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PubMed2005

The current state of telemonitoring: a comment on the literature.

Telemonitoring, is defined as the use of information technology to monitor patients at a distance. This literature review suggests that the most promising applications for telemonitoring is for chronic illnesses such as cardiopulmonary disease, asthma, and heart failure in the home. Fetal heart rate monitoring and infant cardiopulmonary functions have also been monitored at a distance, as well as coagulation, or the level of activity of elderly people, assessed by the intelligent home monitoring devices. Hospitals, clinics, and prisons all have used telemonitoring, as have ambulances equipped with systems connected to the receiving hospital. Telemonitoring allows reduction of chronic disease complications thanks to a better follow-up; provides health care services without using hospital beds; and reduces patient travel, time off from work, and overall costs. Several systems have proven to be cost effective. Telemonitoring is also a way of responding to the new needs of home care in an ageing population. Real-time monitoring of patients in ambulances reduces the time to initiate treatment and allows the emergency crew to be better prepared. The obstacles to telemonitoring development include the initial costs of systems, physician licensing, and reimbursement. In the future, virtual reality, immersive environments, haptic feedback and nanotechnology promise new ways in improving the capabilities of telemonitoring.

Aged↗

PubMed2001

Parallel computation of a maximum-likelihood estimator of a physical map.

Reconstructing a physical map of a chromosome from a genomic library presents a central computational problem in genetics. Physical map reconstruction in the presence of errors is a problem of high computational complexity that provides the motivation for parallel computing. Parallelization strategies for a maximum-likelihood estimation-based approach to physical map reconstruction are presented. The estimation procedure entails a gradient descent search for determining the optimal spacings between probes for a given probe ordering. The optimal probe ordering is determined using a stochastic optimization algorithm such as simulated annealing or microcanonical annealing. A two-level parallelization strategy is proposed wherein the gradient descent search is parallelized at the lower level and the stochastic optimization algorithm is simultaneously parallelized at the higher level. Implementation and experimental results on a distributed-memory multiprocessor cluster running the parallel virtual machine (PVM) environment are presented using simulated and real hybridization data.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2002

Systematic sequencing of cDNA clones using the transposon Tn5.

In parallel with the production of genomic sequence data, attention is being focused on the generation of comprehensive cDNA-sequence resources. Such efforts are increasingly emphasizing the production of high-accuracy sequence corresponding to the entire insert of cDNA clones, especially those presumed to reflect the full-length mRNA. The complete sequencing of cDNA clones on a large scale presents unique challenges because of the generally small, yet heterogeneous, sizes of the cloned inserts. We have developed a strategy for high-throughput sequencing of cDNA clones using the transposon Tn5. This approach has been tailored for implementation within an existing large-scale 'shotgun-style' sequencing program, although it could be readily adapted for use in virtually any sequencing environment. In addition, we have developed a modified version of our strategy that can be applied to cDNA clones with large cloning vectors, thereby overcoming a potential limitation of transposon-based approaches. Here we describe the details of our cDNA-sequencing pipeline, including a summary of the experience in sequencing more than 4200 cDNA clones to produce more than 8 million base pairs of high-accuracy cDNA sequence. These data provide both convincing evidence that the insertion of Tn5 into cDNA clones is sufficiently random for its effective use in large-scale cDNA sequencing as well as interesting insight about the sequence context preferred for insertion by Tn5.

Base Composition↗

PubMed2001

Seeing mountains in mole hills: geographical-slant perception.

When observers face directly toward the incline of a hill, their awareness of the slant of the hill is greatly overestimated, but motoric estimates are much more accurate. The present study examined whether similar results would be found when observers were allowed to view the side of a hill. Observers viewed the cross-sections of hills in real (Experiment 1) and virtual (Experiment 2) environments and estimated the inclines with verbal estimates, by adjusting the cross-section of a disk, and by adjusting a board with their unseen hand to match the inclines. We found that the results for cross-section viewing replicated those found when observers directly face the incline. Even though the angles of hills are directly evident when viewed from the side, slant perceptions are still grossly overestimated.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Photogrammetric and image processing aspects in quantitative flow visualization.

