{"title":"Patent-based analysis of biosafety trends in synthetic biology","authors":"Qiangyu Xiang , Wanying Gao , Kunlan Zuo , Zongzhen Wu , Lu Zhang , Jialin Diao , Jiayun Chen , Huan Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.jobb.2026.01.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jobb.2026.01.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study explored biosafety trends in synthetic biology through patent analysis. As an interdisciplinary field, synthetic biology brings innovation opportunities to society, but it is accompanied by risks, such as the leakage of biological materials and genetic contamination. The Derwent Innovations Index database was used to retrieve 90 relevant patents for in-depth analysis. Through thematic term identification and data cleansing, the patent landscape and technological advancements at the intersection of synthetic biology and biosafety were assessed. Four biosafety classifications were proposed – operational biosafety, technical cell-culture limitations, pathogenic microorganism biosafety and infrastructure and facility biosafety – providing an empirical basis for relevant policymaking and practice. Quantitative analysis showed that over half of the patents were filed between 2017 and 2022 and that US patents focus mainly on operational-level safety, while Chinese patents emphasise infrastructure innovation. This study highlighted the importance of the patent literature in revealing biosafety issues in synthetic biology and suggested that these patents could be used to guide further patent applications and disclosures to promote the safe development and regulation of synthetic biology.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":52875,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Biosafety and Biosecurity","volume":"8 1","pages":"Pages 29-38"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147397016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ahmed Yaseen Abed, Hekmat A. Owaid, Mohamad K. Koodi
{"title":"Hepatitis B virus S gene substitutions in Iraqi patients: computational analysis of missense substitutions and functional impact","authors":"Ahmed Yaseen Abed, Hekmat A. Owaid, Mohamad K. Koodi","doi":"10.1016/j.jobb.2026.01.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jobb.2026.01.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Background</h3><div>The hepatitis B virus (HBV) continues to be a global health concern, with immune-escape substitutions increasingly reported in regions where genotype D predominates. In Iraq, where genotype D is the dominant strain, the functional impact of naturally occurring S gene substitutions remains poorly understood. This study examined S gene substitutions in 13 chronic hepatitis B patients from Anbar Province, Iraq, and used computational approaches to assess the functional consequences of missense substitutions in the large S protein.</div></div><div><h3>Methods</h3><div>A 1070 bp PCR fragment covering the S gene coding regions was amplified and sequenced. Missense substitutions were analyzed using five computational prediction tools (SIFT, PolyPhen-2, PROVEAN, PhD-SNP and P-Mut). Three-dimensional modelling, protein–protein docking analysis and epitope mapping were performed for the most consistently predicted potentially disruptive substitutions.</div></div><div><h3>Results</h3><div>A total of 34 nucleotide substitutions were identified, including 15 missense substitutions, indicating genetic diversity among Iraqi HBV isolates from Anbar Province. Three substitutions (p.159D>A, p.126R>T and p.160P>L) were consistently predicted as functionally impactful by multiple computational tools. Protein–protein docking simulation revealed significant reductions in antibody binding affinity for p.159D>A (45%) and p.126R>T (31%), suggesting potential immune escape mechanisms. Notably, p.126R>T occurs within the vaccine-targeted ‘a’ determinant region, while p.159D>A may contribute to immune escape through predicted conformational changes despite unchanged epitope scores.</div></div><div><h3>Conclusions</h3><div>This in <em>silico</em> analysis provides an initial functional evaluation of HBV S gene substitutions in Iraqi genotype D isolates and identifies substitutions with potential implications for vaccine efficacy and immune recognition. These findings highlight the value of computational screening in resource-limited settings and underscore the need for expanded molecular surveillance and experimental validation to assess clinical significance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":52875,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Biosafety and Biosecurity","volume":"8 1","pages":"Pages 17-28"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147397657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Enhancing SS-OCT 3D image reconstruction: A real-time system with stripe artifact suppression and GPU parallel acceleration","authors":"Dandan LIU","doi":"10.1016/j.vrih.2025.12.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.vrih.2025.12.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Optical coherence tomography (OCT), particularly Swept-Source OCT, is widely employed in medical diagnostics and industrial inspections owing to its high-resolution imaging capabilities. However, Swept-Source OCT 3D imaging often suffers from stripe artifacts caused by unstable light sources, system noise, and environmental interference, posing challenges to real-time processing of large-scale datasets. To address this issue, this study introduces a real-time reconstruction system that integrates stripe-artifact suppression and parallel computing using a graphics processing unit. This approach employs a frequency-domain filtering algorithm with adaptive anti-suppression parameters, dynamically adjusted through an image quality evaluation function and optimized using a convolutional neural network for complex frequency-domain feature learning. Additionally, a graphics processing unit integrated 3D reconstruction framework is developed, enhancing data processing throughput and real-time performance via a dual-queue decoupling mechanism. