Abstract
Antibiotic resistance is a major health concern of the 21st century. The misuse of antibiotics over the years has led to their increasing presence in the environment, particularly in water resources, which can exacerbate the transmission of resistance genes and facilitate the emergence of resistant microorganisms. The objective of the present work is to develop a chemosensor for screening of sulfonamides in environmental waters, targeting sulfamethoxazole as the model analyte. The methodology was based on the retention of sulfamethoxazole in disks containing polystyrene divinylbenzene sulfonated sorbent particles and reaction with p-dimethylaminocinnamaldehyde, followed by colorimetric detection using a computer-vision algorithm. Several color spaces (RGB, HSV and CIELAB) were evaluated, with the coordinate a_star, from the CIELAB color space, providing the highest sensitivity. Moreover, in order to avoid possible errors due to variations in illumination, a color palette is included in the picture of the analytical disk, and a correction using the a_star value from one of the color patches is proposed. The methodology presented recoveries of 82-101% at 0.1 mu g and 0.5 mu g of sulfamethoxazole (25 mL), providing a detection limit of 0.08 mu g and a quantification limit of 0.26 mu g. As a proof of concept, application to in-field analysis was successfully implemented.

Abstract
Lung cancer is one of the most common causes of cancer-related mortality, and since the majority of cases are diagnosed when the tumor is in an advanced stage, the 5-year survival rate is dismally low. Nevertheless, the chances of survival can increase if the tumor is identified early on, which can be achieved through screening with computed tomography (CT). The clinical evaluation of CT images is a very time-consuming task and computed-aided diagnosis systems can help reduce this burden. The segmentation of the lungs is usually the first step taken in image analysis automatic models of the thorax. However, this task is very challenging since the lungs present high variability in shape and size. Moreover, the co-occurrence of other respiratory comorbidities alongside lung cancer is frequent, and each pathology can present its own scope of CT imaging appearances. This work investigated the development of a deep learning model, whose architecture consists of the combination of two structures, a U-Net and a ResNet34. The proposed model was designed on a cross-cohort dataset and it achieved a mean dice similarity coefficient (DSC) higher than 0.93 for the 4 different cohorts tested. The segmentation masks were qualitatively evaluated by two experienced radiologists to identify the main limitations of the developed model, despite the good overall performance obtained. The performance per pathology was assessed, and the results confirmed a small degradation for consolidation and pneumocystis pneumonia cases, with a DSC of 0.9015 +/- 0.2140 and 0.8750 +/- 0.1290, respectively. This work represents a relevant assessment of the lung segmentation model, taking into consideration the pathological cases that can be found in the clinical routine, since a global assessment could not detail the fragilities of the model.

Abstract
Advancements in the development of computer-aided decision (CAD) systems for clinical routines provide unquestionable benefits in connecting human medical expertise with machine intelligence, to achieve better quality healthcare. Considering the large number of incidences and mortality numbers associated with lung cancer, there is a need for the most accurate clinical procedures; thus, the possibility of using artificial intelligence (AI) tools for decision support is becoming a closer reality. At any stage of the lung cancer clinical pathway, specific obstacles are identified and motivate the application of innovative AI solutions. This work provides a comprehensive review of the most recent research dedicated toward the development of CAD tools using computed tomography images for lung cancer-related tasks. We discuss the major challenges and provide critical perspectives on future directions. Although we focus on lung cancer in this review, we also provide a more clear definition of the path used to integrate AI in healthcare, emphasizing fundamental research points that are crucial for overcoming current barriers.

Abstract
An early diagnosis of cancer is essential for a good prognosis, and the identification of differentially expressed genes can enable a better personalization of the treatment plan that can target those genes in therapy. This work proposes a pipeline that predicts the presence of lung cancer and the subtype allowing the identification of differentially expressed genes for lung cancer adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma subtypes. A gradient boosted tree model is used for the classification tasks based on RNA-seq data. The analysis of gene expressions that better differentiate cancerous from normal tissue, and features that distinguish between lung subtypes is the main focus of the present work. Differential expressed genes are analyzed by performing hierarchical clustering in order to identify gene signatures that are commonly regulated and biological signatures associated with a specific subtype. This analysis highlighted patterns of commonly regulated genes already known in the literature as cancer or subtype-specific genes, and others that are not yet documented in the literature.

Abstract
The consumption of antibiotics, such as sulfonamides, by humans and animals has increased in recent decades, and with it their presence in aquatic environments. This contribute to the increasing of bacterial resistant genes, making the treatment of infectious diseases more difficult. These antibiotics are usually detected by taking a water sample to a laboratory and quantifying it using expensive methods. Recently, digital colorimetry, has emerged as a new method for detecting sulfonamides in water. When a reagent comes into contact water sample containing sulfonamides, a color is produced from which we can infer the concentration of sulfonamides. To ensure that the color is not affected by the illumination when taking a photograph, a color reference target is positioned next to the sample to correct the colors. This method has already been implemented in smartphones to provide a faster and more practical tool that can be used immediately when collecting water samples. Despite this improvement, the algorithms used can still be outperformed by the use of machine learning. In this work, we presented a machine learning approach and a mobile app to solve the problem of sulfonamides quantification. The machine learning approach was designed to run locally in the mobile device, while the mobile application is transversal to Android and iOS operation systems.

Abstract
Lung cancer is a highly prevalent pathology and a leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Most patients are diagnosed when the disease has manifested itself, which usually is a sign of lung cancer in an advanced stage and, as a consequence, the 5-year survival rates are low. To increase the chances of survival, improving the cancer early detection capacity is crucial, for which computed tomography (CT) scans represent a key role. The manual evaluation of the CTs is a time-consuming task and computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems can help relieve that burden. The segmentation of the lung is one of the first steps in these systems, yet it is very challenging given the heterogeneity of lung diseases usually present and associated with cancer development. In our previous work, a segmentation model based on a ResNet34 and U-Net combination was developed on a cross-cohort dataset that yielded good segmentation masks for multiple pathological conditions but misclassified some of the lung nodules. The multiple datasets used for the model development were originated from different annotation protocols, which generated inconsistencies for the learning process, and the annotations are usually not adequate for lung cancer studies since they did not comprise lung nodules. In addition, the initial datasets used for training presented a reduced number of nodules, which was showed not to be enough to allow the segmentation model to learn to include them as a lung part. In this work, an objective protocol for the lung mask's segmentation was defined and the previous annotations were carefully reviewed and corrected to create consistent and adequate ground-truth masks for the development of the segmentation model. Data augmentation with domain knowledge was used to create lung nodules in the cases used to train the model. The model developed achieved a Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) above 0.9350 for all test datasets and it showed an ability to cope, not only with a variety of lung patterns, but also with the presence of lung nodules as well. This study shows the importance of using consistent annotations for the supervised learning process, which is a very time-consuming task, but that has great importance to healthcare applications. Due to the lack of massive datasets in the medical field, which consequently brings a lack of wide representativity, data augmentation with domain knowledge could represent a promising help to overcome this limitation for learning models development.