The development of a measurement system for the visualization, topological classification, and quantitative analysis of complex flows in large-scale wind tunnel experiments is described. A new approach was sought in which the topological features of the flow (e.g., stream lines, separation and reattachment regions, stagnation points, and vortex lines) were extracted directly and preferably visualized in real-time in a virtual wind tunnel environment. The system was based on a stereo arrangement of two CCD cameras. A frame rate of 120 fps allowed measurements at high flow velocities. The paper focuses on the problem of fast and accurate reconstruction of path lines of helium filled soap bubbles in three dimensions (3D). A series of simple algorithmic steps was employed to ensure fast data processing. These included fast image segmentation, a spline approximation of the path lines, a camera model, point correspondence building, calculation of path line points in 3D and creation of a three-dimensional spline representation. The path lines, which contained both velocity and topological information, were analyzed to extract the relevant information.

Algorithms↗

PubMed1993

Digital neural networks for high-speed divisions and root extractions.

The instruction set of digital integer-valued VLSIs implementing neural networks is typically restricted to weighted sums, threshold activation functions and weight assignments. However, neural networks also need divisions (for data normalizations) and root extractions (for distance or vector norm computations). This paper presents neural networks which perform the latter operations by using only the above basic instructions. These networks thus provide "macros" to the overall network which calls them. This yields a homogeneous environment. Moreover, a "virtual base" is introduced to exploit the available parallelism. It is freely chosen so as to achieve the desired trade-off between the speed and complexity of the proposed networks (with a minimum of only two neurons). This high-speed capability also makes these structures attractive independently from neural applications.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2001

Modeling of transcellular Ca transport in rat duodenum points to coexistence of two mechanisms of apical entry.

Employing realistic parameters, we have demonstrated that a relatively simple mathematical model can reproduce key features of steady-state Ca2+ transport with the assumption of two mechanisms of Ca2+ entry: a channel-like flux and a carrier-mediated transport. At low luminal [Ca2+] (1-5 mM), facilitated entry dominates and saturates with Km = 0.4 mM. At luminal [Ca2+] of tens of millimolar, apical permeability is dominated by the channel flux that in turn is regulated by cytosolic Ca2+. The model reproduces the linear relationship between maximum Ca2+ transport rate and intestinal calbindin D9K (CaBP) content. At luminal [Ca2+] > 50 mM, local sensitivity analysis shows transcellular transport to be most sensitive to variations in CaBP. At low luminal [Ca2+], transport becomes sensitive to apical entry regulation. The simulations have been run within the Virtual Cell modeling environment, yielding the time course of external Ca2+ and spatiotemporal distributions of both intracellular Ca2+ and CaBP. Coexistence of two apical entry mechanisms accords with the properties of the duodenal Ca2+ transport protein CaT1 and the epithelial Ca2+ channel ECaC.

Animals↗

PubMedDate not supplied

A new method to test the effectiveness of sunscreen ingredients in a novel nano-surface skin cell mimic.

Photophysical properties of sunscreens are commonly studied in solvent media, which do not mimic the skin, or in complex artificial skin systems, which are difficult to handle. In an earlier study, we showed that polystyrene nanosphere suspensions mimic the mixed polarity environment of skin cell systems. This paper presents a new method to quantify the effectiveness of sunscreens in the polystyrene nanosphere environment. This method utilizes the intrinsic UV-B fluorescence of polystyrene nanospheres. We studied three UV-B sunscreens by this new method and compared their extinction coefficients with observed values in solvent. The values follow the trend observed in solvents, but the ratio of their extinction coefficient in solvent to the value obtained by this new method is 1.3-1.8 instead of 1. This difference might be caused by the mixed polarity or the microgeometry of the nanosphere system. Regardless of the difference in the extinction coefficients, this new system can be used to test hundreds of chemicals for their sunscreening potential in a cost-effective way. One marked advantage of this new method is its ability to test both hydrophobic and hydrophilic sunscreening chemicals in the same environment. This is virtually impossible for current solvent-based models, which require different solvents for hydrophobic and hydrophilic chemicals. The new method also allows the simultaneous evaluation of a host of photophysical properties of sunscreening chemicals.

Humans↗

PubMed2001

Autocolorization of three-dimensional radiological data.

It requires skill, effort, and time to visualize desired anatomic structures from radiological data in three-dimensions. There have been many attempts at automating this process and making it less labor intensive. The technique we have developed is based on mutual information for automatic multi-modality image fusion (MIAMI Fuse, University of Michigan). The initial development of our technique has focused on the autocolorization of the liver, portal vein, and hepatic vein. A standard dataset in which these structures had been segmented and assigned colors was created from the full color Visible Human Female (VHF) and then optimally fused to the fresh CT Visible Human Female. This semi-automatic segmentation and coloring of the CT dataset was subjectively evaluated to be reasonably accurate. The transformation could be viewed interactively on the ImmersaDesk, in an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environment. This 3D segmentation and visualization method marks the first step to a broader, standardized automatic structure visualization method for radiological data. Such a method, would permit segmentation of radiological data by canonical structure information and not just from the data's intrinsic dynamic range.