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in structural similarity (0.92), peak signal-to-noise ratio (31.62 dB), and stripe suppression ratio (15.73 dB) compared with existing methods. On the RTX 4090 platform, the proposed system achieved an end-to-end delay of 94.36 milliseconds, a frame rate of 10.3 frames per second, and a throughput of 121.5 million voxels per second, effectively suppressing artifacts while preserving image details and enhancing real-time 3D reconstruction performance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33538,"journal":{"name":"Virtual Reality Intelligent Hardware","volume":"8 1","pages":"Pages 115-130"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147454104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sustainable business decision modelling with blockchain and digital twins: a survey","authors":"Gyan Wickremasinghe, Siofra Frost, Karen Rafferty, Vishal Sharma","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2025.100312","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2025.100312","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Industry 4.0 and beyond will rely heavily on sustainable business decision modelling (BDM) that can be accelerated by blockchain and digital twin (DT) solutions. BDM is built on models and frameworks refined by key identification factors, data analysis, and mathematical or computational aspects applicable to complex business scenarios. Gaining actionable intelligence from collected data for BDM requires a carefully considered infrastructure to ensure data transparency, security, accessibility, and sustainability. Such an infrastructure must also be aligned with the social, economic, and environmental factors. A notable direct impact on BDM concerning resource optimisation, stakeholder engagement, regulatory compliance, and environmental impacts has been identified in this space. Taxonomies are defined in this paper to further understand these segments and evaluate blockchain and DT sustainability features based on an in-depth review of the current state of the art. Based on a rigorous selection procedure, 250 papers were used to evaluate the context of this study using a range of text available from scientific databases, including ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Web of Science, ScienceDirect, and Scopus. Detailed comparative evaluations provide insight into the reachability of the sustainable solution in terms of ideologies, accessibility, and performance overheads. In the context of blockchain, it is understandable that further research is required to attain practically sustainable solutions. Several questions are put forward to motivate further research that significantly impacts BDM. Finally, a case study based on an exemplary supply chain management system (SCMS) is presented to show blockchain and DT's interoperability with BDM.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"7 1","pages":"Article 100312"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147398037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yuanyuan WANG , Dawei LU , Jingfan FAN , Deqiang XIAO , Danni AI , Tianyu FU , Yucong LIN , Long SHAO , Tao CHEN , Hong SONG , Yongtian WANG , Jian YANG
{"title":"Augmented reality surgical navigation: Clinical applications, key technologies, and future directions","authors":"Yuanyuan WANG , Dawei LU , Jingfan FAN , Deqiang XIAO , Danni AI , Tianyu FU , Yucong LIN , Long SHAO , Tao CHEN , Hong SONG , Yongtian WANG , Jian YANG","doi":"10.1016/j.vrih.2025.12.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.vrih.2025.12.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Surgical navigation has evolved significantly through advances in augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality, improving precision and safety across many clinical applications, including neurosurgery, maxillofacial, spinal, and arthroplasty procedures. By integrating preoperative imaging with real-time intraoperative data, these systems provide dynamic guidance, reduce radiation exposure, and minimize tissue damage. Key challenges persist, including intraoperative registration accuracy, flexible tissue deformation, respiratory compensation, and real-time imaging quality. Emerging solutions include artificial intelligence-driven segmentation, deformation-field modeling, and hybrid registration techniques. Future developments will include lightweight, portable systems, improved non-rigid registration algorithms, and greater clinical adoption. Despite advances in rigid-tissue applications, soft-tissue navigation requires additional innovation to address motion variability and registration reliability, ultimately advancing minimally invasive surgery and precision medicine.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33538,"journal":{"name":"Virtual Reality Intelligent Hardware","volume":"8 1","pages":"Pages 1-27"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147454101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Rita Azzi , Rima Kilany Chamoun , Ahmed Serhrouchni , Maria Sokhn
