Technology and Health Care - Volume 26, issue S1

Authors: Zhang, Yongxin | Liu, Xiyu | Zhao, Kun | Li, Lin | Ding, Yanhui

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) has been considered to have a high risk in converting into Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Previous studies showed that AD was associated with changes in resting-state networks (RSNs). However, few studies have evaluated the altered functional connectivity in early mild cognitive impairment (EMCI) and late mild cognitive impairment (LMCI). OBJECTIVE: The aim of this work was to evaluate the impaired network functional connectivity with the disease progression. METHODS: In this paper, we evaluated the impaired function connectivity with the progression of disease based on a priori defined 246 regions …of interest based on Brainnetome Atlas. Connectivity analysis based on three levels (node integrity, intra-network, and inter-network) was conducted. RESULTS: Altered function connectivity was detected in several RSNs. These results provided insights into the dysfunction of more RSNs accompany the progression of AD. We also found that one brain region may belong to multiple RSNs and contribute to achieving different network function. CONCLUSIONS: The aberrant intra- and inter-network dysfunctions might be potential biomarkers or predictors of MCI and AD progression and provide new insight into the pathophysiology of these diseases. Show more

Keywords: Altered functional connectivity, early mild cognitive impairment, late mild cognitive impairment, functional connectivity

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174235

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 103-111, 2018

Authors: Jiang, Xinge | Wei, Shoushui | Zheng, Dingchang | Huang, Peng | Liu, Chengyu

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Changes of pulse transit time (PTT) induced by arm position were studied for unilateral arm. However, consistency of the PTT changes was not validated for both arm sides. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to quantify the PTT changes between horizontal and non-horizontal positions from right arm and left arm in order to explore the consistency of both arms. METHODS: Twenty-four normal subjects aged between 21 and 50 (14 male and 10 female) years were enrolled. Left and right radial artery pulses were synchronously recorded from 24 healthy subjects with one arm (left or right) …at five angles (90 ∘ , 45 ∘ , 0 ∘ , - 45 ∘ and - 90 ∘ ) and the other arm at the horizontal level (0 ∘ ) for reference. RESULTS: The overall mean PTT changes at the five angles (from 90 ∘ to - 90 ∘ ) in the left arm (right as reference) were 16.1, 12.3, - 0.5, - 2.5 and - 2.6 ms, respectively, and in the right arm (left as reference) were 18.0, 12.6, 1.6, - 1.6 and - 2.0 ms, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: Obvious differences were not found in the PTT changes between the two arms (left arm moving or right arm moving) under each of the five different positions (all P > 0.05). Show more

Keywords: Peripheral arterial volume compliance, pulse transit time (PTT), arm PTT, artery pulse

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174256

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 113-119, 2018

Authors: Hua, Lin | Xia, Hong | Xu, Wenbin | Zheng, Weiying | Zhou, Ping

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a complex disorder with a high mortality. The pathophysiology of COPD has not been characterized till date. OBJECTIVE: To identify COPD-related biomarkers by a bioinformatics analysis. METHODS: Here, we conducted the canonical correlation analysis to extract the potential COPD-related miRNAs and mRNAs based on the miRNA-mRNA dual expression profiling data. After identifying miRNAs and mRNAs related to COPD, we constructed an interaction network by integrating three validated miRNA-target sources. Then we expanded the network by adding miRNA-mRNA pairs, which were identified by Spearman rank correlation test. For miRNAs …involved in the network, we further performed the Gene Ontology (GO) functional enrichment analysis of their targets. To validate COPD-related mRNAs involved in the network, we performed receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification on only those mRNAs that overlapped with COPD-related mRNAs of Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) database. RESULTS: The results indicate that some identified miRNAs and their targets in the constructed network might be potential biomarkers of COPD. CONCLUSIONS: Our study helps us to predict the potential risk biomarkers of COPD, and it can certainly help in further elucidating the genetic etiology of COPD. Show more

Keywords: Correlation, miRNA, gene expression, network

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174257

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 121-134, 2018

Authors: Wang, Hong | Liu, Weichao | Fang, Xiang | Wang, Haichen | Ma, Wenjiang | Dong, Huajiang | Yin, Huijuan | Li, Ying-Xin | Sha, Hong

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Laser therapy is reported to be clinically effective for improving microcirculation, rheological properties and blood lipid profiles despite the lack of certainty on the mechanism. OBJECTIVE: This study intends to provide methods to drop blood lipid level of hyperlipidemia samples by low-intensity laser irradiation therapy and provide reasoning of mechanism. METHODS: Twenty whole blood samples of high level of lipids profile are irradiated by 405 nm low-intensity laser at 12 J/cm 2 twice a day for 3 days and compared with normal lipids profile group. Then whole blood sample …are centrifuged to obtain result of erythrocyte for further interpretation. Multi-scan spectrum microplate reader is used to measure absorption spectrum and data is analyzed by software SPSS 14.0. RESULTS: Results show that after 405 nm low-intensity laser irradiation, whole blood samples of high lipid level statistically have higher absorbance peak value than normal samples while erythrocyte samples have lower absorbance peak value. CONCLUSIONS: From the divergence of absorption peak value change after low-intensity laser irradiation for whole blood sample and erythrocyte, we suspect that low level laser irradiation affects the enzymes activity of lipid metabolism, improves the cholesterol balance of plasma and cytoplasm in erythrocyte, and decreases aggregation of the erythrocyte. Show more

Keywords: Low-intensity laser irradiation; absorption spectrometry; lipid profile; erythrocyte membrane

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174302

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 135-143, 2018

Authors: Yoon, Hyun S. | Cha, Young J. | Sohn, Min K. | You, Joshua (Sung) H.

