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Full-Text Articles in Analytical, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques and Equipment

Quantitative Dwi As An Early Imaging Biomarker Of The Response To Chemoradiation In Esophageal Cancer, Benjamin C. Musall Aug 2017

Quantitative Dwi As An Early Imaging Biomarker Of The Response To Chemoradiation In Esophageal Cancer, Benjamin C. Musall

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

For patients diagnosed with stages IIa-IIb esophageal cancer, the current standard of care treatment is tri-modality therapy (TMT), where neoadjuvant chemoradiation (nCRT) is followed by surgical resection. Histopathology of resected tumors reveals that pathological complete response (pCR) is achieved in 20-30% of patients through nCRT alone. Because of the high mortality and morbidity associated with esophagectomy, it may be advantageous for patients exhibiting pCR from nCRT alone to be placed under observation rather than completing their TMT. Therefore, a method for predicting response at an early time-point during nCRT is highly desirable. Conventional methods such as endoscopic ultrasound, re-biopsy, and …


Statistical Methods For Assessing Structural Change In Human & Microbial Genomes, Xuan Zhu May 2017

Statistical Methods For Assessing Structural Change In Human & Microbial Genomes, Xuan Zhu

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Genetic sequencing has been recognized as an effective approach to accurately address biological problems, such as clinical detection of disease, mutation discovery, and targeting specific biomarkers associated with complex diseases. Compared with conventional Sanger sequencing, next-generation sequencing costs much less due to massively parallel high-throughput sequencing. However, due to large numbers of short read sequences, the accuracy of high-throughput sequencing data remains a challenge in that the data obtained from next-generation sequencing often has higher error rates, which may impact downstream genomic analysis. Even if the downstream genomic analysis performs well, the quality of the result will still be impacted …