Technology and Health Care - Volume 24, issue 2

Authors: Domingues, Ana | Barbosa, Filipa | Pereira, Eduardo M. | Santos, Márcio Borgonovo | Seixas, Adérito | Vilas-Boas, João | Gabriel, Joaquim | Vardasca, Ricardo

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Anthropometry has been widely used in different fields, providing relevant information for medicine, ergonomics and biometric applications. However, the existent solutions present marked disadvantages, reducing the employment of this type of evaluation. Studies have been conducted in order to easily determine anthropometric measures considering data provided by low-cost sensors, such as the Microsoft Kinect. In this work, a methodology is proposed and implemented for estimating anthropometric measures considering the information acquired with this sensor. The measures obtained with this method were compared with the ones from a validation system, Qualisys. Comparing the relative errors determined with state-of-art references, for some …of the estimated measures, lower errors were verified and a more complete characterization of the whole body structure was achieved. Show more

Keywords: Anthropometric measures, Kinect, Qualisys

DOI: 10.3233/THC-151116

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 251-265, 2016

Authors: Oyedotun, Oyebade K. | Olaniyi, Ebenezer O. | Khashman, Adnan

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Artificial neural networks have found applications in various areas of medical diagnosis. The capability of neural networks to learn medical data, mining useful and complex relationships that exist between attributes has earned it a major domain in decision support systems. This paper proposes a fast automatic system for the diagnosis of disk hernia and spondylolisthesis using biomechanical features and neural network. Such systems as described within this work allow the diagnosis of new cases using trained neural networks; patients are classified as either having disk hernia, spondylolisthesis, or normal. Generally, both disk hernia and spondylolisthesis present similar symptoms; hence, diagnosis …is prone to inter-misclassification error. This work is significant in that the proposed systems are capable of making fast decisions on such somewhat difficult diagnoses with reasonable accuracies. Feedforward neural network and radial basis function networks are trained on data obtained from a public database. The results obtained within this research are promising and show that neural networks can find applications as efficient and effective expert systems for the diagnosis of disk hernia and spondylolisthesis. Show more

Keywords: Disk hernia, spondylolisthesis, biomechanical features, diagnosis, neural network

DOI: 10.3233/THC-151126

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 267-279, 2016

Authors: Qi, Bao-Chang | Zhao, Yi | Wang, Cheng-Xue | Wang, Tie-Jun | Zhang, Ji-Ting | Ju, Wei-Na | Sun, Da-Hui

Article Type: Case Report

Abstract: Posterior hip dislocation with concomitant femoral fracture is very rare. Here, we report a rare case of a 43-year-old man who was injured in a car accident. The patient sustained right posterior hip dislocation with concomitant right acetabular transverse and posterior wall fracture, ipsilateral femoral shaft fracture, and contralateral proximal femoral fracture (AO type 31-A3). Closed reduction of the hip was attempted, but failed. The acetabular fracture and posterior hip dislocation were reduced and acetabular fracture was fixed using plates through the Kocher-Langenbeck approach. The ipsilateral femoral fracture was treated with closed reduction and intramedullary nailing. The contralateral femoral fracture …was treated with closed reduction and Gamma 3 nailing. Postoperative X-rays revealed reduction of the fractures. The patient achieved bone union and recovered function of the hip 4 months after surgery. Show more

Keywords: Hip dislocation, femoral fractures, acetabulum, multiple trauma

DOI: 10.3233/THC1111

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 281-286, 2016

Authors: Samsudin, Wan Syahirah W. | Sundaraj, Kenneth | Ahmad, Amirozi | Salleh, Hasriah

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: An initial assessment method that can classify as well as categorize the severity of paralysis into one of six levels according to the House-Brackmann (HB) system based on facial landmarks motion using an Optical Flow (OF) algorithm is proposed. The desired landmarks were obtained from the video recordings of 5 normal and 3 Bell's Palsy subjects and tracked using the Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi (KLT) method. A new scoring system based on the motion analysis using area measurement is proposed. This scoring system uses the individual scores from the facial exercises and grades the paralysis based on the HB system. The proposed method …has obtained promising results and may play a pivotal role towards improved rehabilitation programs for patients. Show more

Keywords: Bell's palsy, facial nerve paralysis, motion analysis, optical flow, Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi method, House-Brackmann System

DOI: 10.3233/THC-151103

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 287-294, 2016