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Gait performance of stroke patients is affected by impaired sensory ability. The purpose of the present study was to determine the relationship between somatosensory-evoked potential (SSEP) parameters and gait performance in hemiparetic stroke patients. METHODS: A convenience sample of 17 hemiparetic stroke patients (mean age 60.11 ± 8.83 years; 10 women; right hemiplegia: 10, left hemiplegia: 7) were recruited for the present study. The Electro Synergy system (Viasys Healthcare; San Diego, CA, USA) was used for SSEP evaluation. The 17 patients were assigned to two groups according to their SSEP results as follows: …8 patients to the normal response group and 9 patients to the abnormal group. All the participants underwent the same rehabilitation exercise programs during 4 weeks, followed by clinical evaluation. A mixed-design analysis of a variance model was used to test for differences in timed up-and-go (TUG) test and 10-meter walking test (10MWT) scores between the two independent groups while the participants were subjected to repeated measures (pretest and posttest). RESULTS: Analysis of variance revealed the main time effect (p < 0.05) and group by time interaction effect (p < 0.05). The post hoc test result confirmed that the normal sensory group showed greater improvement in TUG test and 10MWT scores than the abnormal sensory group (p < 0.05). The TUG test and 10MWT scores in the posttest were greater in the normal sensory group than in the abnormal sensory group. CONCLUSIONS: The present study demonstrated the importance of the clinical contribution of the baseline sensory function of individuals with hemiparetic stroke to their gait performance and recovery after stroke rehabilitation. As anticipated, the individuals who had intact or spared sensory function showed greater improvements in gait speed and performance measures than those who had impaired sensory function. Show more

Keywords: Stroke, somatosensory-evoked potential, balance, gait

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174432

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 145-150, 2018

Authors: Li, Hua | Chen, Chuanbo | Zhao, Shengrong | Lyu, Zehua

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Disease leaf segmentation in color image is used to explore the disease shape and lesion regions. It is of great significance for pathological diagnosis and pathological research. OBJECTIVE: This paper proposes a superpixel algorithm using Non-symmetry and Anti-packing Model with Squares (NAMS) for color image segmentation of leaf disease. METHODS: First of all, the NAMS model is presented for color leaf disease image representation. The model can segment images asymmetrically and preserve the characteristics of image context. Second, NAMS based superpixel (NAMS superpixel) algorithm is proposed for clustering pixels, which can represent large …homogeneous areas by super squares. By this way, the impact of complex background and the data redundancy in image segmentation can be reduced. RESULTS: Experimental results indicate that compared with segmenting the original image directly and manipulating by Simple Linear Iterative Clustering (SLIC) superpixel, the proposed NAMS superpixel performs more excellently in not only saving storage but also adhering to the lesion region edge. CONCLUSIONS: The outcome of NAMS superpixel can be regarded as a preprocess procedure for leaf disease region detection since the method can segment the image into superpixel blocks and preserve the lesion area. Show more

Keywords: Disease leaf segmentation, pathological diagnosis, pathological research, non-symmetry and anti-packing model, NAMS superpixel

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174525

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 151-156, 2018

Authors: Sun, Jian | Zhuang, Wei | Li, Gen | Jin, Gui | Xu, Jia | Ma, Ke | Wang, Feng | Feng, Hua

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Pulse wave monitoring is widely used to evaluate the physiological and pathological states of the cardiovascular system. OBJECTIVE: High-sensitivity ring sensors were designed, and a simultaneous acquisition platform based on National Instruments T-Clock technology (NI-TCLK) was used to achieve simultaneous pulse detection using both the traditional method and the magnetic induction phase shift (MIPS) method. METHODS: The excitation signal had a frequency of approximately 10.7 MHz and power of about 20 dBm. A total of 30 volunteers (adults, aged 20–30 y) were selected to corroborate the feasibility of our measurement system. The subjects wore …the proposed sensor on their right-hand forefingers and for reference, the piezoelectric pulse sensor on the left-hand forefinger. The pulse waves of these 30 subjects were measured over 2 min each. RESULTS: The phase shift of the magnetic induction detection signal ranged from 0.6–0.8 degrees. Comparison of detection results for the same subject between the two methods showed that the pulse rate measured by magnetic induction exhibited fewer deviations and better stability than the traditional method. In addition, spectral analysis indicated that the pulse frequencies obtained using the 2 methods were concentrated between 1–3 Hz and were regular in the 1.5 Hz frequency region. CONCLUSIONS: These results prove that the magnetic induction pulse wave can be used to accurately measure pulse wave features. Show more

Keywords: Magnetic induction phase shift, pulse wave, ring coil, synchronous measurement

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174526

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 157-167, 2018

Authors: Lin, Jirui | Xiao, Laiyuan | Wu, Tao

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Video-based face recognition has attracted much attention owning to its wide range of applications such as video surveillance. There are various approaches for facial feature extraction. Feature vectors extracted by these approaches tend to have large dimension and may include redundant information for face representation, which limits the application of methods with high accuracy such as machine learning. OBJECTIVE: Facial landmarks represent the intrinsic characteristics of human face, which can be utilized to decrease redundant information and reduce the computation complexity. But feature points extracted in each frame of a video are irregular which needed to be …aligned. METHODS: This paper presents a novel method which is based on facial landmarks and machine learning. We proposed a method to align the feature data into a common co-ordinate frame, and use a robust AdaBoost algorithm for classification. RESULTS: Experiments on the public Honda/UCSD database demonstrate the superior performance of our method to several state-of-the-art approaches. Experiments on Yale database show the sensitivity and specificity of the proposed method. CONCLUSION: The proposed methods can improve the image-set based recognition performance. Show more

Keywords: Face recognition, facial landmarks, data align

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174534

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 169-178, 2018

Authors: Wang, Xiaoru | Gao, Hongjian | Wu, Shuicai | Bai, Yanping | Zhou, Zhuhuang

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: OBJECTIVE: The aim of the research is to obtain the relative influences of some critical electro-thermal parameters on the ablation temperature and lesion volume during temperature-controlled radiofrequency ablation (RFA) of liver tumor by parameter sensitivity analysis. METHODS: The finite element method (FEM) has been used to establish the simulation model of RFA temperature field, and the sensitivity of the tissue parameters has been analyzed. The effects of six parameters have been taken into account, including the thermal specific capacity (Cp ), the thermal conductivity (k ), the electrical conductivity (Sigma ), the density (rho ), …the dielectric constant (Epsilon ) and the resistance (R ). The simulation processes based on different parameter values have been accomplished with Comsol Multiphysics software, and the sensitivity parameters have been obtained utilizing the variance contribution rate (SS% ) or the main effects. RESULTS: It was found that the ablation temperature and lesion volume increased with increasing the values of R and Sigma , but was a reverse situation for Cp and rho . Besides, the influence of k on ablation volume was relatively small and Epsilon had a negligible effect on ablation temperature. CONCLUSIONS: It is concluded that these parameter sensitivity results can provide scientific and reliable reference for the specificity analysis of the RF ablation models. Show more

Keywords: Radiofrequency ablation, temperature field simulation, sensitivity analysis

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174542

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 179-192, 2018

Authors: Lei, Haijun | Zhao, Yujia | Wen, Yuting | Luo, Qiuming | Cai, Ye | Liu, Gang | Lei, Baiying

