Showing papers by "Rafael Molina published in 1997"
TL;DR: C-erbB-2 is not a specific tumor marker and abnormal serum levels may be found in patients with liver pathologies, and its sensitivity suggests its possible application as a tumor marker in breast, ovarian, lung, lung (mainly adenocarcinomas) and prostatic tumors.
Abstract: The diagnostic value of a new tumor marker, c-erbB-2, was studied in the sera of 50 controls, 112 patients with benign diseases and 534 patients with malignancies. Using 15 U/ml as the cutoff, no healthy subjects, patients with benign diseases (excluding liver cirrhosis) or patients with no evidence of disease (45 patients) had serum levels higher than this limit. Abnormal c-erbB-2 levels were found in 38.5% (10 of 26) of the patients with liver cirrhosis and in 26.7% (8 of 30) of those patients with primary liver cancer. No differences were found between the c-erbB-2 serum concentrations in liver cirrhosis or primary liver cancer, suggesting the possible catabolism of this antigen in the liver. Abnormal levels of this antigen were found in 20% (56 of 278) of the patients with breast carcinoma (locoregional 7%, metastases 41.5%), in 21% (6 of 28) of ovarian carcinomas (stage I-II 0%, stage III-IV 42.8%), in 21% (3 of 14) of the colorectal tumors (locoregional 0%, metastases 30%), and in 13.3% (11 of 83) of the patients with lung cancer (locoregional 11.5%, metastases 16%). C-erbB-2 sensitivity in other patients with advanced disease was: 25% (9 of 36) in prostatic cancer, 22% (2 of 9) in gastric cancer, and 11% (1 of 9) in vesical tumors. When patients with liver metastases were excluded abnormal c-erbB-2 serum levels were only found in breast, lung, prostatic and ovarian carcinomas. C-erbB-2 sensitivity in patients with lung cancer was related to tumor histology with significantly higher value in non-small cell lung cancer (mainly adenocarcinomas) than in patients with small cell lung cancer (p < 0.013). C-erbB-2 concentrations in patients with breast cancer were significantly higher in patients with recurrence (mainly bone and liver metastases) and in patients with progesterone receptor-negative (< 15 fmol/mg) tumors (p < 0.01). In conclusion, c-erbB-2 is not a specific tumor marker and abnormal serum levels may be found in patients with liver pathologies. Its sensitivity suggests its possible application as a tumor marker in breast, ovarian, lung (mainly adenocarcinomas) and prostatic tumors.
70 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the levels of 2,3-bisphosphoglycerate mutase and enolase activities and the distribution of their isoenzymes in normal colon, liver and lung tissues, and in colon, lung and lung adenocarcinoma, lung squamous cell carcinoma and lung carcinoid.
Abstract: We have compared the levels of phosphoglycerate mutase, 2,3-bisphosphoglycerate phosphatase and enolase activities and the distribution of their isoenzymes in normal colon, liver and lung tissues, and in colon, liver and lung adenocarcinoma, lung squamous cell carcinoma and lung carcinoid. All tumours presented higher phosphoglycerate mutase and enolase activities and lower 2,3-bisphosphoglycerate phosphatase activity than the normal tissues. No changes were observed in the phosphoglycerate mutase isoenzyme patterns analysed by cellulose acetate electrophoresis. All specimens contained mainly type BB isoenzyme, traces of type MB isoenzyme and no type MM isoenzyme. However, the tumours had decreased levels of 2,3-bisphosphoglycerate mutase and 2,3-bisphosphoglycerate mutase-phosphoglycerate mutase hybrid enzyme. Determined by agarose gel electrophoresis, alpha alpha-enolase was the isoenzyme predominant in normal lung, colon and liver tissue, although alpha gamma- and gamma gamma-enolase were also present in all tissues. In colon, liver and non-endocrine lung tumours, the proportions of alpha gamma- and gamma gamma-enolase decreased. In contrast, in carcinoid tumours of the lung, the proportions of these isoenzymes increased.
