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PubMed1995

Evaluation of the Ciba Corning 840 blood gas analyzer.

BACKGROUND: Because our laboratory had used the Ciba Corning 200 series blood-gas analyzers for a number of years, we were asked to participate in the evaluation of a premarket unit of the Model 840 analyzer (C840). DESCRIPTION OF DEVICE: The C840 is a bench-top instrument that combines a menu-driven user interface with an automated sampler and integrates software for data management and system diagnostics. EVALUATION METHODS: We compared the performance of the C840 to a laboratory-based Ciba Corning 278 (C278), analyzing a total of 325 blood samples. We also evaluated the software for routine laboratory applications. EVALUATION RESULTS: The bias and imprecision (+/- 2 SD) between the C840 and C278 was calculated for pH (+0.004 +/- 0.014 pH units), PCO2 (+1.8 +/- 3.3 torr), and PO2 (+0.01 +/- 9.0 torr for all PO2 ranges; -0.17 +/- 4.8 torr for PO2 < 150 torr). CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that the analytical performance of the C840 is comparable to the C278, and its data storage and interface capabilities should help laboratories meet CLIA-88 requirements.

Blood Gas Analysis↗

PubMed1999

RVG-ui: a sensor to rival direct-exposure intra-oral x-ray film.

The RVG-ui is a solid-state system for dental x-ray imaging combining a charge-coupled device (CCD) of small pixel size (19.5 microns) with a caesium iodide (CsI) scintillator. It features two sizes of sensor with receptive areas that approach the size of No. 1 and No. 2 periapical x-ray films. The spatial resolution of the RVG-ui exceeds 20 lp/mm, rivaling direct-exposure intra-oral x-ray film when the latter is optimally exposed and processed. The recording latitude of the RVG-ui for clinically acceptable images is 25:1, making exposure error unlikely. In features such as speed of image acquisition, reduction in radiation dose, retrieval of data, and organization and storage of images, the RVG-ui system surpasses traditional x-ray film. Furthermore, it is possible to make accurate length measurements very quickly, and to apply an artificial intelligence program to determine the probability of proximal dental caries in enamel and dentin.

Artificial Intelligence↗

PubMed2005

Convenient intelligent cursor control web systems for Internet users with severe motor-impairments.

The objective of this research work is to simplify and improve the efficiency of cursor control and its interactions on the computer screen by applying fuzzy logic in its decision-making to make Internet users with disabilities use the networked computers conveniently and easily. "Point and click" interactions are one of the key features of operating systems based of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) [C.E. Steriadis, P. Constantinou, Designing human-computer interfaces for quadriplegic people, ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum.-Interact. (TOCHI) 10 (2) (2003) 87-118.]. People with severe motor-impairments due to spinal cord injury (SCI) or spinal cord dysfunction (SCD), however, often have difficulty with accurate and efficient control of pointing devices, limiting their integration to society and unassisted control over their environment through the use of such operating systems [S. Keates, F. Hwang, P. Langdon, P.J. Clarkson, P. Robinson, Cursor measures for motion-impaired computer users, in: Proceedings of ACM SIGCAPH Conference of Assistive Technologies - ASSETS 2002, pp. 135-142.]. The questions "How can someone with severe motor-impairments perform 'point and click' interactions as accurately and efficiently as an able-bodied person?" and "How can these interactions be advanced through use of Computational Intelligence (CI)?" are the driving forces behind the research described in this paper. Through this research, a novel fuzzy mouse cursor control system (FMCCS) is described. The FMCCS core consists of several fuzzy control functions, which define different user interactions with the system. Design and descriptions of these functions, as well first prototype implementation and testing with real users sustaining severe disabilities are presented.

Computer Systems↗

PubMed2005

Demosaicing using optimal recovery.

