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Total-body photography (TBP) has the potential to revolutionize early detection of skin cancers by monitoring minute changes in lesions over time. However, there is no standardized Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) format for TBP. In order to accommodate various TBP data types and sophisticated data preprocessing pipelines, we propose three TBP Extended Information Object Definitions (IODs) for 2D regional images, dermoscopy images, and 3D surface meshes. We introduce a comprehensive pipeline integrating advanced image processing techniques, including 3D DICOM representation, super-resolution enhancement, and style transfer for dermoscopic-like visualization. Our framework tracks individual lesions across multiple TBP scans from different imaging systems and provides cloud-based storage with a customized DICOM viewer. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, we validate our framework using TBP datasets from multiple imaging systems. Our framework and proposed IODs enhance TBP interoperability and clinical utility in dermatological practice, potentially improving early skin cancer detection. 

Habitat isolation and disturbance are important regulators of biodiversity, yet it remains unclear how these environmental features drive differences in parasite diversity between ecosystems. We test whether the biological communities in an isolated, frequently disturbed marine ecosystem (deep-sea hydrothermal vents) have reduced parasite richness and relatively fewer parasite species with indirect life cycles (ILCs) compared to ecosystems that are less isolated and less disturbed. We surveyed the parasite fauna of the biological community at the 9°50′N hydrothermal vent field on the East Pacific Rise and compared it to similar datasets from a well-connected and moderately disturbed ecosystem (kelp forest) and an isolated and undisturbed ecosystem (atoll sandflat). Parasite richness within host species did not differ significantly between ecosystems, yet total parasite richness in the vent community was much lower due to the low number of predatory fish species. Contrary to expectation, the proportion of ILC parasite species was not lower at vents due to a high richness of trematodes, while other ILC parasite taxa were scarce (nematodes) or absent (cestodes). These results demonstrate the success of diverse parasite taxa in an extreme environment and reinforce the importance of host diversity and food web complexity in governing parasite diversity. 

The abundances of free-living species have changed dramatically in recent decades, but little is known about change in the abundance of parasitic species. We investigated whether populations of several parasites have shifted over time in two shore crab hosts, Hemigrapsus oregonensis and Hemigrapsus nudus, by comparing the prevalence and abundance of three parasite taxa in a historical dataset (1969–1970) to contemporary parasite abundance (2018–2020) for hosts collected from 11 intertidal sites located from Oregon, USA, to British Columbia, Canada. Our data suggest that the abundance of the parasitic isopod Portunion conformis has varied around a stable mean for the past 50 years. No change over time was observed for larval acanthocephalans. However, larval microphallid trematodes increased in prevalence over time among H. oregonensis hosts, from a mean of 8.4–61.8% between the historical and contemporary time points. The substantial increase in the prevalence of larval microphallid trematodes could be owing to increased abundances of their bird final hosts, increased production of parasite infective stages by snail intermediate hosts or both. Our study highlights the variability among parasite species in their temporal trajectories of change. 

Schistosome parasites infect more than 200 million people annually, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, where people may be co-infected with more than one species of the parasite. Infection risk for any single species is determined, in part, by the distribution of its obligate intermediate host snail. As the World Health Organization reprioritizes snail control to reduce the global burden of schistosomiasis, there is renewed importance in knowing when and where to target those efforts, which could vary by schistosome species. This study estimates factors associated with schistosomiasis risk in 16 villages located in the Senegal River Basin, a region hyperendemic for Schistosoma haematobium and S . mansoni . We first analyzed the spatial distributions of the two schistosomes’ intermediate host snails ( Bulinus spp. and Biomphalaria pfeifferi , respectively) at village water access sites. Then, we separately evaluated the relationships between human S . haematobium and S . mansoni infections and (i) the area of remotely-sensed snail habitat across spatial extents ranging from 1 to 120 m from shorelines, and (ii) water access site size and shape characteristics. We compared the influence of snail habitat across spatial extents because, while snail sampling is traditionally done near shorelines, we hypothesized that snails further from shore also contribute to infection risk. We found that, controlling for demographic variables, human risk for S . haematobium infection was positively correlated with snail habitat when snail habitat was measured over a much greater radius from shore (45 m to 120 m) than usual. S . haematobium risk was also associated with large, open water access sites. However, S . mansoni infection risk was associated with small, sheltered water access sites, and was not positively correlated with snail habitat at any spatial sampling radius. Our findings highlight the need to consider different ecological and environmental factors driving the transmission of each schistosome species in co-endemic landscapes.