Plants have been observed to interact with the environment in ways that one scientists has claimed proves they are conscious. Paco Calvo, a professor at the University of Murcia in Spain, has been researching plant intelligence and problem-solving for years, finding the mimosa appears to'learn from experience' when it stops folding up. 'In psychology that's the most basic form of learning,' Calvo told DailyMail.com. 'This pattern of folding, then not folding any more, is consistent with the idea that this plant has learned something as a result of experience, not from its genes.' The professor also noted that other plants communicate with each other through chemicals, solve problems, and even appear to have memories.

Atherosclerosis, a chronic inflammatory disease affecting the large arteries, presents a global health risk. Accurate analysis of diagnostic images, like computed tomographic angiograms (CTAs), is essential for staging and monitoring the progression of atherosclerosis-related conditions, including peripheral arterial disease (PAD). However, manual analysis of CTA images is time-consuming and tedious. To address this limitation, we employed a deep learning model to segment the vascular system in CTA images of PAD patients undergoing femoral endarterectomy surgery and to measure vascular calcification from the left renal artery to the patella. Utilizing proprietary CTA images of 27 patients undergoing femoral endarterectomy surgery provided by Prisma Health Midlands, we developed a Deep Neural Network (DNN) model to first segment the arterial system, starting from the descending aorta to the patella, and second, to provide a metric of arterial calcification. Our designed DNN achieved 83.4% average Dice accuracy in segmenting arteries from aorta to patella, advancing the state-of-the-art by 0.8%. Furthermore, our work is the first to present a robust statistical analysis of automated calcification measurement in the lower extremities using deep learning, attaining a Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 9.5% and a correlation coefficient of 0.978 between automated and manual calcification scores. These findings underscore the potential of deep learning techniques as a rapid and accurate tool for medical professionals to assess calcification in the abdominal aorta and its branches above the patella. The developed DNN model and related documentation in this project are available at GitHub page at https://github.com/pip-alireza/DeepCalcScoring.

Pathological alterations in the human vascular system underlie many chronic diseases, such as atherosclerosis and aneurysms. However, manually analyzing diagnostic images of the vascular system, such as computed tomographic angiograms (CTAs) is a time-consuming and tedious process. To address this issue, we propose a deep learning model to segment the vascular system in CTA images of patients undergoing surgery for peripheral arterial disease (PAD). Our study focused on accurately segmenting the vascular system (1) from the descending thoracic aorta to the iliac bifurcation and (2) from the descending thoracic aorta to the knees in CTA images using deep learning techniques. Our approach achieved average Dice accuracies of 93.5% and 80.64% in test dataset for (1) and (2), respectively, highlighting its high accuracy and potential clinical utility. These findings demonstrate the use of deep learning techniques as a valuable tool for medical professionals to analyze the health of the vascular system efficiently and accurately. Please visit the GitHub page for this paper at https://github.com/pip-alireza/TransOnet.

When a patient has a stroke, every minute counts. Here, prompt action can prevent serious brain damage. If a clot is blocking a large blood vessel in the brain, surgeons can remove this occlusion by means of a catheter inserted in the patient's groin. However, this is a complicated procedure, requiring a lot of experience, and only a few specialists are capable of carrying it out. In new work, Fraunhofer researchers have been investigating whether artificial intelligence might be used to steer a catheter automatically and reliably to a blocked blood vessel.

When a patient has a stroke, every minute counts. Here, prompt action can prevent serious brain damage. If a clot is blocking a large blood vessel in the brain, surgeons can remove this occlusion by means of a catheter inserted in the patient's groin. However, this is a complicated procedure, requiring a lot of experience, and only a few specialists are capable of carrying it out. In new work, Fraunhofer researchers have been investigating whether artificial intelligence might be used to steer a catheter automatically and reliably to a blocked blood vessel.