Color images in single-chip digital cameras are obtained by interpolating mosaiced color samples. These samples are encoded in a single-chip charge-coupled device by sampling the light after it passes through a color filter array (CFA) that contains different color filters (i.e., red, green, and blue) placed in some pattern. The resulting sparsely sampled images of the three-color planes are interpolated to obtain the complete color image. Interpolation usually introduces color artifacts due to the phase-shifted, aliased signals introduced by the sparse sampling of the CFAs. This paper introduces a nonlinear interpolation scheme based on edge information that produces high-quality visual results. The new method is especially good at reconstructing the image around edges, a place where the visual human system is most sensitive.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2001

Real time information from bedside monitors as part of a web-based patient record.

Traditional paper-based Medical Records, and even most of their digital counterparts, represent historical patient information. On the other hand new generations of Point-of-Care devices can be connected to standard networks and deliver streams of real time data through an Intranet, or even the Internet. Vital signs provided by IP-based devices can then be viewed at remote stations. Merging both worlds, real time and historical, in the pursuit of a comprehensive EPR is the main challenge of the present project. The basic infra-structure is composed of three main components: an existing Web-based EPR viewing station1 (Web-EPR); a fully integrated HIS/PACS system1; and a monitoring network (Siemens Infinity Network 2). Communication between the components was obtained by developing interfaces based on both HL7 and Siemens protocols the later only for waveforms. For the graphical display a web-browser-based application of the streamed signals was developed and integrated into the existing Web-EPR. This addition expanded the Web-EPR capabilities providing means to include real time signals and calculated parameters on the set of information already available. Some extra features of this project include: one-way SMS messaging of the parameters, interactive WAP access and a DICOM compliant storage of signal waveforms.

Computer Security↗

PubMed2003

Microtensile bond strength testing of luting cements to prefabricated CAD/CAM ceramic and composite blocks.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the Microtensile bond strength (microTBS) and failure mode of resin cements bonded to composite and ceramic CAD/CAM blocks following various surface treatments. METHODS: Paradigm composite blocks and Cerec Vitablocs received three surface treatments following the control treatment of surface grinding with 600 SiC grit. (1) Application of adhesive resin (Adh), (2) etching with hydrofluoric acid and silanization (HF+S) or (3) combination of the previous two treatments (HF+S+Adh). Three resin cements (Tetric Flow, Nexus 2, RelyX ARC) were applied to these surfaces and built-up in layers. After 24 h water storage at 37 degrees C, the non-trimming version of microTBS test was used to produce 1 mm(2) microbars. The Microbars were subjected to a tensile load using a modified testing device. The broken specimens were examined with a stereomicroscope and SEM to determine the failure mode. RESULTS: All control and adhesive treated groups of the ceramic substrate showed premature debonding during cutting. The overall mean microTBS for the three resin cements bonded to ceramic following HF+S and HF+S+Adh surface treatment, was 27 and 29.2 MPa and for the resin cements bonded to composite substrate was 42.3 and 54.2 MPa, respectively. The mode of failure was 98% adhesive with composite as a substrate and 68% mixed failures with ceramic as a substrate. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE: CAD/CAM restorations fabricated from processed composite blocks may have advantage over the ceramic blocks with regard to the higher bond strength with resin cements.

Adhesives↗

PubMed2006

Ambulatory methods for recording cough.

Recording cough sounds to objectively quantify coughing was first performed using large reel-to-reel tape recorders more than 40 years ago. Coughs were counted manually, which is an extremely laborious and time-consuming process. Current technologies including digital recording techniques, data compression and improvements in digital storage capacity should make the process of recording and counting coughs suitable for automation; however, to date no accurate, objective cough monitoring device is available. Cough sounds are easily distinguishable from other vocalizations by the human ear and hence it is reasonable to assume that coughs sounds should have characteristic, identifying acoustic properties. However, the acoustic features of spontaneously occurring cough sounds are extremely variable. Furthermore, in even the worst cases of cough, the time spent speaking is an order of magnitude greater than the time spent coughing. It follows that even an algorithm that mistakes only a very small proportion of speech as cough will still have an unacceptable false positive rate. There is a clear need for an objective measure of cough for use in clinical practice, clinical research and trials of novel treatments. In the near future automated ambulatory systems with sufficient accuracy to be of clinical use should be available.

