MOTIVATION: In clinical trials, individuals are matched using demographic criteria, paired and then randomly assigned to treatment and control groups to determine a drug's efficacy. A chief cause for the irreproducibility of results across pilot to Phase-III trials is population stratification bias caused by the uneven distribution of ancestries in the treatment and control groups. RESULTS: Pair Matcher (PaM) addresses stratification bias by optimizing pairing assignments a priori and/or a posteriori to the trial using both genetic and demographic criteria. Using simulated and real datasets, we show that PaM identifies ideal and near-ideal pairs that are more genetically homogeneous than those identified based on competing methods, including the commonly used principal component analysis (PCA). Homogenizing the treatment (or case) and control groups can be expected to improve the accuracy and reproducibility of the trial or genetic study. PaM's ancestral inferences also allow characterizing responders and developing a precision medicine approach to treatment. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: PaM is freely available via Rhttps://github.com/eelhaik/PAM and a web-interface at http://elhaik-matcher.sheffield.ac.uk/ElhaikLab/. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Vascular stent deployment in peripheral arteries is a medical intervention in which a wire mesh tube is inserted into the artery to provide internal support. However, stents positioned in locations such as the femoral artery are subject to cyclic bending, and are therefore at risk of fatigue fracture. A software tool chain, called AimaSimul, is being implemented to support stent modeling, surgical simulation and risk calculation for surgical planning. In particular, the AimaSimul preoperative planning tool allows clinicians, starting from patient-specific medical images, to interactively assess different stent models and deployment options for the risk of breakage. This paper describes the main functionalities of AimaSimul and, in particular, the stent deployment and deformation.