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Mireia Sole, Joan Blanco, Debora Gil, G. Fonseka, Richard Frodsham, Francesca Vidal, et al. (2017). "Noves perspectives en l estudi de la territorialitat cromosomica de cel·lules germinals masculines: estudis tridimensionals " . Biologia de la Reproduccio, 15, 73–78.
Abstract: In somatic cells, chromosomes occupy specific nuclear regions called chromosome territories which are involved in the
maintenance and regulation of the genome. Preliminary data in male germ cells also suggest the importance of chromosome
territoriality in cell functionality. Nevertheless, the specific characteristics of testicular tissue (presence of different
cell types with different morphological characteristics, in different stages of development and with different ploidy)
makes difficult to achieve conclusive results. In this study we have developed a methodology to approach the threedimensional
study of all chromosome territories in male germ cells from C57BL/6J mice (Mus musculus). The method
includes the following steps: i) Optimized cell fixation to obtain an optimal preservation of the three-dimensionality cell
morphology, ii) Chromosome identification by FISH (Chromoprobe Multiprobe® OctoChrome™ Murine System; Cytocell)
and confocal microscopy (TCS-SP5, Leica Microsystems), iii) Cell type identification by immunofluorescence
iv) Image analysis using Matlab scripts, v) Numerical data extraction related to chromosome features, chromosome
radial position and chromosome relative position. This methodology allows the unequivocally identification and the
analysis of the chromosome territories of all spermatogenic stages. Results will provide information about the features
that determine chromosomal position, preferred associations between chromosomes, and the relationship between chromosome
positioning and genome regulation.
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Mireia Sole, Joan Blanco, Debora Gil, G. Fonseka, Richard Frodsham, Oliver Valero, et al. (2017). "Is there a pattern of Chromosome territoriality along mice spermatogenesis? " In 3rd Spanish MeioNet Meeting Abstract Book (pp. 55–56).
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Mireia Sole, Joan Blanco, Debora Gil, G. Fonseka, Richard Frodsham, Oliver Valero, et al. (2017)." Unraveling the enigmas of chromosome territoriality during spermatogenesis" In IX Jornada del Departament de Biologia Cel•lular, Fisiologia i Immunologia.
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Mireia Sole, Joan Blanco, Debora Gil, G. Fonseka, Richard Frodsham, Oliver Valero, et al. (2017)." Análisis 3d de la territorialidad cromosómica en células espermatogénicas: explorando la infertilidad desde un nuevo prisma" . Revista Asociación para el Estudio de la Biología de la Reproducción, 22(2), 105.
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Mireia Sole, Joan Blanco, Debora Gil, Oliver Valero, Alvaro Pascual, B. Cardenas, et al. (2021). Chromosomal positioning in spermatogenic cells is influenced by chromosomal factors associated with gene activity, bouquet formation, and meiotic sex-chromosome inactivation . Chromosoma, 130, 163–175.
Abstract: Chromosome territoriality is not random along the cell cycle and it is mainly governed by intrinsic chromosome factors and gene expression patterns. Conversely, very few studies have explored the factors that determine chromosome territoriality and its influencing factors during meiosis. In this study, we analysed chromosome positioning in murine spermatogenic cells using three-dimensionally fluorescence in situ hybridization-based methodology, which allows the analysis of the entire karyotype. The main objective of the study was to decipher chromosome positioning in a radial axis (all analysed germ-cell nuclei) and longitudinal axis (only spermatozoa) and to identify the chromosomal factors that regulate such an arrangement. Results demonstrated that the radial positioning of chromosomes during spermatogenesis was cell-type specific and influenced by chromosomal factors associated to gene activity. Chromosomes with specific features that enhance transcription (high GC content, high gene density and high numbers of predicted expressed genes) were preferentially observed in the inner part of the nucleus in virtually all cell types. Moreover, the position of the sex chromosomes was influenced by their transcriptional status, from the periphery of the nucleus when its activity was repressed (pachytene) to a more internal position when it is partially activated (spermatid). At pachytene, chromosome positioning was also influenced by chromosome size due to the bouquet formation. Longitudinal chromosome positioning in the sperm nucleus was not random either, suggesting the importance of ordered longitudinal positioning for the release and activation of the paternal genome after fertilisation.
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Mireia Sole, Joan Blanco, Debora Gil, Oliver Valero, B. Cardenas, G. Fonseka, et al. (2022). "Time to match; when do homologous chromosomes become closer? " Chromosoma, .
