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Biomedical subjects

F Pinciroli

Publications and source records attributed to F Pinciroli.

15 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

MS2/Cardio: towards a multi-service medical software for cardiology.

Many clinics are interested to use software packages in daily practice, but lack of integration of such packages seriously limits their scope. In practice this often entails switching between programs and interrupting the run of an individual program. A multi-task approach would not solve this problem as it would not eliminate the need to input the same data many times, as often occurs when using separate packages. The construction of a Multi-Service Medical Software package (MSx2) is described, which was also developed as an example of practical integration of some clinically relevant functions. The package runs on a personal computer in an MS-DOS environment and integrates a time-oriented medical record management unit (TOMRU) for data of ambulatory patients, and a drug information management unit (DIMU) concerning posology, content, effects, and possible interactions. Of the possible database configurations allowed by MSx2, the cardiology patient database (MSx2/C) and hypertensive patient database (MSx2/H) were developed and described here. Clinical information to be included in the configurations was obtained after discussion and consensus of clinical practitioners. MSx2/C was distributed to several hundred clinical centers during computerized courses to train future users. MSx2 can easily transfer patient data to statistical processing packages.

Ambulatory Care Information Systems↗
PubMed1991

Dissemination, standardization and user-flexibility in implementing TOMRs for cardiology.

A great many clinics are interested in using software programs in daily practice. We report on the construction of a time oriented medical record unit (TOMRU). It runs on MS-DOS personal computers. TOMRU handles the follow-up data of ambulatory patients. Of the possible database customizations allowed by TOMRU, the cardiology patient database (TOMRU/C) and hypertensive patient database (TOMRU/H) were developed and are described here. Customizing TOMRU should in any case be left to an expert user, in charge of database management. The clinical information to be included in the customizations was obtained by discussing the needs of and obtaining the consensus of clinical practitioners. TOMRU/C was handed over to some hundreds of clinical centres during the computerized itinerant courses held to train users.

Ambulatory Care Information Systems↗
PubMed1989

Data compression applied to dynamic electrocardiography.

We have tested some techniques of ECG compression on the BIH/MIT Arrhythmias database. We have applied the following methods: (1) method of differences; (2) compression by prediction; (3) sample skipping methods; with the following kinds of errors: amplitude error, amplitude and delay error, area error. In the first and second method the average code length found after application of the Huffmann encoding has been found to be about 4 bits sample-1. For the third method the final compression ratio varies according to the allowed error; with a limited error threshold, however, we have reached an average compression a little lower than 1:5.

Ambulatory Care↗
PubMed1989

A drug-to-drug interaction package.

This paper describes an electronic database for handling the interactions between active principles administered to various patients. The computer used is a personal computer with adequate mass memory, software, and data obtained from pharmacological sources. The main features of this work are: 'all-patient' orientation, a special sentence-coding system, suitability for most existing catalogues of drug interactions, drug-keyed and cause-and-effect-keyed accesses, menu-driven interaction between the user (a physician) and the system, implementation on a personal computer (as available in most hospital departments) and activation from other programs.

Drug Interactions↗
PubMed1988

Comparison of the performances of an automated arrhythmia detector working on original and virtual ECG tracings.

Two approaches can be taken to improve the performance of an automatic arrhythmia detector: perfecting the detection algorithms or improving the quality of the investigated traces by preprocessing the original traces. This paper reports on the results of a data preprocessing approach. Preprocessing consists in constructing new traces, which we call virtual. They are mathematically obtained from the original traces and referred to the dominant cardiac electric axis. The classifications obtained with an arrhythmia detector using both virtual and original traces are presented and discussed. By comparing the performance indices obtained under the two different conditions, it can be seen that a diagnosis based on the virtual traces is as acceptable as one based on the original traces. This result should be judged as favorable, since the algorithm was not adjusted or calibrated to the virtual traces, while those who developed it had certainly calibrated the parameters to the original traces.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1987

A first step quantification by correlation techniques of the variability in some time intervals measured on the Politecnico/Ca' Granda VCG Database On Young Normal Subjects.

The unevident variability during a 30-min period on intervals measured once every cardiac cycle was investigated by correlation techniques implemented on a digital computer, on normal healthy subjects from the "Politecnico/Ca' Granda VCG Database On Young Normal Subjects". Our most important conclusions are as follows: Generally each time series, related to the many interval values measured, shows that its variability is different from that of the R-R intervals. In particular Bazzett's formula, which provides the widely used "corrected QT interval", has to be amended.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1987

[The electrocardiomultigraphimeter and the Commodore-64. How to use the home computer with great skill].