Acoustics↗

PubMed2004

A wireless PDA-based physiological monitoring system for patient transport.

This paper proposes a mobile patient monitoring system, which integrates current personal digital assistant (PDA) technology and wireless local area network (WLAN) technology. At the patient's location, a wireless PDA-based monitor is used to acquire continuously the patient's vital signs, including heart rate, three-lead electrocardiography, and SpO2. Through the WLAN, the patient's biosignals can be transmitted in real-time to a remote central management unit, and authorized medical staffs can access the data and the case history of the patient, either by the central management unit or the wireless devices. A prototype of this system has been developed and implemented. The system has been evaluated by technical verification, clinical test, and user survey. The evaluation of performance yields a high degree of satisfaction (mean = 4.64, standard deviation--SD = 0.53 in a five-point Likert scale) of users who used the PDA-based system for intrahospital transport. The results also show that the wireless PDA model is superior to the currently used monitors both in mobility and in usability, and is, therefore, better suited to patient transport.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Fetal monitor for non-stress-test screening at home.

A fetal monitoring device developed for non-stress-test (NST) screening at home works on battery power, and is so small and lightweight (152 x 120 x 64 mm, 600 g) that a pregnant woman can monitor fetal Doppler ultra-sound and record fetal heart rate (FHR) and uterine contraction (UC) data on an attached memory IC card at any time and in any place away from a hospital. The physician can evaluate these data, transmitted via public telephone lines, using a built-in modem in the monitor. The combination of the memory IC card as a temporary storage device with the intermittent data transmission to the host provides endless data storage. The input-output relationship of the device was quantitatively evaluated using a Doppler ultrasound heart rate simulator. Forty pregnant women participated in an evaluation of this system. The total number of NST data transmissions was 648, and the total amount of data received was more than 6.7 Mbytes. Of the 648 transmissions, 475 were adequate for clinical interpretation. Of the 101 failed NST data transmissions, 85 resulted from patient handling errors. However, 82.4% of these errors resulted in reexamination and transfer of new data by the patients, who were aware of the insufficiency of the original data. The main cause of the noise in the data was zero-count data; this noise rate accounted for 4.1% of the data abnormalities. A questionnaire survey found that 96% of the participants wanted to use the monitor again in their next pregnancies, and 83% would recommend its use to pregnant friends. The system was easily used and accepted by pregnant women, and the NST data obtained were sufficient for clinical interpretation.

Computer Communication Networks↗

PubMed1980

Use of a PET in medical data logging.

As a mass produced device which can be programmed according to application, the microprocessor is an obvious choice of component in hospital instrumentation for a wide range of activities from routine surveillance and process control to individual research projects. Until recently the development of an instrument from the naked processor has often proved to be labour intensive with control over both cost and timescale from design to completion difficult to maintain. Difficulties are frequently experienced in the areas of providing suitable communication channels for both data collection and immediate information for the operator and mass data storage. In our view, the arrival of the PET on the scene, as an example of a microprocessor based package including keyboard, video display, flexible I/0 ports, simple tape recorder and high level programming language has opened up new opportunities for those wishing to use microprocessors without tears. This paper describes how the authors have confirmed this view by successfully using the PET in particular data logging application. Design philosophy is discussed and gives an estimation of the limitations imposed on an approach using PET.

Computers↗

PubMed2006

Recovery of spectral reflectances of objects being imaged without prior knowledge.

Prior knowledge of the noise present in a color image acquisition device is very important in estimating colorimetric values or in recovering the spectral reflectances of pixels of objects being imaged, since these values are greatly influenced by the noise. In this paper, a new model is proposed for the determination of the noise variance of a multispectral color image acquisition system and experimental results to demonstrate its accuracy are presented. It is demonstrated that the noise variance of an actual multispectral color image acquisition system computed by the proposal agrees fairly well with the variance which minimizes the mean-square error of the recovered reflectances by the Wiener filter. As an application of the proposal, it is shown that spectral reflectances of an art painting are recovered accurately by the use of sensor responses without prior knowledge of objects being imaged and noise present in an image acquisition system.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2005

Security architecture for health grid using ambient intelligence.

