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Biomedical subjects

H Dickhaus

Publications and source records attributed to H Dickhaus.

17 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1997

Detecting chaos in HRV signals in human cardiac transplant recipients.

A statistical approach to chaos identification in time series is presented. The method is applied to numerical data generated by chaotic systems and to heart rate variability (HRV) signals of normal subjects and heart transplant recipients. This method compares the short-term predictability for a given time series to an ensemble of random data which has the same Fourier spectrum as the original time series. The short-term prediction error is computed as a discriminating statistic for performing statistical hypothesis testing. The results suggest that HRV signals of the transplant recipients recorded 3 months after the transplantations show the same signature of chaos as that of the HRV signals for normal subjects.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1995

Computer assisted bone age assessment.

Skeletal or bone age assessment is a very common and important task in the pediatric radiology. To estimate the bone age, visual methods are used which are strongly physician dependent and time-consuming. In order to overcome these disadvantages computerization of bone analysis is being tried. In this paper an approach for computer assisted bone age assessment is presented which tries to take typical computer capabilities into advantage by the concept of pattern recognition.

Age Determination by Skeleton↗
PubMed1994

Quantification of ECG late potentials by wavelet transformation.

Late potentials of preprocessed ECG recordings from patients with sustained ventricular tachycardia and healthy control subjects are investigated by the wavelet transformation. The advantages of this non-stationary signal processing method are discussed in comparison with FFT spectrograms of artificial test signals. The energy distribution plots of these wavelet transformed test signals demonstrate the superiority in detection accuracy and frequency resolution compared with the corresponding spectrograms. For this reason a quantitative discrimination between the two clinical groups of patients and healthy subjects was performed by calculating the scalograms of the wavelet transformed ECG signals in the time-frequency plane. The energy in the frequency band of 100-300 Hz during the last time segment of the QRS complex yielded best classification results.

Action Potentials↗
PubMed1994

Time-frequency analysis of ventricular late potentials.

The time-frequency characteristics are studied of averaged and filtered ECG records from 21 patients with sustained ventricular tachycardia and 29 healthy control subjects. Simulated data as well as real ECG records reveal the detection accuracy of the wavelet transform of signals with late potentials. The wavelet-transforms of preprocessed ECG signals are plotted in the time-frequency plane. These representations of the signals are well suited to describe the different characteristics of the patients and healthy subjects. A quantitative discrimination was performed with a sensitivity of 90% and a specificity of 72% by the energy underneath the squared modulus of the time-frequency distribution plots of the computed wavelet transforms.

Cardiac Pacing, Artificial↗
PubMed1994

A comparative summary of six Health/Medical Informatics programs.

This paper tries to compare six Health Informatics/Medical Informatics (HI/MI) programs by a number of attributes in standardized form. The different programs and their curricula were summarized at the 5th IMIA Working Conference on HI/MI Education at Heidelberg/Heilbronn. The presentation is condensed to a synoptical scheme. Most of the information used for this purpose is taken from five individual papers about the programs presented in this special issue of Methods of Information in Medicine.

