Offline handwritten text recognition (HTR) for historical documents aims for effective transcription by addressing challenges that originate from the low quality of manuscripts under study as well as from several particularities which are related to the historical period of writing. In this paper, the challenge in HTR is related to a focused goal of the transcription of Greek historical manuscripts that contain several particularities. To this end, in this paper, a convolutional recurrent neural network architecture is proposed that comprises octave convolution and recurrent units which use effective gated mechanisms. The proposed architecture has been evaluated on three newly created collections from Greek historical handwritten documents that will be made publicly available for research purposes as well as on standard datasets like IAM and RIMES. For evaluation we perform a concise study which shows that compared to state of the art architectures, the proposed one deals effectively with the challenging Greek historical manuscripts.

Thalassemic syndromes are characterized by clinical heterogenicity. For severe disease forms, lifelong blood transfusions remain the mainstay of therapy, while iron overload monitoring and adequate chelation treatment are required in order to ensure effective disease management. Compared to previous chelators, the new deferasirox film-coated tablet (DFX FCT) is considered to offer a more convenient and well-tolerated treatment scheme, aiming at better treatment-related and patient-related outcomes. The present study’s objective was to prospectively evaluate the safety and efficacy of DFX FCT in children and adolescents with transfusion-dependent thalassemia. Data collected included patient demographics, hematology and biochemistry laboratory work up, magnetic resonance imaging of heart and liver for iron load, as well as ophthalmological and audiological examination prior to and a year following drug administration. Study results confirmed DFX FCT safety in older children in a manner similar to adults, but demonstrated increased frequency of adverse events in younger patients, mainly, involving liver function. With regards to efficacy, study results confirmed the preventive role of DFX FCT in iron loading of liver and heart, however, higher doses than generally recommended were required in order to ensure adequate chelation.