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: This paper solves the multi-class classification problem for Parkinson’s disease (PD) analysis by a sparse discriminative feature selection framework. Specifically, we propose a framework to construct a least square regression model based on the Fisher’s linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and locality preserving projection (LPP). This framework utilizes the global and local information to select the most relevant and discriminative features to boost classification performance. Differing in previous methods for binary classification, we perform a multi-class classification for PD diagnosis. Our proposed method is evaluated on the public available Parkinson’s progression markers initiative (PPMI) datasets. Extensive experimental results indicate that our …proposed method identifies highly suitable regions for further PD analysis and diagnosis and outperforms state-of-the-art methods. Show more

Keywords: Parkinson’s disease, multi-class, feature selection, classification

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174548

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 193-203, 2018

Authors: Yu, Hailong | Fan, Xueli | Zhao, Lebin | Guo, Xiaoyang

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Hand gesture recognition is getting more and more important in the area of rehabilitation and human machine interface (HMI). However, most current approaches are difficult to achieve practical application because of an excess of sensors. In this work, we proposed a method to recognize six common hand gestures and establish the optimal relationship between hand gesture and muscle by utilizing only two channels of surface electromyography (sEMG). We proposed an integrated approach to process the sEMG data including filtering, endpoint detection, feature extraction, and classifier. In this study, we used one-order digital lowpass infinite impulse response (IIR) filter with the …cutoff frequency of 500 Hz to extract the envelope of the sEMG signals. The energy was utilized as a feature to detect the endpoint of motion. The short-time energy, zero-crossing rate and linear predictive coefficient (LPC) with 12 levels were chosen as the features and back propagation (BP) neural network was utilized to classify. In order to test the method, five subjects were involved in the experiment to test the hypothesis. With the proposed method, 96.41% to 99.70% recognition rate was obtained. The experimental results revealed that the proposed method is highly efficient both in sEMG data acquisition and hand motions recognition, and played a role in promoting hand rehabilitation and HMI. Show more

Keywords: sEMG, hand gesture recognition, feature extraction, BP neural network

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174567

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 205-214, 2018

Authors: Kim, Chan-Il | Lee, Jong-Ha

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: In these days, wearable devices have been developed for effectively measuring biological data. However, these devices have tissue allege and noise problem. To solve these problems, biometric measurement based on a non-contact method, such as face image sequencing is developed. This makes it possible to measure biometric data without any operation and side effects. However, it is impossible for a remote center to identify the person whose data are measured by the novel methods. In this paper, we propose the novel non-contact heart rate and blood pressure imaging system, Deep Health Eye. This system has authentication process at the same …time as measuring bio signals, through non-contact method. In the future, this system can be convenient home bio signal monitoring system by combined with smart mirror. Show more

Keywords: Partial pressure suit, counter pressure, circulatory physiology, numerical model

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174569

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 215-228, 2018

Authors: Dai, Juan | Ji, Zhong | Du, Yubao | Chen, Shuo

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: To improving the nursing level of diabetics, it is necessary to develop noninvasive blood glucose method. OBJECTIVE: In order to reduce the number of the near-infrared signal, consider the nonlinear relationship between the blood glucose concentration and near-infrared signal, and correct the individual difference and physiological glucose dynamic, 2 artificial neural networks (2ANN) combined with particle swarm optimization (PSO), named as PSO-2ANN, is proposed. METHOD: Two artificial neural networks (ANNs) are employed as the basic structure of the PSO-ANN model, and the weight coefficients of the two ANNs which represent the difference of …individual and daily physiological rule are optimized by particle swarm optimization (PSO). RESULTS: Clarke error grid shows the blood glucose predictions are distributed in regions A and B, Bland-Altman analysis show that the predictions and measurements are in good agreement. CONCLUSIONS: The PSO-2ANN model is a nonlinear calibration strategy with accuracy and robustness using 1550-nm spectroscopy, which can correct the individual difference and physiological glucose dynamics. Show more

Keywords: Near-infrared technique, noninvasive, blood glucose detection, the PSO-2ANN model

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174592

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 229-239, 2018

Authors: Qian, Li | Wang, Jianfei | Jin, Lian | Song, Biao | Wu, Xiaomei

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Myocardium characteristics differ markedly among individuals and play an important role in defibrillation threshold. The accuracy of simulation models used in most published studies are still have room to be improved and most of them only discussed the effect of myocardial anisotropy on defibrillation threshold. In our manuscript, a rabbit ventricular finite-element (FE) volume conductor model with high precision was constructed. Ventricular myocardium characteristics include cardiomyocyte coupling and the degree of myocardial anisotropy, which are represented as the value and the ratio of anisotropic conductivity, respectively. Quantitative analysis was performed simultaneously in terms of cardiomyocyte coupling and the degree of …myocardial anisotropy. Based on this, the combined effects of these two factors were further discussed. The electric field distributions of shocks and the defibrillation thresholds under different myocardial characteristics were simulated on this model. The simulation results revealed that as the degree of myocardial anisotropy increases, defibrillation threshold increases, and cardiomyocyte decoupling (decrease in electrical conductivity) can considerably increase the defibrillation threshold. Show more

Keywords: Ventricular myocardium characteristics, defibrillation threshold (DFT), finite-element (FE) volume conductor model, cardiomyocyte coupling, myocardial anisotropy

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174599

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 241-248, 2018

Authors: Kim, Seongjung | Kim, Jongman | Ahn, Soonjae | Kim, Youngho

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Deaf people use sign or finger languages for communication, but these methods of communication are very specialized. For this reason, the deaf can suffer from social inequalities and financial losses due to their communication restrictions. OBJECTIVE: In this study, we developed a finger language recognition algorithm based on an ensemble artificial neural network (E-ANN) using an armband system with 8-channel electromyography (EMG) sensors. METHODS: The developed algorithm was composed of signal acquisition, filtering, segmentation, feature extraction and an E-ANN based classifier that was evaluated with the Korean finger language (14 consonants, 17 vowels and …7 numbers) in 17 subjects. E-ANN was categorized according to the number of classifiers (1 to 10) and size of training data (50 to 1500). The accuracy of the E-ANN-based classifier was obtained by 5-fold cross validation and compared with an artificial neural network (ANN)-based classifier. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: As the number of classifiers (1 to 8) and size of training data (50 to 300) increased, the average accuracy of the E-ANN-based classifier increased and the standard deviation decreased. The optimal E-ANN was composed with eight classifiers and 300 size of training data, and the accuracy of the E-ANN was significantly higher than that of the general ANN. Show more

Keywords: Finger language recognition, armband sensor, surface electromyography (EMG)

