Abstract: Musculoskeletal problems are common in high
performance dance population. This study attempts to identify lower
extremity muscle flexibility parameters prevailing among
bharatanatyam dancers and analyze if there is any significant
difference exist between normal and injured dancers in flexibility
parameters. Four hundred and one female dancers and 17 male
dancers were participated in this study. Flexibility parameters
(hamstring tightness, hip internal and external rotation and
tendoachilles in supine and sitting posture) were measured using
goniometer. Results of our study it is evident that injured female
bharathnatyam dancers had significantly (p < 0.05) high hamstring
tightness on left side lower extremity compared to normal female
dancers. The range of motion for left tendoachilles was significantly
(p < 0.05) high for the normal female group when compared to
injured dancers during supine lying posture. Majority of the injured
dancers had high hamstring tightness that could be a possible reason
for pain and MSDs.
Abstract: Bone remodeling occurs by the balanced action of
bone resorbing osteoclasts (OC) and bone-building osteoblasts.
Increased bone resorption by excessive OC activity contributes
to malignant and non-malignant diseases including osteoporosis.
To study OC differentiation and function, OC formed in
in vitro cultures are currently counted manually, a tedious
procedure which is prone to inter-observer differences. Aiming
for an automated OC-quantification system, classification of
OC and precursor cells was done on fluorescence microscope
images based on the distinct appearance of fluorescent nuclei.
Following ellipse fitting to nuclei, a combination of eight
features enabled clustering of OC and precursor cell nuclei.
After evaluating different machine-learning techniques, LOGREG
achieved 74% correctly classified OC and precursor cell
nuclei, outperforming human experts (best expert: 55%). In
combination with the automated detection of total cell areas,
this system allows to measure various cell parameters and most
importantly to quantify proteins involved in osteoclastogenesis.
Abstract: Public health surveillance system focuses on outbreak detection and data sources used. Variation or aberration in the frequency distribution of health data, compared to historical data is often used to detect outbreaks. It is important that new techniques be developed to improve the detection rate, thereby reducing wastage of resources in public health. Thus, the objective is to developed technique by applying frequent mining and outlier mining techniques in outbreak detection. 14 datasets from the UCI were tested on the proposed technique. The performance of the effectiveness for each technique was measured by t-test. The overall performance shows that DTK can be used to detect outlier within frequent dataset. In conclusion the outbreak detection technique using anomaly-based on frequent-outlier technique can be used to identify the outlier within frequent dataset.
Abstract: The counting and analysis of blood cells allows the
evaluation and diagnosis of a vast number of diseases. In particular,
the analysis of white blood cells (WBCs) is a topic of great interest to
hematologists. Nowadays the morphological analysis of blood cells is
performed manually by skilled operators. This involves numerous
drawbacks, such as slowness of the analysis and a nonstandard
accuracy, dependent on the operator skills. In literature there are only
few examples of automated systems in order to analyze the white
blood cells, most of which only partial. This paper presents a
complete and fully automatic method for white blood cells
identification from microscopic images. The proposed method firstly
individuates white blood cells from which, subsequently, nucleus and
cytoplasm are extracted. The whole work has been developed using
MATLAB environment, in particular the Image Processing Toolbox.
Abstract: Prostate cancer is one of the most frequent cancers in men and is a major cause of mortality in the most of countries. In many diagnostic and treatment procedures for prostate disease accurate detection of prostate boundaries in transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) images is required. This is a challenging and difficult task due to weak prostate boundaries, speckle noise and the short range of gray levels. In this paper a novel method for automatic prostate segmentation in TRUS images is presented. This method involves preprocessing (edge preserving noise reduction and smoothing) and prostate segmentation. The speckle reduction has been achieved by using stick filter and top-hat transform has been implemented for smoothing. A feed forward neural network and local binary pattern together have been use to find a point inside prostate object. Finally the boundary of prostate is extracted by the inside point and an active contour algorithm. A numbers of experiments are conducted to validate this method and results showed that this new algorithm extracted the prostate boundary with MSE less than 4.6% relative to boundary provided manually by physicians.
Abstract: One of the essential requirements in order to have a
realistic surgical simulator is real-time interaction by means of a
haptic interface is. In fact, reproducing haptic sensations increases
the realism of the simulation. However, the interaction need to be
performed in real-time, since a delay between the user action and the
system reaction reduces the user immersion. In this paper, we present
a prototype of the coronary stent implant simulator developed in the
HERMES Project; this system allows real-time interactions with a
artery by means of a specific haptic device; thus the user can
interactively navigate in a reconstructed artery and force feedback is
produced when contact occurs between the artery walls and the
medical instruments
Abstract: In this study, we explore the use of information for inventory decision in the healthcare organization (HO). We consider the scenario when the HO can make use of the information collected from some correlated products to enhance its inventory planning. Motivated by our real world observations that HOs adopt RFID and bar-coding system for information collection purpose, we examine the effectiveness of these systems for inventory planning with Bayesian information updating. We derive the optimal ordering decision and study the issue of Pareto improvement in the supply chain. Our analysis demonstrates that RFID system will outperform the bar-coding system when the RFID system installation cost and the tag cost reduce to a level that is comparable with that of the barcoding system. We also show how an appropriately set wholesale pricing contract can achieve Pareto improvement in the HO supply chain.
