AIM: To report the effects of intravenous high-dose glucocorticoids(iv GC) and orbital decompression(OD) surgery for treatment of sight-threatening thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy(TAO).METHODS: A retrospective revie...AIM: To report the effects of intravenous high-dose glucocorticoids(iv GC) and orbital decompression(OD) surgery for treatment of sight-threatening thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy(TAO).METHODS: A retrospective review of medical records from patients with sight-threatening TAO [definite or highly suspected dysthyroid optic neuropathy(DON)] treated with iv GC(60 cases) and OD(25 cases) was conducted at the Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center between January 2001 and January 2009. Patients were initially treated with iv GC(iv GC group). If no significant improvement in visual function was obtained, they then received OD surgery(OD group). The pre-versus post-treatment efficacies of either iv GC or OD in these patients were assessed using several indices, including visual acuity, intraocular pressure, ocular alignment, ocular motility, and exophthalmos. RESULTS: Nighty-one eyes had definite DON while 79 were considered to have highly suspected DON. In the iv GC group, 51 individuals(85.0%) eventually demonstrated normal vision, while 10 patients(16.7%) demonstrated a reduction in deviation(P<0.01), and 35 cases(58.3%) showed slight improvements in ocular motility(P<0.01). In OD group, visual acuity improved in 24 cases(96.0%, P<0.01) and all patients showed varying reductions of exophthalmos(mean: 4.35±1.13 mm, P<0.01). Eight cases(32.0%) experienced an 8-15 PD reduction of deviation and ocular motility improved in 12 cases(48.0%), while 3 patients(12.0%) developed new-onset strabismus with diplopia post-surgically(P<0.01). Patients were followed up at an average of 1.55±1.07 y. CONCLUSION: Both iv GC and OD show good therapeutic efficacy in the treatment of sight-threatening TAO. Thepresence of extremely poor eyesight(≥0.5 log MAR) was corrected in some patients with iv GC alone, thus sparing these patients from subsequent OD surgery. In patients who were refractory to steroids, subsequent OD surgery often provided satisfactory outcomes, however, new-onset strabismus with diplopia was observed in 12.0% of these cases.展开更多
Low-Density Parity-Check （LDPC） codes are powerful error correcting codes. LDPC decoders have been implemented as efficient error correction codes on dedicated VLSI hardware architectures in recent years. This paper...Low-Density Parity-Check （LDPC） codes are powerful error correcting codes. LDPC decoders have been implemented as efficient error correction codes on dedicated VLSI hardware architectures in recent years. This paper describes two strategies to parallelize min-sum decoding of irregular LDPC codes. The first implements min-sum LDPC decoders on multicore platforms using OpenMP, while the other uses the Compute Unified Device Architecture （CUDA） to parallelize LDPC decoding on Graphics Processing Units （GPUs）. Empirical studies on data with various scales show that the performance of these decoding processes is improved by these parallel strategies and the GPUs provide more efficient, fast implementation decoder.展开更多
In this paper, a fast-convergence distributed support vector machine （FDSVM） algorithm is proposed, aiming at efficiently solving the problem of distributed SVM training. Rather than exchanging information only amon...In this paper, a fast-convergence distributed support vector machine （FDSVM） algorithm is proposed, aiming at efficiently solving the problem of distributed SVM training. Rather than exchanging information only among immediate neighbor sites, the proposed FDSVM employs a deterministic gossip protocol-based commu nication policy to accelerate diffusing information around the network, in which each site communicates with others in a flooding and iterative manner. This communication policy significantly reduces the total number of iterations, thus further speeding up the convergence of the algorithm. In addition, the proposed algorithm is proved to converge to the global optimum in finite steps over an arbitrary strongly connected network （SCN）. Experiments on various benchmark data sets show that the proposed FDSVM consistently outperforms the related state-of-the art approach for most networks, especially in the ring network, in terms of the total training time.展开更多
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.81670885)the Science and Technology Program of Guangdong Province, China (No.2013B020400003)the Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou, China (No.15570001)
文摘AIM: To report the effects of intravenous high-dose glucocorticoids(iv GC) and orbital decompression(OD) surgery for treatment of sight-threatening thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy(TAO).METHODS: A retrospective review of medical records from patients with sight-threatening TAO [definite or highly suspected dysthyroid optic neuropathy(DON)] treated with iv GC(60 cases) and OD(25 cases) was conducted at the Zhongshan Ophthalmic Center between January 2001 and January 2009. Patients were initially treated with iv GC(iv GC group). If no significant improvement in visual function was obtained, they then received OD surgery(OD group). The pre-versus post-treatment efficacies of either iv GC or OD in these patients were assessed using several indices, including visual acuity, intraocular pressure, ocular alignment, ocular motility, and exophthalmos. RESULTS: Nighty-one eyes had definite DON while 79 were considered to have highly suspected DON. In the iv GC group, 51 individuals(85.0%) eventually demonstrated normal vision, while 10 patients(16.7%) demonstrated a reduction in deviation(P<0.01), and 35 cases(58.3%) showed slight improvements in ocular motility(P<0.01). In OD group, visual acuity improved in 24 cases(96.0%, P<0.01) and all patients showed varying reductions of exophthalmos(mean: 4.35±1.13 mm, P<0.01). Eight cases(32.0%) experienced an 8-15 PD reduction of deviation and ocular motility improved in 12 cases(48.0%), while 3 patients(12.0%) developed new-onset strabismus with diplopia post-surgically(P<0.01). Patients were followed up at an average of 1.55±1.07 y. CONCLUSION: Both iv GC and OD show good therapeutic efficacy in the treatment of sight-threatening TAO. Thepresence of extremely poor eyesight(≥0.5 log MAR) was corrected in some patients with iv GC alone, thus sparing these patients from subsequent OD surgery. In patients who were refractory to steroids, subsequent OD surgery often provided satisfactory outcomes, however, new-onset strabismus with diplopia was observed in 12.0% of these cases.
基金Agilent Technology Foundation(No.912-CHN09)National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.61175110)+1 种基金National Key Basic Research and Development(973)Program of China(No.2012CB316305)National Key Projects of Science and Technology of China(No.2011ZX02101-004)
文摘Low-Density Parity-Check （LDPC） codes are powerful error correcting codes. LDPC decoders have been implemented as efficient error correction codes on dedicated VLSI hardware architectures in recent years. This paper describes two strategies to parallelize min-sum decoding of irregular LDPC codes. The first implements min-sum LDPC decoders on multicore platforms using OpenMP, while the other uses the Compute Unified Device Architecture （CUDA） to parallelize LDPC decoding on Graphics Processing Units （GPUs）. Empirical studies on data with various scales show that the performance of these decoding processes is improved by these parallel strategies and the GPUs provide more efficient, fast implementation decoder.
文摘In this paper, a fast-convergence distributed support vector machine （FDSVM） algorithm is proposed, aiming at efficiently solving the problem of distributed SVM training. Rather than exchanging information only among immediate neighbor sites, the proposed FDSVM employs a deterministic gossip protocol-based commu nication policy to accelerate diffusing information around the network, in which each site communicates with others in a flooding and iterative manner. This communication policy significantly reduces the total number of iterations, thus further speeding up the convergence of the algorithm. In addition, the proposed algorithm is proved to converge to the global optimum in finite steps over an arbitrary strongly connected network （SCN）. Experiments on various benchmark data sets show that the proposed FDSVM consistently outperforms the related state-of-the art approach for most networks, especially in the ring network, in terms of the total training time.