Anatomy, Cross-Sectional↗

PubMed2002

Visualization of conserved structures by fusing highly variable datasets.

INTRODUCTION: Skill, effort, and time are required to identify and visualize anatomic structures in three-dimensions from radiological data. Fundamentally, automating these processes requires a technique that uses symbolic information not in the dynamic range of the voxel data. We were developing such a technique based on mutual information for automatic multi-modality image fusion (MIAMI Fuse, University of Michigan). This system previously demonstrated facility at fusing one voxel dataset with integrated symbolic structure information to a CT dataset (different scale and resolution) from the same person. The next step of development of our technique was aimed at accommodating the variability of anatomy from patient to patient by using warping to fuse our standard dataset to arbitrary patient CT datasets. METHODS: A standard symbolic information dataset was created from the full color Visible Human Female by segmenting the liver parenchyma, portal veins, and hepatic veins and overwriting each set of voxels with a fixed color. Two arbitrarily selected patient CT scans of the abdomen were used for reference datasets. We used the warping functions in MIAMI Fuse to align the standard structure data to each patient scan. The key to successful fusion was the focused use of multiple warping control points that place themselves around the structure of interest automatically. The user assigns only a few initial control points to align the scans. Fusion 1 and 2 transformed the atlas with 27 points around the liver to CT1 and CT2 respectively. Fusion 3 transformed the atlas with 45 control points around the liver to CT1 and Fusion 4 transformed the atlas with 5 control points around the portal vein. The CT dataset is augmented with the transformed standard structure dataset, such that the warped structure masks are visualized in combination with the original patient dataset. This combined volume visualization is then rendered interactively in stereo on the ImmersaDesk in an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) environment. RESULTS: The accuracy of the fusions was determined qualitatively by comparing the transformed atlas overlaid on the appropriate CT. It was examined for where the transformed structure atlas was incorrectly overlaid (false positive) and where it was incorrectly not overlaid (false negative). According to this method, fusions 1 and 2 were correct roughly 50-75% of the time, while fusions 3 and 4 were correct roughly 75-100%. The CT dataset augmented with transformed dataset was viewed arbitrarily in user-centered perspective stereo taking advantage of features such as scaling, windowing and volumetric region of interest selection. CONCLUSIONS: This process of auto-coloring conserved structures in variable datasets is a step toward the goal of a broader, standardized automatic structure visualization method for radiological data. If successful it would permit identification, visualization or deletion of structures in radiological data by semi-automatically applying canonical structure information to the radiological data (not just processing and visualization of the data's intrinsic dynamic range). More sophisticated selection of control points and patterns of warping may allow for more accurate transforms, and thus advances in visualization, simulation, education, diagnostics, and treatment planning.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2005

Adaptive soft tissue deformation for a virtual reality surgical trainer.

Real time tissue deformation is an important aspect of interactive virtual reality (VR) environments such as medical trainers. Most approaches in deformable modelling use a fixed space discretization. A surgical trainer requires high plausibility of the deformations especially in the area close to the instrument. As the area of intervention is not known a priori, adaptive techniques have to be applied. We present an approach for real time deformation of soft tissue based on a regular FEM mesh of cube elements as opposed to a mesh of tetrahedral elements used by the majority of soft tissue simulators. A regular mesh structure simplifies the local refinement operation as the elements topology and stiffness are known implicitly. We propose an octree-based adaptive multiresolution extension of our basic approach. The volumetric representation of the deformed object is created automatically from medical images or by voxelization of a surface model. The resolution of the volumetric representation is independent of the surface geometry resolution. The surface is deformed according to the simulation performed on the underlying volumetric mesh.

Computer Simulation↗

PubMed1987

Processing and presentation of insulin. I. Analysis of immunogenic peptides and processing requirements for insulin A loop-specific T cells.