Abstract: Sensorized instruments that accurately measure the interaction forces (between biological tissue and instrument endeffector) during surgical procedures offer surgeons a greater sense of immersion during minimally invasive robotic surgery. Although there is ongoing research into force measurement involving surgical graspers little corresponding effort has been carried out on the measurement of forces between scissor blades and tissue. This paper presents the design and development of a force measurement test apparatus, which will serve as a sensor characterization and evaluation platform. The primary aim of the experiments is to ascertain whether the system can differentiate between tissue samples with differing mechanical properties in a reliable, repeatable manner. Force-angular displacement curves highlight trends in the cutting process as well the forces generated along the blade during a cutting procedure. Future applications of the test equipment will involve the assessment of new direct force sensing technologies for telerobotic surgery.
Abstract: An alarming emergence of multidrug-resistant strains
of the tuberculosis pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis and
continuing high worldwide incidence of tuberculosis has invigorated
the search for novel drug targets. The enzyme glutamate racemase
(MurI) in bacteria catalyzes the stereoconversion of L-glutamate to
D-glutamate which is a component of the peptidoglycan cell wall of
the bacterium. The inhibitors targeted against MurI from several
bacterial species have been patented and are advocated as promising
antibacterial agents. However there are none available against MurI
from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, due to the lack of its threedimensional
structure. This work accomplished two major objectives.
First, the tertiary structure of MtMurI was deduced computationally
through homology modeling using the templates from bacterial
homologues. It is speculated that like in other Gram-positive bacteria,
MtMurI exists as a dimer and many of the protein interactions at the
dimer interface are also conserved. Second, potent candidate
inhibitors against MtMurI were identified through docking against
already known inhibitors in other organisms.
Abstract: Dengue fever is an important human arboviral disease. Outbreaks are now reported quite often from many parts of the world. The number of cases involving pregnant women and infant cases are increasing every year. The illness is often severe and complications may occur. Deaths often occur because of the difficulties in early diagnosis and in the improper management of the diseases. Dengue antibodies from pregnant women are passed on to infants and this protects the infants from dengue infections. Antibodies from the mother are transferred to the fetus when it is still in the womb. In this study, we formulate a mathematical model to describe the transmission of this disease in pregnant women. The model is formulated by dividing the human population into pregnant women and non-pregnant human (men and non-pregnant women). Each class is subdivided into susceptible (S), infectious (I) and recovered (R) subclasses. We apply standard dynamical analysis to our model. Conditions for the local stability of the equilibrium points are given. The numerical simulations are shown. The bifurcation diagrams of our model are discussed. The control of this disease in pregnant women is discussed in terms of the threshold conditions.
Abstract: In this paper we present a method for gene ranking
from DNA microarray data. More precisely, we calculate the correlation
networks, which are unweighted and undirected graphs, from
microarray data of cervical cancer whereas each network represents
a tissue of a certain tumor stage and each node in the network
represents a gene. From these networks we extract one tree for
each gene by a local decomposition of the correlation network. The
interpretation of a tree is that it represents the n-nearest neighbor
genes on the n-th level of a tree, measured by the Dijkstra distance,
and, hence, gives the local embedding of a gene within the correlation
network. For the obtained trees we measure the pairwise similarity
between trees rooted by the same gene from normal to cancerous
tissues. This evaluates the modification of the tree topology due to
progression of the tumor. Finally, we rank the obtained similarity
values from all tissue comparisons and select the top ranked genes.
For these genes the local neighborhood in the correlation networks
changes most between normal and cancerous tissues. As a result
we find that the top ranked genes are candidates suspected to be
involved in tumor growth and, hence, indicates that our method
captures essential information from the underlying DNA microarray
data of cervical cancer.
Abstract: Sputum smear conversion after one month of antituberculosis
therapy in new smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis
patients (PTB+) is a vital indicator towards treatment success. The
objective of this study is to determine the rate of sputum smear
conversion in new PTB+ patients after one month under treatment of
National Institute of Diseases of the Chest and Hospital (NIDCH).
Analysis of sputum smear conversion was done by re-clinical
examination with sputum smear microscopic test after one month.
