Current Issue : January - March Volume : 2016 Issue Number : 1 Articles : 5 Articles
Background: The visual assessment of infants poses specific challenges: many\ntechniques that are used on adults are based on the patientââ?¬â?¢s response, and are not\nsuitable for infants. Significant advances in the eye-tracking have made this assessment\nof infant visual capabilities easier, however, eye-tracking still requires the subjectââ?¬â?¢s collaboration,\nin most cases and thus limiting the application in infant research. Moreover,\nthere is a lack of transferability to clinical practice, and thus it emerges the need for\na new tool to measure the paradigms and explore the most common visual competences\nin a wide visual field. This work presents the design, development and preliminary\ntesting of a new system for measuring infantââ?¬â?¢s gaze in the wide visual field called\nCareToy C: CareToy for Clinics.\nMethods: The system is based on a commercial eye tracker (SmartEye) with six cameras\nrunning at 60 Hz, suitable for measuring an infantââ?¬â?¢s gaze. In order to stimulate the\ninfant visually and audibly, a mechanical structure has been designed to support five\nspeakers and five screens at a specific distance (60 cm) and angle: one in the centre,\ntwo on the right-hand side and two on the left (at 30Ã?° and 60Ã?° respectively). Different\ntasks have been designed in order to evaluate the system capability to assess the\ninfantââ?¬â?¢s gaze movements during different conditions (such as gap, overlap or audiovisual\nparadigms). Nine healthy infants aged 4ââ?¬â??10 months were assessed as they\nperformed the visual tasks at random.\nResults: We developed a system able to measure infantââ?¬â?¢s gaze in a wide visual field\ncovering a total visual range of Ã?±60Ã?° from the centre with an intermediate evaluation\nat Ã?±30Ã?°. Moreover, the same system, thanks to different integrated software, was able\nto provide different visual paradigms (as gap, overlap and audio-visual) assessing and\ncomparing different visual and multisensory sub-competencies. The proposed system\nendowed the integration of a commercial eye-tracker into a purposive setup in a smart\nand innovative way.\nConclusions: The proposed system is suitable for measuring and evaluating infantââ?¬â?¢s\ngaze capabilities in a wide visual field, in order to provide quantitative data that can\nenrich the clinical assessment....
The rapidly expanding field of big data analytics has started to play a pivotal role in the evolution of healthcare practices and research.\nIt has provided tools to accumulate, manage, analyze, and assimilate large volumes of disparate, structured, and unstructured data\nproduced by current healthcare systems. Big data analytics has been recently applied towards aiding the process of care delivery\nand disease exploration. However, the adoption rate and research development in this space is still hindered by some fundamental\nproblems inherent within the big data paradigm. In this paper, we discuss some of these major challenges with a focus on three\nupcoming and promising areas of medical research: image, signal, and genomics based analytics. Recent research which targets\nutilization of large volumes of medical data while combining multimodal data from disparate sources is discussed. Potential areas\nof research within this field which have the ability to provide meaningful impact on healthcare delivery are also examined....
Background: Digital image (DI) analysis avoids visual subjectivity in interpreting\nimmunohistochemical stains and provides more reproducible results. An automated\nprocedure consisting of two variant methods for quantifying the cytokeratin-19\n(CK19) marker in breast cancer tissues is presented.\nMethods: The first method (A) excludes the holes inside selected CK19 stained areas,\nand the second (B) includes them. 93 DIs scanned from complete cylinders of tissue\nmicroarrays were evaluated visually by two pathologists and by the automated\nprocedures.\nResults and conclusions: There was good concordance between the two\nautomated methods, both of which tended to identify a smaller CK19-positive area\nthan did the pathologists. The results obtained with method B were more similar to\nthose of the pathologists; probably because it takes into account the entire positive\ntumoural area, including the holes. However, the pathologists overestimated the\npositive area of CK19. Further studies are needed to confirm the utility of this\nautomated procedure in prognostic studies....
Background: As the most characteristic feature of Parkinsonââ?¬â?¢s disease (PD), bradykinesia\n(slowness of movement) affects all patients with Parkinsonââ?¬â?¢s disease and interferes\nwith their daily activities. This study introduces a wearable bradykinesia assessment\nsystem whose core component is composed of an inertial measurement unit.\nMethods: The system diagram and assessment task were defined in accordance with\nclinical requirements from neurologists. Based on hand grasping actions, calculations\nof hand grasping ranges and statistical methods of quantitatively assessing parkinsonian\nbradykinesia were presented. Seven control subjects and eight patients were\ntested with this system.\nResults: Experimental results show that a calculated bradykinesia parameter (modified\nmean range, instead of mean and standard deviation of the grasp ranges) correlated\nwell with the evaluations of a neurologist (Pearsonââ?¬â?¢s correlation coefficient\nr = âË?â??0.83, p < 0.001).\nConclusions: The bradykinesia assessment system was tested on both health subjects\nand PD patients. The results show that this system has greater correlation with the\nevaluations by neurologists than other parkinsonian bradykinesia assessment systems.\nThe modified mean range was verified as the major bradykinesia parameter (key indicator).\nThis study is helpful to those who want to use consumer-grade inertial sensors\nfor quantitative assessment of motor symptoms during treatment....
Background: Diffuse reflection imaging could potentially be used to recover the\nsuperficial microvasculature under cutaneous tissue and the associated blood oxygenation\nstatus with a modified imaging resolution. The aim of this work is to deliver\na new approach of local off-axis scanning diffuse reflection imaging, with the revisit of\nthe modified Beerââ?¬â??Lambert Law (MBLL).\nMethods: To validate this, the system is used to recover the micron-scale subsurface\nvessel structure interiorly embedded in a skin equivalent tissue phantom. This vessel\nstructure is perfused with oxygenated meta-hemoglobin solution.\nResults: Our preliminary results confirm that the thin vessel structure can be mapped\ninto a 2-D planar image. The distributions of oxygenated hemoglobin concentration\n(CtHbO2) and deoxygenated hemoglobin concentration (CtRHb) can be co-registerated\nthrough the MBLL upon the CW spectroscopy, the scattering issue is addressed in the\nreformed MBLL. The recovered pattern matches to the estimation from the simultaneous\noptical coherence tomography studies.\nConclusions: With further modification, this system may serve as the first prototype\nto investigate the superficial microvasculature in the expot ential skin cancer loci, or a\nmicro-lesion of vascular dermatosis....
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