48 citations
21 Apr 1997
TL;DR: The use of Dirichlet distributions are proposed to model the authors' prior knowledge about the blurring function together with smoothness constraints on the restored image to solve the blind deconvolution problem.
Abstract: This paper deals with the simultaneous identification of the blur and the restoration of a noisy and blurred image. We propose the use of Dirichlet distributions to model our prior knowledge about the blurring function together with smoothness constraints on the restored image to solve the blind deconvolution problem. We show that the use of Dirichlet distributions offers a lot of flexibility in incorporating vague or very precise knowledge about the blurring process into the blind deconvolution process. The proposed MAP estimator offers additional flexibility in modeling the original image. Experimental results demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm.
31 citations
21 May 1997
TL;DR: A large number of researchers from varied disciplines have been utilizing Markov random fields models for developing optimal, robust algorithms for various problems, such as texture analysis, image synthesis, classification and segmentation, surface reconstruction, integration of several low level vision modules, sensor fusion and image restoration.
Abstract: Over the last few years, a growing number of researchers from varied disciplines have been utilizing Markov random fields (MRF) models for developing optimal, robust algorithms for various problems, such as texture analysis, image synthesis, classification and segmentation, surface reconstruction, integration of several low level vision modules, sensor fusion and image restoration. However, not much work has been reported on the use of this model in image restoration.
25 citations
TL;DR: Patients with prostate cancer had a significantly lower free/total PSA ratio than patients with BPH, although the distributions across study groups overlapped, and in patients with a total PSA level between 4 micrograms/l and 25 microgramS/l, free/ Total PSA demonstrated better diagnostic utility thanTotal PSA alone.
15 citations
TL;DR: Assessment of the serum value of the percentage of free/total PSA in the differential diagnosis of BPH and prostate cancer concludes that free PSA may be a useful marker for the diagnosis of prostate cancer.
Abstract: The use of PSA in the diagnosis of prostate cancer is controversial. This is due to false-positive results caused by benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). Different forms of circulating PSA have recentl
13 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: The results suggest that the determination of CEA bile is highly useful in the diagnosis of occult liver metastases.
Abstract: About a 20-25% of the patients at diagnosis of colorectal carcinoma present with occult liver metastases. The aim of this work was to determine the prognostic significance of CEA bile level for the early detection of occult metastases. We determined the CEA blood level and the CEA bile level in 182 patients with colorectal carcinoma (3 Dukes' stage A, 86 Dukes' stage B, 53 Dukes' stage C, and 40 patients with liver metastases) , and also in 42 patients with simple cholelithiasis, as the control group. In the patients with cholelithiasis, the mean values of CEA serum and bile levels were normal. In patients with colorectal carcinomas the CEA serum levels ranged from 3 to 110 ng/ml, and the CEA bile level from 3 to 226 ng/ml. Patients with liver metastases, had a mean CEA serum level of 193 ng/ml while CEA bile level was 1,225 ng/ml. In conclusion, our results suggest that the determination of CEA bile is highly useful in the diagnosis of occult liver metastases. The objective of this work was to determine the prognostic significance of the CEA in bile, for the early detection of occult metastases, and thus enable the selection of those patients who could benefit from adjuvant therapy.
13 citations
TL;DR: This work compares classical methods which are formulated as Bayesian deconvolution techniques and proposes a new method based on a multichannel prior distribution that preserves the flux within each channel.
6 citations
02 Jul 1997
TL;DR: This paper proposes a method based on the hierarchical Bayesian approach for the reconstruction of BDCT compressed images and the estimation of the related parameters both at the coder and decoder and test the method on real images.
Abstract: High compression ratios for both still images and sequences of images are usually achieved by quantizing the block discrete cosine transform (BDCT) coefficients of the intensity or displaced frame different values. This block based processing and quantization yields images that exhibit annoying blocking artifacts. In this paper, we propose a method based on the hierarchical Bayesian approach for the reconstruction of BDCT compressed images and the estimation of the related parameters both at the coder and decoder. We examine how to combine the parameters estimated at the coder and decoder and test the method on real images.
3 citations
2 citations