OBJECTIVES: To propose a novel approach of incorporating ambient intelligence in the health grid security architecture. METHODS: Security concerns are severely impeding the grid community effort in spreading its wings in health applications. In this paper, we have proposed a high level approach to incorporate ambient intelligence for health grid security architecture and have argued that this will significantly improve the current state of the grid security paradigm with an enhanced user-friendly environment. We believe that the time is right to shift the onus of traditional security mechanisms onto the new technologies. The incorporation of ambient intelligence in the security architecture of a grid will not only render a security paradigm robust but also provide an attractive vision for the future of computing by bringing the two worlds together. RESULTS: In this article we propose an evolutionary approach of utilizing smart devices for grid security architecture. We argue that such an infrastructure will impart unique features to the existing grid security paradigms by offering fortified and relentless monitoring. This new security architecture will be comprehensive in nature but will not be cumbersome for the users due to its typical characteristics of not prying into their lives and adapting to their needs. CONCLUSIONS: We have identified a new paradigm of the security architecture for a health grid that will not only render a security mechanism robust but will also provide the high levels of user-friendliness. As our approach is a first contribution to this problem, a number of other issues for future research remain open. However, the prospects are fascinating.

Access to Information↗

PubMed1996

Conversational perspectives in a communication aid for non-vocal people.

A computer-based text storage and retrieval system (TALK) has recently been developed as a conversation aid for non-vocal people. To facilitate the rapid retrieval (and synthesised speech output) of stored content, potential utterances on each conversational topic are organised according to three intersecting perspectives. The perspectives are "person' (me, you), "time' (past, present, future), and "issue' (what, when, where, who, how, why). Although the system has been shown capable of supporting free-flowing conversation with relatively short pauses preceding the user's turns at speech, the perspective organisation is probably less than ideal for some topics. An experiment was conducted to see whether, over a number of conversational topics, storage and retrieval of potential utterances would be faster with the existing, uniform, set of perspectives or with different sets of perspectives tailored to each topic. At the storage stage, the "uniform' set of perspectives facilitated more rapid classification of potential utterances than the "tailored' sets. At the retrieval stage, however, repetition of the classification decisions was more accurate (without being any slower) for the tailored sets of perspectives, suggesting that retrieval of stored utterances during conversation may be faster when the perspective organisation is tailored to topics.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

MobileMed: a PDA-based mobile clinical information system.

Patient clinical data are distributed and often fragmented in heterogeneous systems, and therefore the need for information integration is a key to reliable patient care. Once the patient data are orderly integrated and readily available, the problems in accessing the distributed patient clinical data, the well-known difficulties of adopting a mobile health information system, are resolved. This paper proposes a mobile clinical information system (MobileMed), which integrates the distributed and fragmented patient data across heterogeneous sources and makes them accessible through mobile devices. The system consists of four main components: a smart interface, an HL7 message server (HMS), a central clinical database (CCDB), and a web server. The smart interface and the HMS work in concert to generate HL7 messages from the existing legacy systems, which essentially send the patient data in HL7 messages to the CCDB to be stored and maintained. The CCDB and the web server enable the physicians to access the integrated up-to-date patient data. By proposing the smart interface approach, we provide a means for effortless implementation and deployment of such systems. Through a performance study, we show that the HMS is reliable yet fast enough to be able to support efficient clinical data communication.

Computer Communication Networks↗

PubMed1997

Disasters and the information technology revolution.