Socio-demographic and hematological parameters were evaluated to
perceive the correlation with the disease status. Among all enrolled
patients only 33.33% were available for follow up diagnosis and of
them only 42.86% patients turned to smear negative. Probably this
consequence is due to non-coherence to the proper disease
management. 66.67% and 78.78% patients reported low haemoglobin
and packed cell volume level respectively whereas 80% and 93.33%
patients accounted accelerated platelet count and erythrocyte
sedimentation rate correspondingly.
Abstract: This study aimed to detect and to identify the main
strains of airborne microorganisms present in the Shanghai Metro
system. Samples were collected using agar plates exposed to the air
and microorganisms were identified using catalase, plasma coagulase
and hymolytic analysis. The results show that the concentration of
mildew present within a newly opened metro line was significantly
higher than for other lines. Differences among underground and
elevated stations can be attributed to differences in passenger flow and
the environment surrounding the stations. Additionally, the
investigation indicated that bacteria reached maximum levels at
different times on weekdays and weekends. The bacteria in the Metro
stations were identified as primarily Gram positive, consisting mainly
of coagulase-negative staphylococcus strains (CNS).
Abstract: The size, complexity and number of databases used
for protein information have caused bioinformatics to lag behind in
adapting to the need to handle this distributed information.
Integrating all the information from different databases into one
database is a challenging problem. Our main research is to develop a
tool which can be used to access and manipulate protein information
from difference databases. In our approach, we have integrated
difference databases such as Swiss-prot, PDB, Interpro, and EMBL
and transformed these databases in flat file format into relational
form using XML and Bioperl. As a result, we showed this tool can
search different sizes of protein information stored in relational
database and the result can be retrieved faster compared to flat file
database. A web based user interface is provided to allow user to
access or search for protein information in the local database.
Abstract: A data cutting and sorting method (DCSM) is proposed
to optimize the performance of data mining. DCSM reduces the
calculation time by getting rid of redundant data during the data
mining process. In addition, DCSM minimizes the computational units
by splitting the database and by sorting data with support counts. In the
process of searching for the relationship between metabolic syndrome
and lifestyles with the health examination database of an electronics
manufacturing company, DCSM demonstrates higher search
efficiency than the traditional Apriori algorithm in tests with different
support counts.
Abstract: As the increase of intraoral acidity due to ingestion of sweet foods and acidic beverages usually bring forth a dental caries and a erosion, the measurement of intraoral pH is essential in the study of oral environment. The indwelling intraoral pH telemetry for lasting longer than 24 hours in the mouth was developed to overcome the limits of conventional wire electrode method previously used for salivary and plaque pH measurement, and to assess its effectiveness.
Abstract: In Multiple Sclerosis, pathological changes in the
brain results in deviations in signal intensity on Magnetic Resonance
Images (MRI). Quantitative analysis of these changes and their
correlation with clinical finding provides important information for
diagnosis. This constitutes the objective of our work. A new approach
is developed. After the enhancement of images contrast and the brain
extraction by mathematical morphology algorithm, we proceed to the
brain segmentation. Our approach is based on building statistical
model from data itself, for normal brain MRI and including clustering
tissue type. Then we detect signal abnormalities (MS lesions) as a
rejection class containing voxels that are not explained by the built
model. We validate the method on MR images of Multiple Sclerosis
patients by comparing its results with those of human expert
segmentation.
Abstract: A mathematical model of the respiratory system is
introduced in this study. Geometrical dimensions of the respiratory
system were used to compute the acoustic properties of the
respiratory system using the electro-acoustic analogy. The effect of
the geometrical proportions of the respiratory system is observed in
the paper.
Abstract: With getting older in the whole population, the
prevalence of stroke and its residual disability is getting higher and
higher recently in Taiwan. The functional electrical stimulation
cycling system (FESCS) is useful for hemiplegic patients. Because
that the muscle of stroke patients is under hybrid activation. The raw
electromyography (EMG) represents the residual muscle force of
stroke subject whereas the peak-to-peak of stimulus EMG indicates the
force enhancement benefiting from ES. It seems that EMG signals
could be used for a parameter of feedback control mechanism. So, we
design the feedback control protocol of FESCS, it includes
physiological signal recorder, FPGA biomedical module, DAC and
electrical stimulation circuit. Using the intensity of real-time EMG
signal obtained from patients, as a feedback control method for the
output voltage of FES-cycling system.
Abstract: It is shown that the relationship of tick-borne
encephalitis virus with the human body comes in two ways, the
development of acute infection with the outcome in convalescence
and long stay by the virus in the body, its persistence in the nervous
tissue with periodic reactivation and prolonged circulating
immunoglobulin M. In spite of the fact that tick-borne encephalitis
virus has a tropism for nerve tissue, involvement in the process of
blood cells is an integral component of the infection. Comprehensive
study of the relation of factors of innate and adaptive immunity in the
tick-borne encephalitis providing insight into the features of chronic
disease.