{"title":"Unlocking the potential of data: Toward a secure and privacy-preserving blockchain-based health data governance framework","authors":"Rita Azzi , Rima Kilany Chamoun , Ahmed Serhrouchni , Maria Sokhn","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2025.100318","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2025.100318","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Data have always been at the heart of organizations, fueling decision-making, service delivery, and influencing people's way of life. Organizations work to improve the visibility, reliability, security, and scalability of data. Yet, these attempts are not without challenges. One of the biggest challenges faced by organizations is data confidentiality, since a data breach can affect a person's dignity with severe consequences for the organization itself. Data governance is necessary to mitigate these risks, especially when dealing with sensitive information such as health data. This research paper presents a novel approach to data governance through the development of a blockchain-based framework that aims to unlock the potential of data while minimizing the risk of data breaches and unauthorized access. It involves three critical components: data classification, data segregation, and data access control to ensure proper management, protection, and utilization of data within an organization. While this paper discusses the implementation of our framework within the healthcare ecosystem, it also offers a clear roadmap to facilitate its adoption across any data-driven domain. Our approach demonstrates how data accessibility can be enhanced while safeguarding data privacy and upholding its availability, integrity, and confidentiality.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"7 1","pages":"Article 100318"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147398033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pujie Jing , Xia Feng , Liangmin Wang , Xiangmei Song
{"title":"FAME: Federated authority management for attribute-based encryption scheme in blockchain-assisted data marketing","authors":"Pujie Jing , Xia Feng , Liangmin Wang , Xiangmei Song","doi":"10.1016/j.bcra.2025.100317","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.bcra.2025.100317","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Data marketing serves as a centralized third party, aggregating data owners and trading their data with buyers to promote data circulation. However, the security and privacy of marketing rely on a trusted central authority, single points of failure and rights abuse can easily cause untrusted marketing and data leakage. In this paper, we propose a federated authority management for an attribute-based encryption (ABE) scheme in blockchain-assisted data marketing. First, we design an authority blockchain with a threshold issuance protocol to replace the trusted authority in ABE, which achieves trusted authorization for marketing and eliminates the single points of failure. Second, we design an on/off-chain phased right revocation method, which efficiently revokes a buyer's access rights by invoking smart contracts to update the on-chain rights status, and without requiring off-chain re-authorization. Thus, this method prevents insecure marketing due to the abuse of rights. Theoretical analysis shows that our scheme could protect marketing security and data privacy. Experimental results confirm that it reduces the access and revocation cost to a constant level and decreases the storage overhead of marketing by <em>n</em> times compared to existing schemes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":53141,"journal":{"name":"Blockchain-Research and Applications","volume":"7 1","pages":"Article 100317"},"PeriodicalIF":5.6,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146174012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Zhiqi HUANG , Deqiang XIAO , Hongxun LIU , Long SHAO , Danni AI , Jingfan FAN , Tianyu FU , Yucong LIN , Hong SONG , Jian YANG
{"title":"Enhanced CT-CBCT image registration for orthopedic surgery: Integrating rigid-elastic motion models","authors":"Zhiqi HUANG , Deqiang XIAO , Hongxun LIU , Long SHAO , Danni AI , Jingfan FAN , Tianyu FU , Yucong LIN , Hong SONG , Jian YANG","doi":"10.1016/j.vrih.2026.01.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.vrih.2026.01.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Background</h3><div>Computed tomography (CT) and cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) image registration play pivotal roles in computer-assisted navigation for orthopedic surgery. Traditional methods often apply uniform deformation models, neglecting the biomechanical differences between rigid structures and soft tissues, which compromises registration accuracy, especially during significant bone displacements.</div></div><div><h3>Method</h3><div>To address this issue, we introduce RE-Reg, a rigid-elastic CT-CBCT image registration framework that jointly learns rigid bone motion and soft tissue deformation. RE-Reg incorporates a rigid alignment (RA) module to estimate global bone motion and an elastic deformation (ED) module to model soft tissue deformation, preserving bony structures through bone shape preservation (BSP) loss.</div></div><div><h3>Result</h3><div>Our comprehensive evaluation on publicly available datasets demonstrates that RE-Reg significantly outperforms existing methods in terms of registration accuracy and rigid bone structure preservation, achieving a 1.3% improvement in Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) and a 23% reduction in rigid bone deformation (<span><math><mrow><mo>%</mo><mo>Δ</mo><mtext>vol</mtext></mrow></math></span>) compared with the best baseline.</div></div><div><h3>Conclusion</h3><div>This framework not only enhances anatomical fidelity but also ensures biomechanical plausibility and provides a valuable tool for image-guided orthopedic surgery. This code is available at https://github.com/Zq-Huang/RE-Reg.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33538,"journal":{"name":"Virtual Reality Intelligent Hardware","volume":"8 1","pages":"Pages 87-100"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147454028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