The processing and presentation of insulin by B hybridoma cells to insulin A loop-specific T cell hybridomas was investigated. We found that the activation of these T cells requires insulin to be processed in a manner that permits unfolding of the molecule and prevents extensive proteolysis. An analysis of insulin peptides formed by either enzymatic digestion in vitro or solid phase synthesis revealed that a conformational determinant comprised of residues A1-A14 disulfide-linked to B7-B15 is most immunogenic to these T cells. Reduction and/or proteolysis of this peptide markedly decreases its immunogenicity. The pork insulin A1-A14/B7-B15 peptide differs only at residue A4 from its mouse insulin homolog. Thus, Glu A4 forms part of the antigenic site recognized by a pork insulin/I-Ad-specific mouse T cell. This insulin peptide can be induced to assume an alpha-helical configuration in a hydrophobic environment. In addition, virtually all of the residues of this peptide are identical with those predicted to be situated in amphipathic regions of the native insulin molecule. N-Ethylmaleimide and bacitracin, which inhibit the activity of two cytosolic enzymes that cleave insulin, enhance the antigen presentation of insulin. This suggests that these enzymes may participate in the nonlysosomal antigen processing of insulin by a B lymphocyte. A comparison of the relative avidity of several T cell hybridomas, which have the same apparent specificity for this insulin peptide, showed that an increase in their avidity was associated with a degeneracy in their fine specificity. Our data demonstrate that the efficiency of processing and presentation of a given antigenic determinant is related to the conformation of the determinant and the specificity and avidity of the T cell.

Animals↗

PubMed1989

The mast cell-committed progenitor. I. Description of a cell capable of IL-3-independent proliferation and differentiation without contact with fibroblasts.

We have identified a late, committed stage in the differentiation of the mast cell progenitor just before granulation. Mast cell committed progenitors (MCCP) are nongranulated cells with a density of 1.060 to 1.070 g/ml which can be harvested from the mesenteric lymph node of mice infected with Nippostrongylus brasiliensis. Mast cell-committed progenitors are able to proliferate and differentiate in the absence of IL-3 or IL-4 when cultured on a monolayer of embryonic skin or 3T3 fibroblasts and can form colonies in methylcellulose supplemented with fibroblast conditioned medium. Fibroblast conditioned medium appears to contain a soluble MCCP proliferation factor that maintains biologic activity when heated to 56 degrees C for 45 min but is destroyed by incubation with either trypsin or chymotrypsin. It can be selectively precipitated with 60 to 70% saturated ammonium sulfate. The factor is not absorbed by immobilized antibodies to nerve growth factor. The MCCP proliferation activity of the factor could not be mimicked by IL-1, IL-2, IL-4, granulocyte-macrophage-CSF, granulocyte-CSF, macrophage-CSF, IFN-alpha/beta, IFN-gamma, nerve growth factor, epidermal growth factor, serum fibronectin, heparin, or a number of glycosaminoglycans. At high salt concentrations, the factor passes through a 50-kDa membrane and can be concentrated above a 5-kDa membrane. MCCP acquire a connective tissue phenotype when cultured on a fibroblast monolayer and a mucosal phenotype when cloned in the presence of conditioned medium from PWM-stimulated spleen cells. When cultured in the absence of IL-3 on a monolayer of embryonic skin or 3T3 fibroblasts, mast cell-committed progenitors produce mast cells which stain with berberine sulfate suggesting a connective tissue phenotype; however, the mast cells that develop when mast cell-committed progenitors are cultured in the presence of IL-3 or conditioned media from PWM-stimulated spleen cells do not stain with berberine sulfate. MCCP intercalate into monolayers of embryonic skin or 3T3 fibroblasts, but T cells are not able to associate with the monolayer and can be completely washed away. Attempts to enrich mast cell-committed progenitors by intercalation and elution from embryonic skin monolayers proved unsuccessful, but some enrichment of mast cell-committed progenitors could be achieved by discontinuous Percoll gradients. Thus, we have identified a way to obtain late-stage, mast cell-committed progenitors in an environment that is virtually uncontaminated with other hematopoietic progenitors.

Animals↗

PubMed1997

[Prevalence of Aeromonas spp. in surface water].