The drop in hardware costs has fostered the widespread use of home-computing systems. Because of this situation, the home-computer can be profitably employed in some highly specialized fields. We believe electrocardiographic instrumentation to be one of such fields. We have built an electrocardiomultigraphimeter (ECXGM), which can be considered as a development of the traditional electrocardiograph that fulfills some additional functions. Our prototype features vectorcardiography, polar coordinate tracing, automatic measurements between fiducial points selected by the user with a joystick and cursor on the screen and trace filing by patient, on labelled floppy disks. The conventional hardware consists of a Commodore 64 console, a monitor, two floppy disk drives and an Epson HI-80 plotter, all of them readily available. The special hardware consists of an A/D converter, which receives the electrocardiographic signal downstream of the amplifying stage which is a standard feature of any electrocardiograph. Prototype development mostly involved the software. Difficulties were posed by the limited resources available on home-computers, an important point in view of the problem to be tackled. The solutions adopted are based on the use of the ASSEMBLER language, overloading techniques and on minimizing the interconnections among the software modules defined in a compactly built program. The result is an instrument having significantly advanced clinico-scientific capabilities as compared to current electrocardiographic instruments. This factor, and the class of the hardware used and special software built confer originality to this work.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Computer Graphics↗
PubMed1986

Remarks and experiments on the construction of respiratory waveforms from electrocardiographic tracings.

We report on some observations and preliminary experiments on the deduction of respiratory waveforms from electrocardiographic traces by interpolating the values of angles related to a cardiac electrical axis. The experiments concern comparing the trends obtained from different definitions of the cardiac electrical axis: respiratory waveforms deducted by considering the electrical axis of either the QRS complex or the T wave, and those deducted in the presence of cardiac rhythm disorders, noise, and drifts. The most significant result was obtained when, starting from an ECG trace, we were able to plot curves that were very close to the respiration curve obtained from a belt impedance meter. This result indicates that the objective can be attained. Other results concern specific cases and the constraints to be observed. Among those, arrhythmia, missing beats, pauses, noise, and drifts superimposed on the original ECG traces.

Arrhythmias, Cardiac↗
PubMed1985

Virtual leads for the ambulatory ECG monitoring: remarks on the persistency of their direction.

We attempt to improve the performances of the algorithms devoted to the computer-based detection of arrhythmias by improving the quality of the tracings they have in input. This aim is pursued by building virtual tracings mathematically derived from the original ones. In this paper we describe the persistency in the time domain of the direction of some virtual leads. Such a persistency will tell us how often in a subject we must recalculate the virtual lead. They have been defined starting from the original tracings of the two leads belonging to the BIH/MIT Arrhythmia Database. We considered the width of the time window just more than the cycle duration: i.e., a severe experimental condition. We found there is no persistency and we have to recalculate continuously the direction of the virtual lead. The set consisting of only two original leads and the short window may have had a major influence on our results. About the specific contribution that the virtual leads take to the improving of the tracings quality, we have several examples where, in respect to the original tracings, the virtual tracings show a positive increase of the differences between normal and abnormal beats.

Ambulatory Care↗
PubMed1985

Ratios sequences of close R-R intervals in cardiac arrhythmias.

In this paper we introduce a new method for the quantification of the variations occurring in the original R-R interval sequence measured on the ECG in the presence of arrhythmia. The method is based on the construction of derived sequences. These are generated by calculating the ratio between each value in the original sequence and some of the preceding ones. The method's properties can be partly brought back to those of certain non-recursive digital filters, which illustrate their capability to detect any events occurring in the original sequence at frequencies equal to 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4 of the basic frequency. Experiments run on data from real patients from the MIT/BIH Arrhythmia Database and on data generated by mathematical models show the selection capability to be sufficiently retained by a set of histograms plotted with data from the original and derived sequences.

Arrhythmias, Cardiac↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Electrocardiomultigraphimeter using a home computer.

The drop in hardware costs has fostered the widespread use of home-computer systems. Because of this situation, the home computer can be profitably employed in some highly specialized fields. We believe electrocardiographic instrumentation to be one such field. We have built an electrocardiomultigraphimeter (ECXGM), which can be considered as a development of the traditional electrocardiograph that performs some additional functions. Our prototype features vectorcardiography, polar coordinate tracing, automatic measurements between fiducial points selected by the user with a joystick and screen cursor and trace filing by patient on labelled floppy disks. The standard hardware consists of a Commodore 64 console, a monitor, two floppy disk drives and an Epson HI-80 plotter, all of which are readily available. The special hardware consists of an A/D converter, which receives the electrocardiographic signal downstream of the amplifying stage, which is a standard feature of any electrocardiograph. Prototype development mostly involved the software. Difficulties were posed by the limited resources available on home computers, an important point in view of the problem to be tackled. The solutions adopted are based on the use of assembler language and overloading techniques and minimizing the interconnections among the software modules defined in a compactly built program. The result is an instrument with significantly advanced clinico-scientific capabilities as compared to current electrocardiographic instruments. This fact, and the class of the hardware used and special software built, confer originality to this work. The new instrument ought to be especially suitable for the offices of cardiologists who have an interest in such capabilities, and for schools of electrocardiography.

Computer Graphics↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Object-orientated DBMS techniques for time-oriented medical record.

In implementing time-orientated medical record (TOMR) management systems, use of a relational model played a big role. Many applications have been developed to extend query and data manipulation languages to temporal aspects of information. Our experience in developing TOMR revealed some deficiencies inside the relational model, such as: (a) abstract data type definition; (b) unified view of data, at a programming level; (c) management of temporal data; (d) management of signals and images. We identified some first topics to face by an object-orientated approach to database design. This paper describes the first steps in designing and implementing a TOMR by an object-orientated DBMS.

Algorithms↗