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174602

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 249-258, 2018

Authors: Kim, Kyong | Song, Won Kyung | Chong, Woo Suk | Yu, Chang Ho

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: The body-weight support (BWS) function, which helps to decrease load stresses on a user, is an effective tool for gait and balance rehabilitation training for elderly people with weakened lower-extremity muscular strength, hemiplegic patients, etc. This study conducts structural analysis to secure user safety in order to develop a rail-type gait and balance rehabilitation training system (RRTS). The RRTS comprises a rail, trolley, and brain-machine interface. The rail (platform) is connected to the ceiling structure, bearing the loads of the RRTS and of the user and allowing locomobility. The trolley consists of a smart drive unit (SDU) that assists the …user with forward and backward mobility and a body-weight support (BWS) unit that helps the user to control his/her body-weight load, depending on the severity of his/her hemiplegia. The brain-machine interface estimates and measures on a real-time basis the body-weight (load) of the user and the intended direction of his/her movement. Considering the weight of the system and the user, the mechanical safety performance of the system frame under an applied 250-kg static load is verified through structural analysis using ABAQUS (6.14-3) software. The maximum stresses applied on the rail and trolley under the given gravity load of 250 kg, respectively, are 18.52 MPa and 48.44 MPa. The respective safety factors are computed to be 7.83 and 5.26, confirming the RRTS’s mechanical safety. An RRTS with verified structural safety could be utilized for gait movement and balance rehabilitation and training for patients with hemiplegia. Show more

Keywords: The body-weight support, rehabilitation, training system, gait movement

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174604

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 259-268, 2018

Authors: Garcia-Zapirain, Begonya | Sierra-Sosa, Daniel | Ortiz, David | Isaza-Monsalve, Mariano | Elmaghraby, Adel

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Pressure Injuries are chronic wounds that are formed due to the constriction of the soft tissues against bone prominences. In order to assess these injuries, the medical personnel carry out the evaluation and diagnosis using visual methods and manual measurements, which can be inaccurate and may generate discomfort in the patients. By using segmentation techniques, the Pressure Injuries can be extracted from an image and accurately parameterized, leading to a correct diagnosis. In general, these techniques are based on the solution of differential equations and the involved numerical methods are demanding in terms of computational resources. In previous work, we …proposed a technique developed using toroidal parametric equations for image decomposition and segmentation without solving differential equations. In this paper, we present the development of a mobile application useful for the non-contact assessment of Pressure Injuries based on the toroidal decomposition from images. The usage of this technique allows us to achieve an accurate segmentation almost 8 times faster than Active Contours without Edges (ACWE) and Dynamic Contours methods. We describe the techniques and the implementation for Android devices using Python and Kivy. This application allows for the segmentation and parameterization of injuries, obtain relevant information for the diagnosis and tracking the evolution of patient’s injuries. Show more

Keywords: Pressure ulcer, image segmentation, mobile application, Python, Kivy, Android

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174612

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 269-280, 2018

Authors: Na, Sung Dae | Wei, Qun | Seong, Ki Woong | Cho, Jin Ho | Kim, Myoung Nam

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: The conventional methods of speech enhancement, noise reduction, and voice activity detection are based on the suppression of noise or non-speech components of the target air-conduction signals. However, air-conduced speech is hard to differentiate from babble or white noise signals. OBJECTIVE: To overcome this problem, the proposed algorithm uses the bone-conduction speech signals and soft thresholding based on the Shannon entropy principle and cross-correlation of air- and bone-conduction signals. METHODS: A new algorithm for speech detection and noise reduction is proposed, which makes use of the Shannon entropy principle and cross-correlation with …the bone-conduction speech signals to threshold the wavelet packet coefficients of the noisy speech. RESULTS: The proposed method can be get efficient result by objective quality measure that are PESQ, RMSE, Correlation, SNR. CONCLUSION: Each threshold is generated by the entropy and cross-correlation approaches in the decomposed bands using the wavelet packet decomposition. As a result, the noise is reduced by the proposed method using the MATLAB simulation. To verify the method feasibility, we compared the air- and bone-conduction speech signals and their spectra by the proposed method. As a result, high performance of the proposed method is confirmed, which makes it quite instrumental to future applications in communication devices, noisy environment, construction, and military operations. Show more

Keywords: Noise reduction, bone conduction, Shannon entropy, speech

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174615

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 281-289, 2018

Authors: Kim, Jun-Tae | Choi, Ahnryul | Jeong, Jin-Hyoung | Jo, Jae-Hyun | Ryu, Ok-Su | Kim, Eun-Ji | Kim, Ki-Young | Song, Mi-Hee | Song, Young-Ho | Shin, Woon-Seob | Lee, Sang-Sik

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: This study was conducted according to the method presented in the Republic of Korea Pharmacopoeia 11th Revision, aseptic test method to evaluate the suitability of sterilization for a sterile needle (4 Pin Multi-needle). In this study, four tests were conducted: sterility test, cytotoxicity test, acute toxicity test, skin sensitization test. First, in the aseptic test, the microorganism was not proliferated in the aseptic test of the medium. As a result of the performance test of the medium, it was confirmed that the microorganism developed within 3 days and the fungus was evident within 5 days. Based on this, it was …confirmed that the medium was suitable, and as a result of the aseptic test, the development of microorganisms was not observed during the total culture period. Based on these results, tests were conducted which were confirmed to be suitable for aseptic testing because the development of bacteria on the provided samples was not recognized. For cytotoxicity tests ISO10993-5; 2009 (Biological Evaluation of Medical Devices, Part 5: Test for in vitro Cytotoxicity). As a result, the MEM eluate of the test substance caused very slight cytotoxicity to the fibroblasts of the mouse and was judged to be Grade 1 (Slightly cytotoxic) according to the judgment standard of ISO 10993-5. On the other hand, solvent control, negative control and positive control showed the expected results on the test. Acute Toxicity Test Results: It was judged that there was no systemic toxicity change when ICR mice were treated with 50 mL/kg B.W. of the eluate of sterile injectable needle for 72 hours. Skin sensitization test result: The Hartley guinea pig was evaluated as a substance which is evaluated as a substance which does not induce any skin reaction when skin sensitization is applied to the dissected material of the sterile injectable needle and is weak in skin sensitivity. Based on the above tests, we will study the stability and efficacy of more reliable medical devices based on the verification and performance of medical devices. Show more

