD) and normal controls (NC).
METHODS: Seventy-eight subjects including 40 PD patients and 38 NC had completed optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) and neurological examinations for three rating scales (UPDRS-III, MMSE and MoCA). The IA was calculated by the absolute value of difference in right and left eyes. The IA of thickness in macular ganglion cell inner-plexiform layer (GCIPL), peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (pRNFL), and vessel density of superficial capillary plexus (SCP), deep capillary plexus (DCP), radial peripapillary capillary (RPC) were obtained from OCTA.
RESULTS: The motor-symptom-onset side of eyes showed lower vessel density in parafovea of SCP (51.09 ± 3.46 vs 49.81 ± 4.16, P = 0.03) and superior hemi of perifovea DCP (49.55 ± 5.81 vs 47.33 ± 5.71, = 0.04). The PD patients showed larger IA in thickness of superior half of pRNFL (5.27 [2.67, 10.87] vs 3.08 [1.62, 5.61], P = 0.02) and parafovea GCIPL (2.40[1.25, 6.35] vs 1.40[0.50, 2.45], P = 0.02). No significant interocular asymmetry was found in vessel density between PD and NC. A higher UPDRS-III scale was associated with larger IA in GCIPL (β = 0.093, P = 0.001) and smaller IA in DCP (β = -0.065, P = 0.037).
CONCLUSIONS: The motor-symptom-onset side of eyes showed more severe loss of macular vessel density than the other side of eyes. The PD patients showed asymmetrical structural change in GCIPL and pRNFL, which showed the potential as the diagnostic biomarker for PD.

During the second-to-third trimester, the neuronal pathways of the fetal brain experience rapid development, resulting in the complex architecture of the interwired network at birth. While diffusion MRI-based tractography has been employed to study the prenatal development of structural connectivity network (SCN) in preterm neonatal and postmortem fetal brains, the in utero development of SCN in the normal fetal brain remains largely unknown. In this study, we utilized in utero dMRI data from human fetuses of both sexes between 26 and 38 gestational weeks to investigate the developmental trajectories of the fetal brain SCN, focusing on intrahemispheric connections. Our analysis revealed significant increases in global efficiency, mean local efficiency, and clustering coefficient, along with significant decrease in shortest path length, while small-worldness persisted during the studied period, revealing balanced network integration and segregation. Widespread short-ranged connectivity strengthened significantly. The nodal strength developed in a posterior-to-anterior and medial-to-lateral order, reflecting a spatiotemporal gradient in cortical network connectivity development. Moreover, we observed distinct lateralization patterns in the fetal brain SCN. Globally, there was a leftward lateralization in network efficiency, clustering coefficient, and small-worldness. The regional lateralization patterns in most language, motor, and visual-related areas were consistent with prior knowledge, except for Wernicke\'s area, indicating lateralized brain wiring is an innate property of the human brain starting from the fetal period. Our findings provided a comprehensive view of the development of the fetal brain SCN and its lateralization, as a normative template that may be used to characterize atypical development.

OBJECTIVE: Previous research has suggested a connection between major depressive disorder (MDD) and certain comorbidities, including gastrointestinal issues, thyroid dysfunctions, and glycolipid metabolism abnormalities. However, the relationships between these factors and asymmetrical alterations in functional connectivity (FC) in adults with MDD remain unclear.
METHODS: We conducted a study on a cohort of 42 MDD patients and 42 healthy controls (HCs). Participants underwent comprehensive clinical assessments, including evaluations of blood lipids and thyroid hormone levels, as well as resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (Rs-fMRI) scans. Data analysis involved correlation analysis to compute the parameter of asymmetry (PAS) for the entire brain\'s functional connectome. We then examined the interrelationships between abnormal PAS regions in the brain, thyroid hormone levels, and blood lipid levels.
RESULTS: The third-generation ultra-sensitive thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH3UL) level was found to be significantly lower in MDD patients compared to HCs. The PAS score of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) decreased, while the bilateral posterior cingulate cortex (Bi-PCC) PAS increased in MDD patients relative to HCs. Notably, the PAS score of the left IFG negatively correlated with both TSH and total cholesterol (CHOL) levels. However, these correlations lose significance after the Bonferroni correction.
CONCLUSIONS: MDD patients demonstrated abnormal asymmetry in resting-state FC (Rs-FC) within the fronto-limbic system, which may be associated with CHOL and thyroid hormone levels.