Biomedical subjects

G Antoniol

Publications and source records attributed to G Antoniol.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Quantitative founder-effect analysis of French Canadian families identifies specific loci contributing to metabolic phenotypes of hypertension.

The Saguenay-Lac St-Jean population of Quebec is relatively isolated and has genealogical records dating to the 17th-century French founders. In 120 extended families with at least one sib pair affected with early-onset hypertension and/or dyslipidemia, we analyzed the genetic determinants of hypertension and related cardiovascular and metabolic conditions. Variance-components linkage analysis revealed 46 loci after 100,000 permutations. The most prominent clusters of overlapping quantitative-trait loci were on chromosomes 1 and 3, a finding supported by principal-components and bivariate analyses. These genetic determinants were further tested by classifying families by use of LOD score density analysis for each measured phenotype at every 5 cM. Our study showed the founder effect over several generations and classes of living individuals. This quantitative genealogical approach supports the notion of the ancestral causality of traits uniquely present and inherited in distinct family classes. With the founder effect, traits determined within population subsets are measurably and quantitatively transmitted through generational lineage, with a precise component contributing to phenotypic variance. These methods should accelerate the uncovering of causal haplotypes in complex diseases such as hypertension and metabolic syndrome.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1997

EEG data compression techniques.

In this paper, electroencephalograph (EEG) and Holter EEG data compression techniques which allow perfect reconstruction of the recorded waveform from the compressed one are presented and discussed. Data compression permits one to achieve significant reduction in the space required to store signals and in transmission time. The Huffman coding technique in conjunction with derivative computation reaches high compression ratios (on average 49% on Holter and 58% on EEG signals) with low computational complexity. By exploiting this result a simple and fast encoder/decoder scheme capable of real-time performance on a PC was implemented. This simple technique is compared with other predictive transformations, vector quantization, discrete cosine transform (DCT), and repetition count compression methods. Finally, it is shown that the adoption of a collapsed Huffman tree for the encoding/decoding operations allows one to choose the maximum codeword length without significantly affecting the compression ratio. Therefore, low cost commercial microcontrollers and storage devices can be effectively used to store long Holter EEG's in a compressed format.

Algorithms↗

PubMed1996

Telephone transmission of 20-channel digital electroencephalogram using lossless data compression.

BACKGROUND: The use of telecommunications for computer-assisted transmission of neurophysiological signals is a relatively new practice. With the development of digital technology, it is now possible to record electroencephalograms (EEGs) in digital form. Previous reports have demonstrated the possibility of real-time telephone transmission of a limited number of EEG channels. OBJECTIVES: To assess the effectiveness of specific data-compression software to improve the transmission of digital 20-channel EEG records over ordinary public telephone lines. METHODS: A prototype system was built to transmit digital EEG signals from one computer to another using two 14.4-kbps modems and proprietary lossless data-compression software. RESULTS: Forty compressed digital EEG records of 20 channels each were sent from different locations at variable distances using "plain old telephone service" (POTS). The mean compression ratio was 2.2 to 2.8:1 using a sampling frequency of 128 Hz and 2.8:1 at a sampling rate of 256 Hz. Transmission time was reduced proportionately. CONCLUSION: Although this study used a store-and-forward approach, the results suggest that it may be possible to transmit a large number of compressed EEG channels in real time using data compression.

Electroencephalography↗