David Bamidele OLAWADE , Ezenwa Robinson MODUM , Olabanke Florence OLAWUYI , Omobolaji Rosemary OLASILOLA , Babajide David MAKANJUOLA , John Oluwatosin ALABI
{"title":"The role of digital twin technology in physiotherapy and rehabilitation practice","authors":"David Bamidele OLAWADE , Ezenwa Robinson MODUM , Olabanke Florence OLAWUYI , Omobolaji Rosemary OLASILOLA , Babajide David MAKANJUOLA , John Oluwatosin ALABI","doi":"10.1016/j.vrih.2026.01.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.vrih.2026.01.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Digital twin technology, that creates virtual replicas of physical entities using real-time data and simulation models, has emerged as a transformative innovation across multiple healthcare domains. Its application in physiotherapy and rehabilitation represents a paradigm shift from traditional therapeutic approaches to personalized data-driven interventions that optimize patient outcomes. This narrative review examines the current applications, benefits, challenges, and future prospects of digital twin technology in physiotherapy and rehabilitation, providing a comprehensive analysis of the manner in which this technology is reshaping clinical practice and patient care. A narrative review approach was employed, systematically searching PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, and Web of Science databases. Studies describing digital twin applications, development methodologies, clinical implementations, and theoretical frameworks in physiotherapy and rehabilitation contexts were included. Digital twin technology demonstrates significant potential in personalizing rehabilitation programs, enabling real-time monitoring of patient progress, predicting treatment outcomes, and facilitating remote therapeutic interventions. Current applications span musculoskeletal rehabilitation, neurological recovery, post-surgical care, and sports injury management. Key benefits include enhanced treatment precision, improved patient engagement, reduced healthcare costs, and accelerated recovery times. However, implementation faces challenges including technological complexity, data privacy concerns, interoperability issues, and the need for substantial infrastructure investment. Digital twin technology represents a promising frontier in physiotherapy and rehabilitation, offering unprecedented opportunities for personalized, efficient, and effective patient care. Successful integration requires addressing the current limitations while fostering interdisciplinary collaboration between clinicians, engineers, and data scientists.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33538,"journal":{"name":"Virtual Reality Intelligent Hardware","volume":"8 1","pages":"Pages 71-86"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147454102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chi Weng MA , Ruien SHEN , Deli DONG , Shuangjiu XIAO
{"title":"Botanical tree reconstruction from a single image via 3D GAN-based skeletonization","authors":"Chi Weng MA , Ruien SHEN , Deli DONG , Shuangjiu XIAO","doi":"10.1016/j.vrih.2023.08.009","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.vrih.2023.08.009","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Background</h3><div>3D botanical tree reconstruction from a single image plays a vital role in the field of computer graphics. However, accurately capturing the intricate branching patterns and detailed morphologies of trees remains a challenge.</div></div><div><h3>Methods</h3><div>In this study, we proposed a novel approach for single-image tree reconstruction using a conditional generative adversarial network to infer the 3D skeleton of a tree in the form of a 2D skeleton depth map. Based on the 2D skeleton depth map, a corresponding branching structure (3D skeleton) that inherits the tree shape in the input image and leaves can be generated using a procedural modeling technique.</div></div><div><h3>Result</h3><div>Experimental results show that the proposed method accurately reconstructs diverse tree structures across species. Both quantitative and qualitative evaluations demonstrate improved skeleton completeness, branching accuracy, and visual realism over baseline methods, while requiring no user input.</div></div><div><h3>Conclusions</h3><div>Our proposed approach for generating lifelike 3D tree models from a single image with no user input shows its proficiency in achieving efficient and reliable reconstruction. These results showcase the capability of the proposed model to recreate complex tree architectures while capturing their visual authenticity.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":33538,"journal":{"name":"Virtual Reality Intelligent Hardware","volume":"8 1","pages":"Pages 101-114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2026-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147454103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}