Curriculum↗
PubMed1993

Heart rate variability in time and frequency domains: effects of gallopamil, nifedipine, and metoprolol compared with placebo.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the effects of three different antianginal drugs on heart rate, blood pressure, and heart rate variability. DESIGN: Randomised, single blind, placebo controlled, cross over study. SETTING: University hospital. PARTICIPANTS: Nine healthy male volunteers. INTERVENTIONS: Oral administration of either 50 mg gallopamil, 20 mg nifedipine, 100 mg metoprolol, or placebo according to a random crossover plan. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Time intervals between consecutive R waves in electrocardiograms measured with an accuracy of 5 ms from digital Holter recordings. Blood pressure monitored continuously by finger plethysmography. RESULTS: Metoprolol lowered heart rate from 62(6) to 51(5) beats/min (p = 0.003) after 78(23) minutes. Nifedipine provoked reflex tachycardia from 56(5) to 94(18) beats/min (p < 0.001) at 10(3) minutes after treatment followed by an exponential decline in heart rate to baseline values with a time constant of 34(7) min in seven subjects but 83 minutes in one volunteer. One subject showed no exponential decline in heart rate. Nifedipine significantly lowered the supine mean arterial pressure from 86(6) to 67(6) mm Hg (p = 0.004) after 11(2) minutes, indicating an acute reduction in arterial resistance. Gallopamil did not significantly change mean heart rate or blood pressure. In the sitting position three hours after administration gallopamil and metoprolol significantly lowered power spectral density in the low frequency band (0.03 Hz to 0.15 Hz) compared with placebo (p < 0.05). Nifedipine did not produce such an effect. CONCLUSIONS: Gallopamil and metoprolol both inhibit cardiac sympathetic activation compared with placebo, whereas nifedipine causes reflex sympathetic activation.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Ventricular late potentials in patients with and without inducible sustained ventricular tachycardia: a combined analysis in the time and frequency domain.

Time and frequency of signal-averaged electrocardiograms from 51 patients and 19 normal subjects were studied. A new filter device was designed to facilitate the analysis of the complete QRS complex, particularly the high-frequency components. All patients underwent electrical programmed stimulation (EPS) with up to three extra stimuli. In 29 patients, sustained ventricular tachycardia (VT) was inducible (group A), whereas in 22, sustained VT could not be elicited (group B). Between A and B, we compared several variables from the signal-averaged ECG as well as clinical data. The variables that differed between the two groups (P less than 0.01) were entered into a logistic regression model to determine which ones could most reliably predict the outcome of EPS. A combination of three variables (number of minima and maxima in the terminal QRS; third of four areas of equal length, divided by the total area below the QRS; maximum of the frequency spectre in the terminal QRS) could predict the inducibility of sustained VT with 82.8% sensitivity and 86.4% specificity.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Tonic descending inhibition affects intensity coding of nociceptive responses of spinal dorsal horn neurones in the cat.

The supraspinal inhibitory control of lumbar spinal dorsal horn neurones was investigated in N2O-anaesthetized cats by reversibly blocking conduction in the spinal cord. Dorsal horn neurones selected for this study had convergent input from myelinated (A-) and unmyelinated (C-) fibres in the posterior tibial and/or superficial peroneal nerves of the hind limb. Virtually all of them could also be excited by noxious heating of the skin of the footpad region and by low intensity mechanical stimulation of the foot. Variation of the temperature of noxious radiant skin heating (40-56 degrees C, 10 sec in duration) resulted in graded responses of the neurones. The stimulus-response functions (SRF) were monotonic; in the majority of 32 cases they were linear. Neurones could be classified according to their maximum discharge frequency in response to skin heating into 22 weakly sensitive units (responses below 100 Hz at 50 degrees C) and 10 highly sensitive units (above 100 Hz). Responses outlasted the period of skin heating by seconds to minutes. A reversible conduction block of spinal axons by cooling a 15 mm cord segment (L1) with a thermode at 0 degrees C affected the responsiveness of the dorsal horn neurones in 12 of 15 cases. The maximum discharge frequency to a certain temperature of skin heating was increased during the spinal block. The duration of heat-evoked discharges was either not changed or increased during the spinal block. The SRF were reversibly displaced during the spinal blockade to higher discharge frequencies and lower threshold temperatures of skin heating. In 8 of 12 cases the change in the SRF was a nearly parallel shift, whereas in 4 units the increase of responsiveness had a complex effect upon the SRF. The decrease in the threshold to skin heating ranged up to 4.5 degrees C; the mean decrease was 2 degrees C. It is confirmed that in anaesthetized cats, nociceptive spinal neurones are subject to a tonically active descending inhibition, which is interrupted by local spinal cooling. The effect of the spinal block on the SRF of the neurones suggests that this tonic inhibition is similar to that produced by electrical stimulation in the lateral reticular formation of the brain-stem.

Animals↗
PubMed1984

Evidence for a monosynaptic connection between slowly adapting pulmonary stretch receptor afferents and inspiratory beta neurones.