Keywords: Meso-therapy, multi-Needle, medical device, safety evaluation

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174624

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 291-306, 2018

Authors: He, Xinzi | Yu, Zhen | Wang, Tianfu | Lei, Baiying | Shi, Yiyan

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Dermoscopy imaging has been a routine examination approach for skin lesion diagnosis. Accurate segmentation is the first step for automatic dermoscopy image assessment. OBJECTIVE: The main challenges for skin lesion segmentation are numerous variations in viewpoint and scale of skin lesion region. METHODS: To handle these challenges, we propose a novel skin lesion segmentation network via a very deep dense deconvolution network based on dermoscopic images. Specifically, the deep dense layer and generic multi-path Deep RefineNet are combined to improve the segmentation performance. The deep representation of all available layers is aggregated …to form the global feature maps using skip connection. Also, the dense deconvolution layer is leveraged to capture diverse appearance features via the contextual information. Finally, we apply the dense deconvolution layer to smooth segmentation maps and obtain final high-resolution output. RESULTS: Our proposed method shows the superiority over the state-of-the-art approaches based on the public available 2016 and 2017 skin lesion challenge dataset and achieves the accuracy of 96.0% and 93.9%, which obtained a 6.0% and 1.2% increase over the traditional method, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: By utilizing Dense Deconvolution Net, the average time for processing one testing images with our proposed framework was 0.253 s. Show more

Keywords: Dermoscopy image, skin lesion segmentation, deep residual network, dense deconvolution net, hierarchical supervision

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174633

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 307-316, 2018

Authors: Yarahmadian, Mehran | Zhong, Yongmin | Gu, Chengfan | Shin, Jaehyun

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Soft tissue modeling plays an important role in the development of surgical training simulators as well as in robot-assisted minimally invasive surgeries. It has been known that while the traditional Finite Element Method (FEM) promises the accurate modeling of soft tissue deformation, it still suffers from a slow computational process. OBJECTIVE: This paper presents a Kalman filter finite element method to model soft tissue deformation in real time without sacrificing the traditional FEM accuracy. METHODS: The proposed method employs the FEM equilibrium equation and formulates it as a filtering process to estimate …soft tissue behavior using real-time measurement data. The model is temporally discretized using the Newmark method and further formulated as the system state equation. RESULTS: Simulation results demonstrate that the computational time of KF-FEM is approximately 10 times shorter than the traditional FEM and it is still as accurate as the traditional FEM. The normalized root-mean-square error of the proposed KF-FEM in reference to the traditional FEM is computed as 0.0116. CONCLUSIONS: It is concluded that the proposed method significantly improves the computational performance of the traditional FEM without sacrificing FEM accuracy. The proposed method also filters noises involved in system state and measurement data. Show more

Keywords: Soft tissue deformation, finite element, real-time estimation, Kalman filter

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174640

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 317-325, 2018

Authors: Chai, Xin | Wang, Qisong | Zhao, Yongping | Liu, Xin | Liu, Dan | Bai, Ou

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Emotion recognition based on EEG signals is a critical component in Human-Machine collaborative environments and psychiatric health diagnoses. However, EEG patterns have been found to vary across subjects due to user fatigue, different electrode placements, and varying impedances, etc. This problem renders the performance of EEG-based emotion recognition highly specific to subjects, requiring time-consuming individual calibration sessions to adapt an emotion recognition system to new subjects. Recently, domain adaptation (DA) strategies have achieved a great deal success in dealing with inter-subject adaptation. However, most of them can only adapt one subject to another subject, which limits their applicability in real-world …scenarios. To alleviate this issue, a novel unsupervised DA strategy called Multi-Subject Subspace Alignment (MSSA) is proposed in this paper, which takes advantage of subspace alignment solution and multi-subject information in a unified framework to build personalized models without user-specific labeled data. Experiments on a public EEG dataset known as SEED verify the effectiveness and superiority of MSSA over other state of the art methods for dealing with multi-subject scenarios. Show more

Keywords: EEG, emotion recognition, domain adaptation, multi-subject learning, logistic regression

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174739

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 327-335, 2018

Authors: Lu, Yanan | Ma, Yu | Chen, Chen | Wang, Yuanyuan

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder of the brain. Clinically, epileptic seizures are usually detected via the continuous monitoring of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals by experienced neurophysiologists. OBJECTIVE: In order to detect epileptic seizures automatically with a satisfactory precision, a new method is proposed which defines hybrid features that could characterize the epileptiform waves and classify single-channel EEG signals. METHODS: The hybrid features consist of both the ones usually used in EEG signal analysis and the Kraskov entropy based on Hilbert-Huang Transform which is proposed for the first time. With the hybrid …features, EEG signals are classified and the epileptic seizures are detected. RESULTS: Three datasets are used for test on three binary-classification problems defined by clinical requirements for epileptic seizures detection. Experimental results show that the accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of the proposed methods outperform two state-of-the-art methods, especially on the databases containing signals from different sources. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed method provides a new avenue to assist neurophysiologists in diagnosing epileptic seizures automatically and accurately. Show more

Keywords: Epilepsy, epileptic seizures detection, electroencephalogram (EEG), hybrid features, Kraskov entropy, Hilbert-Huang transform

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174679

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 337-346, 2018

Authors: Wu, Jianlei | Liu, Yunfeng | Zhang, Jianxing | Peng, Wei | Jiang, Xianfeng

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Orthodontic treatment planning (OTP) is primarily depended on clinical experiences of orthodontists at present, while equivocal OTP would increase the possibility of treatment failure. OBJECTIVE: The objective was to investigate a methodology for quantitatively evaluating OTP, using theoretical analyses, orthodontic forces measurement (OFM) and finite element method (FEM). METHODS: An OTP was theoretically designed based on a clinical case and forces on incisors in OTP were measured on a specialized platform. Further, FEM simulations were performed on the designed OTP and control group. At last, an 18-month tracking was carried out to …observe treatment effects of the designed OTP. RESULTS: The moving tendencies of incisors were in keeping with ideal treatment from the designed OTP through FEM; the maximal hydrostatic stress and logarithmic strain in periodontal ligament (PDL) decreased by 26.81% and 32.60% compared to the control group. Clinical feedback indicated that a controllable correction of incisors was realized after 18 months, which was in accord with the FEM result and root/bone resorption by reason of stress/strain reduction on PDL did not occur. CONCLUSIONS: Biomechanical responses of periodontium can be quantitatively estimated using OTM and FEM. This study provided an alternative technological mean for the predictability and optimization of clinical OTP. Show more

Keywords: Biomechanics, orthodontic treatment planning (OTP), orthodontic forces measurement (OFM), finite element method (FEM)

