The identification of germline BRCA1/2 (BRCA) mutations plays an important role in the treatment planning of high-risk breast cancer patients, but genetic testing may be costly or unavailable. The multiparametric breast MRI (mpMRI) features offer noninvasive imaging biomarkers that could support BRCA mutation prediction. In this study, we investigate whether mpMRI features can predict BRCA mutation status in high-risk breast cancer patients. We collected data from 231 consecutive patients (82 BRCA-positive, 149 BRCA-negative) who underwent BRCA mutation testing and preoperative MRI between 2013 and 2019. We used the mpMRI features, including computer-aided diagnosis (CAD)-derived kinetic features, morphologic features, and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values from diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). In the univariate analysis, higher CAD-derived washout component and peak enhancement, larger tumor size and angio-volume, peritumoral edema on T2-weighted imaging, axillary adenopathy, and minimal or mild background parenchymal enhancement (BPE) were significantly associated with BRCA mutation, while ADC values showed no significant differences. In the multivariate analysis, three significant predictors were washout component ≥ 19.5% (odds ratio [OR] = 3.89, p < 0.001), minimal or mild BPE (OR = 2.57, p = 0.004), and tumor size ≥ 2.5 cm (OR = 2.41, p = 0.004). Using these predictors, we compared the predictive performance of 13 ML models through 30 repeated runs and achieved the highest performance (AUC = 0.72). In conclusion, ML models integrating mpMRI features demonstrated good performance for predicting BRCA mutations in high-risk patients. This noninvasive approach may aid personalized treatment planning and genetic counseling.

Sternocleidomastoid (SCM) is a paired muscle that stretches along both sides of the neck area. It acts as an accessory muscle of inhalation. Abnormal SCM contraction during asthma is usually a sign of further respiratory impairment. Thus, monitoring SCM muscles has great significance in asthma assessment and control. In this work, we develop a wearable monitoring system based on an optical sensor that consists of an LED and a photo detector (PD). A voltage comparator enables the microcontroller unit (MCU) to remain in sleep mode until waken upon detecting contraction. Experimental results show that our optical sensor consumes much lower power than surface electromyography (sEMG), the most commonly used technique while offering more comfort and compactness. It is also robust to motion artifact and DC baseline wandering. These properties simplify the hardware design, while the use of the comparator further reduces the system power consumption to >450 μW on average, making it the best option for low power monitoring.

Two techniques are proposed to alleviate the computational burden of MUltiple SIgnal Classification (MUSIC) algorithm applied to Electroencephalogram (EEG) source localization. A significant reduction was achieved by parsing the cortex surface into smaller regions and nominating only a few regions for the exhaustive search inherent in the MUSIC algorithm. The nomination procedure involves a dictionary learning phase in which each region is assigned an atom matrix. Moreover, a dimensionality reduction step provided by excluding some of the electrodes is designed such that the Cramer-Rao bound of localization is maintained. It is shown by simulation that computational complexity of the MUSIC-based localization can be reduced up to 80%.