The synaptic connection between slowly adapting pulmonary stretch receptor afferents and inspiratory neurones within a region ventral to the tractus solitarius was determined using intracellular recording and spike triggered averaging techniques. When the vagus nerve was stimulated at intensities eliciting a Hering-Breuer reflex, the difference in mean latency between centrally recorded action potentials of slowly adapting pulmonary stretch receptor afferents and e.p.s.p.s of inspiratory beta neurones was 0.2 ms. This difference is indicative of a monosynaptic connection. Extracellular single unit spikes of slowly adapting pulmonary stretch receptors recorded from the nodose ganglion were used to trigger the averaging of synaptic noise recorded from inspiratory neurones. A prominent wave of synaptic depolarization was observed in all inspiratory beta neurones even when a small number of sweeps were averaged. This depolarization was absent from inspiratory alpha neurones. The shape indices of these depolarizations are consistent with a monosynaptic connection between slowly adapting pulmonary stretch receptor afferents and inspiratory beta neurones. In addition, the data raise the possibility that this connection is multiple and distributed.

Animals↗
PubMed1978

[Inhibition in the spinal cord: a neuronal mechanism of hypalgesia produced by acupuncture (author's transl)].

Central nervous system mechanisms of nociception and pain were studied electrophysiologically in the spinal cord of cats. A great proportion of dorsal horn neurons respond to noxious skin stimuli, for instance to heating to 50 degrees C; such stimuli predominantly activate afferent C fibres. These spinal neurons participate in the transmission of nociceptive information to the brain. The heat-evoked discharges of dorsal horn neurons are effectively inhibited by repetitive electrical stimulation of large;, low-threshold cutaneous A fibres. The inhibition reaches its maximum effect after several minutes of nerve stimulation, and declines at a slow rate after the end of stimulation. This long-term suppression is considered to be a neuronal mechanism underlying hypalgesia produced in man e.g. by acupuncture and by transcutaneous nerve stimulation.

Acupuncture Therapy↗
PubMed1978

External nucleus of inferior colliculus: auditory and spinal somatosensory afferents and their interactions.

1. The discharges of 129 units were studied in the external nucleus of the inferior colliculus of 11 anesthetised and paralyzed cats. This region is known to receive fibers from auditory nuclei and the dorsal column nuclei. 2. Stimuli used were pure tone bursts, monaural or binaural, tactile stimulation of the body surface, and electrical stimulation of the dorsal columns (DC) at a low cervical level and of the contralateral and ipsilateral tibial nerves. 3. Forty-six percent of units were only influenced by one type of stimulation (26% auditory, 20% DC). Of the remaining bimodally influenced units, the majority was excited by pure tone stimuli and inhibited by DC stimulation. 4. A small proportion of the total population (18%) was excited by both DC and auditory input, and units sensitive to both tones and tactile stimulation of the skin were rare (4%). 5. Auditory tuning curves were generally very broad compared with those of units in the central nucleus of the inferior colliculus. Similarly, somatic receptive fields were large and usually extended over a whole limb. 6. The majority of tone-responsive units were influenced binaurally (70%); most somatic receptive fields were located on the contralateral fore- or hindlimb (16/18). 7. The results indicate that both auditory and somatosensory information is contained in the discharges of units in the external nucleus of the inferior colliculus. 8. Speculations are made about the role of this nucleus in descending auditory input to the spinal cord and in the comparison of auditory and cutaneous information during sound-evoked coordinated body movements.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Representations of ECG--late potentials in the time frequency plane.

It is shown that time frequency signal analysis could be a useful technique in detecting late potentials (LP). In particular, the spectrogram, the Wigner distribution and the wavelet transform have been applied to ECG signals from patients with sustained ventricular tachycardia. Comparisons of the three algorithms reveals that much better time localization is achieved by the wavelet transform. Moreover, it is concluded that a separation between healthy subjects and patients could be obtained based upon time frequency analysis.

Action Potentials↗