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174689

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 347-359, 2018

Authors: Xu, Wenbin | Xia, Hong | Liu, Wei | Zheng, Weiying | Hua, Lin

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Muscle-invasive bladder cancers (MIBCs) are heterogeneous cancers and can be grouped into basal-like and luminal subtypes that are highly reminiscent of those found in breast cancer. Like basal-like breast cancers, basal-like MIBCs are associated with advanced stage and metastatic disease. However, the biological and clinical significance of molecular subtypes of MIBCs remain unclear. Therefore, we implemented a serious of bioinformatics methods to explore genetic similarities between bladder and breast cancers. METHODS AND RESULTS: In the current study, by the application of multiple levels data analysis including random forest analysis, PPI and transcription factor …regulation network construction, Gene Ontology (GO) and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis, we explored the genetics commonness between MIBC and breast cancers from the molecular heterogeneity based on the disease subtypes. CONCLUSIONS: Our study identified some basal-related and luminal-related genes shared by two cancers. These studies can help shed light on the potential relationships between MIBC and breast cancer as a whole. Show more

Keywords: Bladder cancer, breast cancer, genetic commonness, regulation network

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174699

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 361-377, 2018

Authors: Zhang, Yiyan | Li, Qin | Xin, Yi | Lv, Weiqi | Ge, Chuanbin

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Magnesium ion, as important cation in the human body, involved in various enzymatic reactions, glucose transport and insulin release. Now diabetes mellitus and diabetic complications have become important public health problems around the world. OBJECTIVE: This paper explores the association between concentration levels of serum magnesium and common complications and comorbidities of diabetes mellitus and other biochemical indexes. METHODS: There are 1217 eligible patients selected from 14,317 cases of diabetic hospitalization patients from January 2010 to December 2011. Random forest algorithm was applied to assess the importance of various biochemical indexes and …to perform diabetic complications prediction. RESULTS: The research results showed that low concentration of serum magnesium and four common diabetic complications – diabetic retinopathy, diabetic nephropathy, diabetic neuropathy and diabetic macroangiopathy – exists association, but no obvious correlation with other comorbidities like hypertension. CONCLUSIONS: The specific factors of four common diabetic complications were selected from the biochemical indexes to provide a reference direction for further research. Show more

Keywords: Serum magnesium, diabetic complications, biochemical index, random forest, associated factor

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174702

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 379-387, 2018

Authors: Ren, Fulong | Cao, Peng | Zhao, Dazhe | Wan, Chao

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Diabetic macular edema (DME) is one of the severe complication of diabetic retinopathy causing severe vision loss and leads to blindness in severe cases if left untreated. OBJECTIVE: To grade the severity of DME in retinal images. METHODS: Firstly, the macular is localized using its anatomical features and the information of the macula location with respect to the optic disc. Secondly, a novel method for the exudates detection is proposed. The possible exudate regions are segmented using vector quantization technique and formulated using a set of feature vectors. A semi-supervised learning with graph based …classifier is employed to identify the true exudates. Thirdly, the disease severity is graded into different stages based on the location of exudates and the macula coordinates. RESULTS: The results are obtained with the mean value of 0.975 and 0.942 for accuracy and F1-scrore, respectively. CONCLUSION: The present work contributes to macula localization, exudate candidate identification with vector quantization and exudate candidate classification with semi-supervised learning. The proposed method and the state-of-the-art approaches are compared in terms of performance, and experimental results show the proposed system overcomes the challenge of the DME grading and demonstrate a promising effectiveness. Show more

Keywords: Retinal images, diabetic macular edema, exudate detection, classification

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174704

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 389-397, 2018

Authors: Zou, Yupeng | Ma, Huizi | Han, Zhiyuan | Song, Yang | Liu, Kai

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: To solve the technical problems associated with the research on lower limb rehabilitation robot in terms of configuration design, human-machine compatibility, lightweight, and multimodel rehabilitation. OBJECTIVE: This study introduced a parallel wire driving lower limb rehabilitation robot. The robot featured modular design, reconfiguration, multimodel, and good human-machine compatibility. METHODS: The dynamics model of the wire driving module (WDM) was built based on which a multiple feedback loop controller (including a forward controller and a surplus force compensator) was designed. RESULTS: The experimental results showed that the WDM could load force …accurately and reliably during the loading procedure. CONCLUSIONS: The machinery and control system of the WDM met the design request. Show more

Keywords: Parallel wire driving robot, dynamics modeling, force control, lower limb rehabilitation

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174714

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 399-408, 2018

Authors: Kwon, Yuri | Kim, Ji-Won | Heo, Jae-Hoon | Jeon, Hyeong-Min | Choi, Eui-Bum | Eom, Gwang-Moon

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: The sitting in an awkward posture for a prolonged time may lead to spinal or musculoskeletal disease. It is important to investigate the joint loads at spine while sitting. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the joint moment and antero-posterior (AP) reaction force at cervico-thoracic and lumbosacral joint for various sitting postures. METHODS: Twenty healthy males participated in this study. Six sitting postures were defined from three spinal curvatures (slump, flat, and lordosis) and two arm postures (arms-on-chest and arms-forward). Kinematic and kinetic data were measured in six sitting …postures from which joint moment and AP reaction force were calculated by inverse dynamics. RESULTS: In the cervico-thoracic joint, joint moment and AP reaction force were greater in slump than the flat and lordosis postures (p < 0.001) and also in arms-forward posture compared to arms-on-chest posture. In the lumbosacral joint, joint moment and AP reaction force were greater in slump than flat and lordotic posture (p < 0.001) but there was no difference between different arm postures. The joint loads (moment and AP reaction force) at the cervico-thoriacic joint were closely related to the head flexion angle (r > 0.86) while those at the lumbosacral joint were correlated to the trunk flexion angle (r > 0.77). In slump posture, the joint moments were close to or over the extreme of the daily life such as sit-to-stand and walking. Consequently, if the slump is continued for a long time, it may cause pain and diseases at the cervico-thoracic and lumbosacral joints. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the study indicated that the lordosis or flat would be better spinal postures. Also, keeping arms close to body would be desirable to reduce joint loads. Show more

Keywords: Sitting posture, cervico-thoracic joint, lumbosacral joint, joint moment, joint reaction force

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174717

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 409-418, 2018

Authors: Kim, Ji-Sun | Baek, Jin-Young | Oh, Han-Byeol | Lee, Seong-Su | Jun, Jae-Hoon

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: The laser is able to irradiate the exact amount of stimulation to an area by a non contact method, and has the advantage of being able to stimulate the local target area. OBJECTIVE: This study examined an efficient method of laser tactile stimulation using laser parameter combinations. METHODS: The laser parameters that could cause an increase in the cognitive response rate of human subjects were examined without increasing the amount of total laser energy. RESULTS: As a result, the appropriate matching parameters such as duty ratio, pulse frequency, and …exposure time of laser pulses showed a dominant influence in effectively increasing the tactile response rate of subjects with limited amount of total laser energy. CONCLUSIONS: This study can be applied to neurophysiology, cognitive research, and clinical laser application. Show more