Some Aeromonas strains are well recognized enteropathogens according to microbiological, clinical, immunological and epidemiological evidence. The main source of infection seems to be untreated water, these microorganisms can be found in virtually all aquatic environments. Additionally, some Aeromonas, which include enterotoxigenic strains, are capable of rapid growth at 5 degrees C and even of producing toxins. Vegetable products irrigated with contaminated water may reach critical Aeromonas levels after being kept under refrigeration, this could represent a public health risk when they are consumed as uncooked salads. This study was pursued to evaluate such risk. Surface water samples were streaked on starch ampicillin and inositol-brilliant green-bile salts agar dishes. In addition, 100 ml of each sample were filtered through a 0.45 micron Millipore membrane filter. The filters were incubated on alkaline peptone water as enrichment media during 24 h at 35 degrees C. Enrichment broth was then streaked on the selective agars above mentioned. Isolates from both tests were identified using the API 20 E System. The prevalence of Aeromonas strains in the analyzed samples was 17.8%. A higher isolation rate was observed after the enrichment technique. Starch ampicillin agar showed a higher recuperation rate. A Veronii biotype sobria (formerly A. sobria) was isolated with higher frequency. Since this species has been associated with the greatest virulence, the use of contaminated water to irrigate vegetable products that are to be kept under refrigeration and consumed without ulterior cooking may represent a risk to the public health.

Aeromonas↗

PubMed2001

Changes in bodily awareness induced by immersive virtual reality.

The recent proliferation of virtual reality technology has attracted the interest of social scientists who study human behavior and perceptual experience. Such computer simulations are able to present technologically rendered environments, where the properties of the physical world are approximated or manipulated to varying degrees. The present study sought to investigate the influence of an immersive virtual experience on the perceptual awareness of the body. A body awareness questionnaire was administered to users of a desktop and an immersive implementation of a virtual environment (the Cityscape). The results indicated a significant main effect for the mode of presentation (i.e., desktop or immersive), no gender effects, and no interaction effect between gender and the mode of presentation. Test of between-subjects effects for the mode of presentation found significant differences on a number of body awareness dimensions. The desktop group were found to experience higher levels of skin, muscular, and cardiovascular awareness, while the immersive group experienced higher levels of body boundary ambiguity and aural awareness.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

The influence of virtual reality play on children's motivation.

PURPOSE: This study explored the degree of motivation children exhibit during virtual reality (VR) play sessions. METHOD: Sixteen children with cerebral palsy aged 8 to 12 years participated. They were observed during a variety of VR environments that were video recorded. The Pediatric Volitional Questionnaire (PVQ) was used to measure children's motivation. The PVQ provides insights into children's inner motives as well as how the virtual environment enhances or attenuates children's motives. Nine VR environments were randomly selected to score with the PVQ. RESULTS: Data were analyzed and descriptive statistics were calculated for modes and medians of total volition scores for each VR environment. Different environments produced varying levels of volitional behaviour. The features of environments that produced higher levels of volition included challenge, variability and competition. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: The overall volitional scores of children with cerebral palsy in the current study indicate that VR play is a motivating activity and thus has potential as a successful intervention tool.

Cerebral Palsy↗

PubMed2002

Discriminative ability with respect to amino acid types: assessing the performance of knowledge-based potentials without threading.

We present a novel method designed to analyze the discriminative ability of knowledge-based potentials with respect to the 20 residue types. The method is based on the preference of amino acids for specific types of protein environment, and uses a virtual mutagenesis experiment to estimate how much information a given potential can provide about environments of each amino acid type. This allows one to test and optimize the performance of real potentials at the level of individual amino acids, using actual data on residue environments from a dataset of known protein structures. We have applied our method to long-range and medium-range pairwise distance-dependent potentials. The results of our study indicate that these potentials are only able to discriminate between a very limited number of residue types, and that discriminative ability is extremely sensitive to the choice of parameters used to construct the potentials, and even to the size of the training dataset. We also show that different types of pairwise distance potentials are dominated by different types of interactions. These dominant interactions strongly depend on the type of approximation used to define residue position. For each potential, our methodology is able to identify a potential-specific amino acid distance matrix and a reduced amino acid alphabet of any specified size, which may have implications for sequence alignment and multibody models.

Amino Acid Substitution↗

PubMed2003

Virtuality in human supervisory control: assessing the effects of psychological and social remoteness.

Virtuality would seem to offer certain advantages for human supervisory control. First, it could provide a physical analogue of the 'real world' environment. Second, it does not require control room engineers to be in the same place as each other. In order to investigate these issues, a low-fidelity simulation of an energy distribution network was developed. The main aims of the research were to assess some of the psychological concerns associated with virtual environments. First, it may result in the social isolation of the people, and it may have dramatic effects upon the nature of the work. Second, a direct physical correspondence with the 'real world' may not best support human supervisory control activities. Experimental teams were asked to control an energy distribution network. Measures of team performance, group identity and core job characteristics were taken. In general terms, the results showed that teams working in the same location performed better than teams who were remote from one another.

Adult↗