This paper, the second in a series of state-of-the art reviews, examines the evolution and possible medium-term future of information technology (IT) in disaster management. Until the end of the 1970s, civilian application of IT to disaster management was confined to a few specialised departments of universities, large companies and government. Between the late 1970s and mid-1980s, microprocessor-based devices brought limited, though rapidly improving, computing capacity to a wider range of organisations and individuals. Operational applications included real-time emergency information, management decision support and programme and project planning. Extensive innovation occurred, though operational implementation was often long delayed or limited in scope. During the late 1980s, desktop systems became more powerful, more networked, more portable and generally more mature, with a range of practical emergency-related tools emerging. Computer communications emerged as a practical technology for linking emergency professionals on a global basis. From the early 1990s onwards, powerful and inter-connectable computer equipment has evolved to become an indispensable component of disaster operations worldwide. There are presently major changes under way in emergency-related global information access and networking--the implications of which have yet to be played out. The last part of the paper highlights a set of key technologies which seems likely to shape disaster planning, management and research over the next 10 years, and draws out some operational and organisational implications.

Computer Communication Networks↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Radiology on handheld devices: image display, manipulation, and PACS integration issues.

Handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs) have undergone continuous and substantial improvements in hardware and graphics capabilities, making them a compelling platform for novel developments in teleradiology. The latest PDAs have processor speeds of up to 400 MHz and storage capacities of up to 80 Gbytes with memory expansion methods. A Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM)-compliant, vendor-independent handheld image access system was developed in which a PDA server acts as the gateway between a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) and PDAs. The system is compatible with most currently available PDA models. It is capable of both wired and wireless transfer of images and includes custom PDA software and World Wide Web interfaces that implement a variety of basic image manipulation functions. Implementation of this system, which is currently undergoing debugging and beta testing, required optimization of the user interface to efficiently display images on smaller PDA screens. The PDA server manages user work lists and implements compression and security features to accelerate transfer speeds, protect patient information, and regulate access. Although some limitations remain, PDA-based teleradiology has the potential to increase the efficiency of the radiologic work flow, increasing productivity and improving communication with referring physicians and patients.

Computer Security↗

PubMed2005

Design and implementation of a smart card based healthcare information system.

Smart cards are used in information technologies as portable integrated devices with data storage and data processing capabilities. As in other fields, smart card use in health systems became popular due to their increased capacity and performance. Their efficient use with easy and fast data access facilities leads to implementation particularly widespread in security systems. In this paper, a smart card based healthcare information system is developed. The system uses smart card for personal identification and transfer of health data and provides data communication via a distributed protocol which is particularly developed for this study. Two smart card software modules are implemented that run on patient and healthcare professional smart cards, respectively. In addition to personal information, general health information about the patient is also loaded to patient smart card. Health care providers use their own smart cards to be authenticated on the system and to access data on patient cards. Encryption keys and digital signature keys stored on smart cards of the system are used for secure and authenticated data communication between clients and database servers over distributed object protocol. System is developed on Java platform by using object oriented architecture and design patterns.

Computer Communication Networks↗

PubMed2005

[Clinical and pharmacological databases for personal digital assistants].

Personal digital assistants (PDAs) are part of the new technologies applied to medicine, which could improve both access to and storage of distinct databases. The present article reviews some general technical features, as well as the utility of these devices for consulting specific pediatric, clinical and pharmacological databases. A search was performed in Medline (1999 to 2004) and of web pages that described the use of PDAs and a total of 46 useful applications were identified, including pediatric diagnostic and treatment guidelines, databases of diagnostic procedures, guidelines for antibiotic therapy in the pediatric and adult populations, databases to establish the diagnosis and treatment of patients in emergency and intensive care medicine, catalogues of general drugs with complete pharmacological data (indications, doses, adverse effects, interactions, toxicology, pregnancy, lactation), specific databases of neonatology, otorhinolaryngology and pediatric surgery, and medical calculator software. Each reference details the contents, source of the reference information, memory requirements, operating system, cost, web page for downloads and whether there is a test version. There is a wide variety of pediatrics software for PDAs. Once the quality of these databases has been assessed, each user should evaluate which application will be most useful depending on his or her needs.

Computers, Handheld↗