Keywords: Laser tactile stimulation, laser parameter, diode pulse laser, tactile response rate

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174718

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 419-425, 2018

Authors: Kwon, Moon-Seok | Kwon, Yu-Ri | Park, Yang-Sun | Kim, Ji-Won

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Gait is associated with an important risk factor of falls in the elderly. It is important to find differences of quantitative gait variables between fallers and non-fallers. The aim of this study was to investigate gait patterns in elderly fallers and non-fallers. Thirty-eight fallers and 38 non-fallers of similar age and height participated in this study. Subjects walked across the GaitRite walkway at self-selected comfortable speeds. Spatio-temporal gait variables were measured to characterize gait patterns. Kinetic variables were derived from normalized vertical ground reaction force (GRF). Independent t-tests were performed to compare the fallers with the non-fallers. The fallers walked …more slowly with shorter steps and more variable step times than the non-fallers (p < 0.05). The fallers showed a longer stance phase with increased double-limb support than the non-fallers (p < 0.05). The times to reach maximal weight acceptance and mid-stance of the fallers were significantly longer than those of the non-fallers (p < 0.05). These results suggest that spatio-temporal variables and GRF variables would be useful for distinguishing prospective fallers from non-fallers among the elderly. Show more

Keywords: Gait, fall, ground reaction force, gait variable, elderly

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174736

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 427-436, 2018

Authors: Yang, Peng | Ni, Dong | Chen, Siping | Wang, Tianfu | Wu, Donghui | Lei, Baiying

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Brain functional connectivity network (BFCN) has been widely applied to identify biomarkers for the brain function understanding and brain diseases analysis. OBJECTIVE: Building a biologically meaningful brain network is a crucial work in these applications. For this task, sparse learning has been widely applied for the network construction. If multiple time-point data is added to the brain imaging application, the disease progression pattern in the longitudinal analysis can be better revealed. METHODS: A novel longitudinal analysis for MCI classification is devised based on resting-state functional magnetic resonating imaging (rs-fMRI). Specifically, this paper …proposes a novel multi-task learning method to integrate fused penalty by regularization. In addition, a novel objective function is developed for fused sparse learning via smoothness constraint. RESULTS: The proposed method achieves the best classification performance with an accuracy of 95.74% for baseline and 93.64% for year 1 data. CONCLUSIONS: The experimental results show that our proposed method achieves quite promising classification performance. Show more

Keywords: Mild cognitive impairment, brain functional connectivity network, longitudinal analysis, smooth regularization

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174587

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 437-448, 2018

Authors: Xie, Peng | Wang, Mengke | Guo, Yanrong | Wen, Huiying | Chen, Xin | Chen, Siping | Lin, Haoming

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: During the past two decades, tissue elasticity has been extensively studied and has been used in clinical disease diagnosis. But biological soft tissues are viscoelastic in nature. Therefore, they should be simultaneously characterized in terms of elasticity and viscosity. In addition, the mechanical properties of soft tissues are temperature dependent. However, how the temperature influences the shear wave dispersion and the viscoelasticity of soft tissue are still unclear. The aim of this study is to compare viscoelasticity of fat emulsion phantom with different temperature using acoustic radiation force elasticity imaging method. In our experiment, we produced four proportions of ultrasonic …phantom by adding fat emulsion gelatin. Through adjusting the component of the fat emulsion, we change the viscoelasticity of the ultrasonic phantom. We used verasonics system to gather data and voigt model to fit the elasticity and viscosity value of the ultrasonic phantom we made. The influence of temperature to the ultrasonic phantom also measured in our study. The results show that the addition of fat emulsion to the phantom can increase the viscosity of the phantom, and the shear wave phase velocity decreases gradually at each frequency with the temperature increases, which provides a new material for the production of viscoelastic phantom. Show more

Keywords: Viscoelasticity, fat emulsion phantom, fatty liver, temperature dependent

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174746

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 449-458, 2018

Authors: Liu, Xin | Wang, Qisong | Liu, Dan | Wang, Yuan | Zhang, Yan | Bai, Ou | Sun, Jinwei

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Human emotion classification is traditionally achieved using multi-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) signal, which requires costly equipment and complex classification algorithms. OBJECTIVE: The experiments can be implemented in the laboratory environment equipped with high-performance computers for the online analysis; this will hinder the usability in practical applications. METHODS: Considering that other physiological signals are also associated with emotional changes, this paper proposes to use a wearable, wireless system to acquire a single-channel electroencephalogram signal, respiration, electrocardiogram (ECG) signal, and body postures to explore the relationship between these signals and the human emotions. …RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Compared with traditional emotion classification method, the presented method was able to extract a small number of key features associated with human emotions from multiple physiological signals, where the algorithm complexity was greatly reduced when incorporated with the support vector machine classification. The proposed method can support an embedded on-line analysis and may enhance the usability of emotion classification. Show more

Keywords: Emotion, wearable sensors, support vector machine, EEG, ECG, respiration

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174747

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 459-469, 2018

Authors: Zhu, Shidong | Luo, Lin | Yang, Bibo | Ni, Kai | Zhou, Qian | Li, Xinghui | Wang, Xiaohao

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: A novel intra-ventricular assist device (iVAD) was established as a new pulsatile assist device to address various disadvantages, such as bulky configuration and reduced arterial pulsatility, observed in conventional ventricular assist devices. OBJECTIVE: Analyzed the native left ventricular stroke volume (SV) after iVAD support in vitro . METHODS: The SV of iVAD was examined in a home-designed mock circulatory system (MCS) at different heart rates and drive pressures and the SV of a failure ventricle was examined with iVAD at 75, 90, 120 bpm and 120–180 mmHg drive pressure after iVAD support. …Data pertaining to native left ventricular SV before and after iVAD support were compared. RESULTS: The native ventricular SV was improved by iVAD when its drive pressure (DP) was slightly greater than that of the mock system. Conversely, the native ventricular SV was decreased when DP was much greater than that (150 mmHg) of MCS. A high DP had a significant effect on SV. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed device improved the dysfunctional native left ventricular SV when DP of iVAD was slightly greater than that of MCS. However, iVAD reduced the SV when the drive pressure was greater than that of MCS. Show more

Keywords: Left ventricular assist device, mock circulatory system, pulsatile pump, stroke volume