Abstract: In most eukaryotes, pairing of homologous chromosomes is an essential feature of meiosis that ensures homologous recombination and segregation. However, when the pairing process begins, it is still under investigation. Contrasting data exists in Mus musculus, since both leptotene DSB-dependent and preleptotene DSB-independent mechanisms have been described. To unravel this contention, we examined homologous pairing in pre-meiotic and meiotic Mus musculus cells using a threedimensional fuorescence in situ hybridization-based protocol, which enables the analysis of the entire karyotype using DNA painting probes. Our data establishes in an unambiguously manner that 73.83% of homologous chromosomes are already paired at premeiotic stages (spermatogonia-early preleptotene spermatocytes). The percentage of paired homologous chromosomes increases to 84.60% at mid-preleptotene-zygotene stage, reaching 100% at pachytene stage. Importantly, our results demonstrate a high percentage of homologous pairing observed before the onset of meiosis; this pairing does not occur randomly, as the percentage was higher than that observed in somatic cells (19.47%) and between nonhomologous chromosomes (41.1%). Finally, we have also observed that premeiotic homologous pairing is asynchronous and independent of the chromosome size, GC content, or presence of NOR regions.
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Misael Rosales, Petia Radeva, Oriol Rodriguez-Leor, & Debora Gil. (2009). "Modelling of image-catheter motion for 3-D IVUS " . Medical image analysis, 13(1), 91–104.
Abstract: Three-dimensional intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) allows to visualize and obtain volumetric measurements of coronary lesions through an exploration of the cross sections and longitudinal views of arteries. However, the visualization and subsequent morpho-geometric measurements in IVUS longitudinal cuts are subject to distortion caused by periodic image/vessel motion around the IVUS catheter. Usually, to overcome the image motion artifact ECG-gating and image-gated approaches are proposed, leading to slowing the pullback acquisition or disregarding part of IVUS data. In this paper, we argue that the image motion is due to 3-D vessel geometry as well as cardiac dynamics, and propose a dynamic model based on the tracking of an elliptical vessel approximation to recover the rigid transformation and align IVUS images without loosing any IVUS data. We report an extensive validation with synthetic simulated data and in vivo IVUS sequences of 30 patients achieving an average reduction of the image artifact of 97% in synthetic data and 79% in real-data. Our study shows that IVUS alignment improves longitudinal analysis of the IVUS data and is a necessary step towards accurate reconstruction and volumetric measurements of 3-D IVUS.
Keywords: Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS); Motion estimation; Motion decomposition; Fourier
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Misael Rosales, Petia Radeva, Oriol Rodriguez, & Debora Gil. (2005). "Suppression of IVUS Image Rotation. A Kinematic Approach " In Monica Andres and Hernandez Petia and Santos A. and R. Frangi (Ed.), Functional Imaging and Modeling of the Heart (Vol. 3504, pp. 889–892). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3504. Springer Berlin / Heidelberg.
Abstract: IntraVascular Ultrasound (IVUS) is an exploratory technique used in interventional procedures that shows cross section images of arteries and provides qualitative information about the causes and severity of the arterial lumen narrowing. Cross section analysis as well as visualization of plaque extension in a vessel segment during the catheter imaging pullback are the technique main advantages. However, IVUS sequence exhibits a periodic rotation artifact that makes difficult the longitudinal lesion inspection and hinders any segmentation algorithm. In this paper we propose a new kinematic method to estimate and remove the image rotation of IVUS images sequences. Results on several IVUS sequences show good results and prompt some of the clinical applications to vessel dynamics study, and relation to vessel pathology.
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Oriol Pujol, Debora Gil, & Petia Radeva. (2005). "Fundamentals of Stop and Go active models " . Image and Vision Computing, 23(8), 681–691.
Abstract: An efficient snake formulation should conform to the idea of picking the smoothest curve among all the shapes approximating an object of interest. In current geodesic snakes, the regularizing curvature also affects the convergence stage, hindering the latter at concave regions. In the present work, we make use of characteristic functions to define a novel geodesic formulation that decouples regularity and convergence. This term decoupling endows the snake with higher adaptability to non-convex shapes. Convergence is ensured by splitting the definition of the external force into an attractive vector field and a repulsive one. In our paper, we propose to use likelihood maps as approximation of characteristic functions of object appearance. The better efficiency and accuracy of our decoupled scheme are illustrated in the particular case of feature space-based segmentation.
Keywords: Deformable models; Geodesic snakes; Region-based segmentation
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Oriol Ramos Terrades, Albert Berenguel, & Debora Gil. (2020). "A flexible outlier detector based on a topology given by graph communities ".
Abstract: Outlier, or anomaly, detection is essential for optimal performance of machine learning methods and statistical predictive models. It is not just a technical step in a data cleaning process but a key topic in many fields such as fraudulent document detection, in medical applications and assisted diagnosis systems or detecting security threats. In contrast to population-based methods, neighborhood based local approaches are simple flexible methods that have the potential to perform well in small sample size unbalanced problems. However, a main concern of local approaches is the impact that the computation of each sample neighborhood has on the method performance. Most approaches use a distance in the feature space to define a single neighborhood that requires careful selection of several parameters. This work presents a local approach based on a local measure of the heterogeneity of sample labels in the feature space considered as a topological manifold. Topology is computed using the communities of a weighted graph codifying mutual nearest neighbors in the feature space. This way, we provide with a set of multiple neighborhoods able to describe the structure of complex spaces without parameter fine tuning. The extensive experiments on real-world data sets show that our approach overall outperforms, both, local and global strategies in multi and single view settings.
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