Developing a small, smart, and sensitive pressure sensor array is necessary for establishing a comfortable and safe environment in daily life. Herein, the miniaturization effects of $1\times 1$ poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) piezoresistive pressure sensors with a cross-point electrode (CPE) structure have been investigated and found to suffer from response delays owing to the serious current crowding effect. To eliminate the adverse effects caused by the device scaling, polypyrrole (PPy) was blended into PEDOT:PSS to obtain a high piezoresistive sensitivity of 0.58 kPa ⁻¹ and a fast relaxation time of 0.74 s for the miniaturized PEDOT:PSS/PPy piezoresistive pressure sensors with a PPy concentration of 60 ppm. Subsequently, the optimized PEDOT:PSS/PPy composites were implemented to fabricate $3\times 3$ CPE piezoresistive sensor arrays with an electrode size of 0.2 mm, and a readout circuit was designed to instantaneously measure the resistance of each pixel of the sensor arrays under the application of pressure. Using the $3\times 3$ PEDOT:PSS/PPy piezoresistive sensor arrays with a readout circuit, the pressure distribution of the finger pressing and an occlusal pressure monitoring of a molar before and after the dental filling process were successfully demonstrated, suitable for prospective applications in biomedicine.

A midline shift (MLS) is an important clinical indicator for intracranial hemorrhage. In this study, we proposed a robust, fully automatic neural network-based model for the detection of MLS and compared it with MLSs drawn by clinicians; we also evaluated the clinical applications of the fully automatic model. We recruited 300 consecutive non-contrast CT scans consisting of 7269 slices in this study. Six different types of hemorrhage were included. The automatic detection of MLS was based on modified Keypoint R-CNN with keypoint detection followed by training on the ResNet-FPN-50 backbone. The results were further compared with manually drawn outcomes and manually defined keypoint calculations. Clinical parameters, including Glasgow coma scale (GCS), Glasgow outcome scale (GOS), and 30-day mortality, were also analyzed. The mean absolute error for the automatic detection of an MLS was 0.936 mm compared with the ground truth. The interclass correlation was 0.9899 between the automatic method and MLS drawn by different clinicians. There was high sensitivity and specificity in the detection of MLS at 2 mm (91.7%, 80%) and 5 mm (87.5%, 96.7%) and MLSs greater than 10 mm (85.7%, 97.7%). MLS showed a significant association with initial poor GCS and GCS on day 7 and was inversely correlated with poor 30-day GOS (p < 0.001). In conclusion, automatic detection and calculation of MLS can provide an accurate, robust method for MLS measurement that is clinically comparable to the manually drawn method.

Background: Cases of acute sphenoid sinusitis complicated by septic cavernous sinus (CS) thrombosis and internal carotid artery (ICA) stenosis are rarely reported. Different causative pathogens have been reported for this condition. We present two extremely rare and special cases with diverse clinical presentations and outcomes. Case 1 involved a female patient with less extensive sinusitis, but critical ICA occlusion. Case 2 involved a male patient with extensive pansinusitis, meningitis, cerebritis, and vasculitis due to fungal infection, but less stenosis of the ICA lumen. Both patients underwent surgical debridement and received broad-spectrum antibiotics. Additional anti-fungal medication was also administered in Case 2. However, outcomes differed considerably between cases. Discussion: Case 1 recovered with minimal neurological deficits and had Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS) and modified Rankin Scale (mRS) scores of 5 and 2, respectively; however, the Case 2 had GOS and mRS scores of 3 and 4, respectively. Although rare, septic CS thrombosis with ICA stenosis can lead to unexpected and severe neurological sequelae. Fungal infection can result in catastrophic complications and poorer prognosis. Conclusion: In addition to early detection, aggressive surgical debridement and adequate antimicrobial treatment are crucial to satisfactory outcomes in patients with septic CS thrombosis complicated with ICA stenosis.

Intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) represents a significant public health concern due to its high morbidity and mortality rates. For example, ICH accounts for approximately 15–30% of all strokes [1], with an annual global incidence of about 3.4 million new cases [2]. Only about one-quarter of ICH patients achieve functional independence by three months [3]. This […]