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174752

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 471-479, 2018

Authors: Sohn, Jeehoon | Park, Sung-Ha | Kim, Sukwon

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Dancesport is a popular activity among older adults who look for fun and fitness in Korea. Studies reported positive sociological and psychological effects of dancesport. But, little studies were performed to evaluate the effects of dancesport on balance performances. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the present study was to evaluate the effects of dancesport for 15 weeks on walking balance and standing balance of older adults. METHODS: Older adults regularly participated in the dancesport program 3 times a week for 15 weeks. The program included Rumba, Cha-cha-cha, and Jive. They exercised the prescribed …dancesport at intermediate level for 50–60 mins for each time. A total 22 reflective markers were placed on the anatomical landmarks and 8 cameras were used to measure 3-D positions of participants. Also, center of pressure (COP) data were measured to analyze standing balance using a ground reaction board at 1200 Hz for 30 seconds. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to test the effects of 15 weeks of dancesport on walking balance and standing balance. RESULTS: The results suggested that, after 15 weeks of dancesport participation, older adults’ walking balance (48.3 ± 20.3 cm 2 vs 38.2 ± 18.2 cm 2 ) and standing balance (COP area: 189.4 ± 85.4 mm 2 vs 103.5 ± 55.4mm 2 , COP distance: 84.2 ± 34.4 cm vs 76.5 ± 21.4 cm) were significantly improved. CONCLUSION: Performing dancesport would require moving center of mass rapidly and frequently while maintaining posture. This may result in improving walking balance and standing balance in the present study. The study concluded that dancesport would be an effective exercise method in enhancing postural stability of older adults. Show more

Keywords: Dancesport, stability, balance, walking, falls, elderly

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174760

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 481-490, 2018

Authors: Wei, Qun | Kim, Mi-Jung | Lee, Jong-Ha

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Drinking water has several advantages that have already been established, such as improving blood circulation, reducing acid in the stomach, etc. However, due to people not noticing the amount of water they consume every time they drink, most people drink less water than the recommended daily allowance. OBJECTIVE: In this paper, a capacitive sensor for developing an automatic tumbler to measure water level is proposed. Different than in previous studies, the proposed capacitive sensor was separated into two sets: the main sensor for measuring the water level in the tumbler, and the reference sensor for …measuring the incremental level unit. METHODS: In order to confirm the feasibility of the proposed idea, and to optimize the shape of the sensor, a 3D model of the capacitive sensor with the tumbler was designed and subjected to Finite Element Analysis (FEA) simulation. According to the simulation results, the electrodes were made of copper and assembled in a tumbler manufactured by a 3D printer. The tumbler was filled with water and was subjected to experiments in order to assess the sensor’s performance. RESULTS: The comparison of experimental results to the simulation results shows that the measured capacitance value of the capacitive sensor changed linearly as the water level varied. This proves that the proposed sensor can accurately measure the water level in the tumbler. Additionally, by use of the curve fitting method, a compensation algorithm was found to match the actual level with the measured level. CONCLUSIONS: The experimental results proved that the proposed capacitive sensor is able to measure the actual water level in the tumbler accurately. A digital control part with micro-processor will be designed and fixed on the bottom of the tumbler for developing a smart tumbler. Show more

Keywords: Capacitive sensor, water level, 3D modeling, FEA simulation, compensation algorithm

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174794

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 491-500, 2018

Authors: Li, Yan | Dai, Yongliang | Guo, Youmin

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Smoking for a long period is known to cause several harms to the human body, chiefly associated with serious pulmonary damage. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the difference in the pulmonary damage between current smokers and ex-smokers, through measuring the bronchial parameters and the extent of emphysema, in order to further illustrate the harm of smoking and the need to stop smoking. METHODS: Using the FACT-Digital lung TM software quantitatively analysis of CT images, including the WT, WA%, LD, LV, PD, and %LAA-950 was performed. The percentage of low attenuation …areas less than -950 Hounsfield units (%LAA-950) was defined as the extent of emphysema. The longitudinal data in the two consecutive years of these current smoker group and ex-smoker group were compared by paired t-test. RESULTS: The LV, %LAA-950, WT and WA% of current smokers increased more rapidly each year than that of ex-smokers. The PD and LD of current smokers declined more rapidly each year than that of ex-smokers. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that pulmonary damage caused by smoking related to the smoking status, can be measured. Smoking cessation has a positive role in alleviating the progress of pulmonary damage. Show more

Keywords: Quantitative CT measurements, smoking, computed tomography, longitudinal study

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174800

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 501-507, 2018

Authors: Li, Mi | Xu, Hongpei | Liu, Xingwang | Lu, Shengfu

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Many studies have been done on the emotion recognition based on multi-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. OBJECTIVE: This paper explores the influence of the emotion recognition accuracy of EEG signals in different frequency bands and different number of channels. METHODS: We classified the emotional states in the valence and arousal dimensions using different combinations of EEG channels. Firstly, DEAP default preprocessed data were normalized. Next, EEG signals were divided into four frequency bands using discrete wavelet transform, and entropy and energy were calculated as features of K-nearest neighbor Classifier. RESULTS: The …classification accuracies of the 10, 14, 18 and 32 EEG channels based on the Gamma frequency band were 89.54%, 92.28%, 93.72% and 95.70% in the valence dimension and 89.81%, 92.24%, 93.69% and 95.69% in the arousal dimension. As the number of channels increases, the classification accuracy of emotional states also increases, the classification accuracy of the gamma frequency band is greater than that of the beta frequency band followed by the alpha and theta frequency bands. CONCLUSIONS: This paper provided better frequency bands and channels reference for emotion recognition based on EEG. Show more

Keywords: Emotion recognition, multi-channel EEG, DWT, Valence, Arousal

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174836

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 509-519, 2018

Authors: Ye, Fuli | Zhan, Huimiao | Shi, Guilian

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: The preoperative evaluation of liver functional reserve is very important to determine the excision of liver lobe for the patients with liver cancer. There already exist many effective evaluation methods, but these ones have many disadvantages such as large trauma, complicated process and so on. OBJECTIVE: Therefore, it is essential to develop a fast, accurate and simple detection method of liver functional reserve for the practical application in the clinical engineering field. METHODS: According to the principle of spectrophotometry, this paper proposes a detection method of liver functional reserve based on three-wavelength …from red light to infrared light (IR), in which the artery pulse, the vein pulse and the move of tissue are taken into account. RESULTS: By using photoelectric sensor technology and excreting experiment of indocyanine green, a minimally invasive, fast and simple testing equipment is designed in this paper. CONCLUSIONS: The testing result shows this equipment can greatly reduce the interference from human body and ambient, realize continuous and real-time detection of arterial degree of blood oxygen saturation and liver functional reserve. Show more

Keywords: Liver functional reserve, pulse blood oxygen, three-wavelength, photoelectric conversion

DOI: 10.3233/THC-174843

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 26, no. S1, pp. 521-529, 2018