Several disorders or abnormalities observed in medicine and psychology are not explicable (or not fully explicable) by genetics and environmental influences, either alone or together. These include phobias and philias observed in early infancy, unusual play in childhood, homosexuality, gender identity disorder, a child's idea of having parents other than its own, differences in temperament mani...

Hemangiomas of infancy are the most common benign tumors of childhood. They are composed of proliferating endothelial tumor cells and usually manifest as cutaneous birthmarks. In most cases, these tumors characteristically follow a natural course of regression. However, they can cause a tremendous amount of anxiety. Hemangiomas can threaten vital life processes if located in certain areas of th...

Port-wine stain (PWS) birthmarks are one class of benign congenital vascular malformation. Laser therapy is the most successful treatment modality of PWS. Unfortunately, this approach has limited efficacy, with only 10% of patients experiencing complete blanching of the PWS. To address this problem, several research groups have developed technologies and methods designed to study treatment outc...

Hemangiomas are common vascular birthmarks that usually present a predictable pattern of proliferation and ultimate involution. Most do not require any treatment. When intervention is clinically indicated, medical and surgical options exist. Historically, corticosteroids have been used and have been shown to slow or stop the growth of a majority of hemangiomas; however, growth concerns and infe...

Vascular anomalies are a heterogeneous group of congenital blood vessel disorders more typically referred to as birthmarks. Subcategorized into vascular tumors and malformations, each anomaly is characterized by specific morphology, pathophysiology, clinical behavior, and management approach. Hemangiomas are the most common vascular tumors. Lymphatic, capillary, venous, and arteriovenous malfor...

A software birthmark is a unique characteristic of a program that can be used as a software theft detection technique. In this paper we present and empirically evaluate a novel birthmarking technique — Whole Program Path Birthmarking — which uniquely identifies a program based on a complete control flow trace of its execution. To evaluate the strength of the proposed technique we examine two im...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES During laser therapy of port wine stain (PWS) birthmarks, regions of persistent perfusion may exist. Immediate retreatment of such regions may improve PWS laser therapeutic outcome. To address this need, we propose use of laser speckle imaging (LSI) to provide real-time, quantitative feedback during laser surgery. Herein, we present in vitro and in vivo data collected ...