Technology and Health Care - Volume 28, issue S1

Authors: Kang, Seung-Rok | Kim, Gi-Wook | Ko, Myoung-Hwan | Han, Kap-Soo | Kwon, Tae-Kyu

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: The amount of patients with muscle imbalance of the left and right side increases rapidly due to an incorrect lifestyle. OBJECTIVE: We investigated the optimal exercise load required to improve muscle imbalance. METHODS: Thirty participants were enrolled in the study. They performed squat exercises according to a whole body vibration (WBV) frequency protocol over a period of eight weeks. The exercises were performed three days a week and comprised five sets of fifteen trials per set per day. We validated muscle imbalance improvement using WBV by comparing and analyzing the results at …different vibration frequencies. The participants were divided into three WBV protocol groups: no WBV, low-frequency WBV (25 Hz and 5 mm amplitude), and high-frequency WBV (50 Hz and 5 mm amplitude). We estimated the isokinetic muscle functions of the hip, knee, and ankle joints using BIODEX system 3. Ultimately, low-frequency WBV improved balance 10.2 ∼ 26.5% more than high-frequency WBV. RESULTS: Continuous load-deviation motions during low-frequency WBV were more effective at improving muscle imbalance than high-frequency WBV. WBV load variation methods improved muscle function and contractility more than external weights or loads by directly transferring kinetic energy into the body. CONCLUSION: In this clinical study, we demonstrated that low-frequency WBV was more effective at improving muscle imbalance. The WBV protocol can be used in rehabilitation programs to improve imbalance without requiring elderly or physically decompensated patients to participate in excessive exercise. Show more

Keywords: Exercise load deviation, frequency, human body, muscle strength imbalance, whole body vibration

DOI: 10.3233/THC-209011

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 28, no. S1, pp. 103-114, 2020

Authors: Shin, Mi Yeon | Chong, Woo Suk | Yu, Chang Ho

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Hydrogen storage using metal hydride (MH) offers various advantages so the global research and development using MH alloys keeps growing. OBJECTIVE: In this paper, we developed a new actuation system using temperature control of the MH module. METHODS: The actuation system consisted of an MH module, fan, mass flow controller (MFC), solenoid valve, actuator, and a temperature and pressure sensor. The MH module, two fans and temperature sensors were set for heating and cooling the MH power by electricity. Two MFCs and four pneumatic solenoid valves were used for controlling the direction …and measuring hydrogen flow. Two actuators were used to evaluate performance of the MH alloy, and all the results were measured by LabVIEW software. Hydrogen was absorbed by the MH alloy by pressurizing at 1 MPa, and the absorbed hydrogen was desorbed using a vacuum pump. RESULTS: The temperature condition of the driving test was 20–50 ∘ C. As the module was heated, it was confirmed that the actuator connected to the system was driven by the pressure of desorbed hydrogen. CONCLUSION: It is confirmed that the actuation system is suitable for the evaluation of characteristics of MH alloy. Future studies are planned to develop MH alloys and test the actual driving performance using this system. Show more

Keywords: Metal hydride (MH), hydrogen absorption-desorption characteristics, temperature control

DOI: 10.3233/THC-209012

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 28, no. S1, pp. 115-122, 2020

Authors: Jung, Young-Jin | Lee, Yun-Sung | Choi, Ga-Young | Hwang, Han-Jeong

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Electroencephalography (EEG) measured during transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can help understand the accurate impact of tDCS on the brain, but this has been hindered due to significant inflow of tDCS-induced electrical artifacts. OBJECTIVE: In this study, we introduce a novel tDCS device developed based on current limiter, which can prevent the generation of significant electrical artifacts. METHODS: To verify the feasibility of our developed tDCS device, we performed simultaneous measurement of EEG during tDCS application with five different current intensities (0, 500, 1,000, 1,500, and 2,000 μ A). Changes in EEG power spectral …density (PSD) and correlation between the PSD of non-stimulation and tDCS condition were investigated to see whether our tDCS device can be used for simultaneous EEG recording without significant inflow of tDCS-induced electrical artifacts. RESUTLS: The mean EEG-PSD differences between non-stimulation and tDCS condition were not significant for all stimulation current intensities. Furthermore, EEG-PSDs estimated during non-stimulation and tDCS application showed statistically high correlation for all comparison cases. CONCLUSION: Based on the results, we could demonstrate the feasibility of our tDCS device based on current limiter for simultaneous EEG measurement, which could potentially provide a way to investigate the impact of tDCS on the brain more accurately. Show more

Keywords: Current limiter, transcranial direct current stimulation, simultaneous EEG recording, neuromodulation, precise brain stimulation

DOI: 10.3233/THC-209013

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 28, no. S1, pp. 123-130, 2020

Authors: Shen, Zhen | Xie, Yi | Shang, Xiuqin | Xiong, Gang | Chen, Shi | Yao, Yong | Pan, Zhouxian | Pan, Hui | Dong, Xisong | Li, Yuqing | Guo, Chao | Wang, Fei-Yue

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Endoscopic endonasal transsphenoidal pituitary surgery is usually difficult and risky. With limited sources of cadaveric skulls, traditional methods of using virtual images to study the surgery are difficult for neurosurgeons and students because the surgery requires spatial imagination and good understanding of the patient’s conditions as well as practical experience. The three-dimensional (3D) printing technique has played an important role in clinical medicine due to its advantages of low cost, high-efficiency and customization. OBJECTIVE: CT images are used as the source data of 3D printing. The data obtained directly from the CT machine has limited …accuracy, which cannot be printed without processing. Some commercial platforms can help build an accurate model but the cost and customization are not satisfactory. In this situation, a tactile, precise and low-cost 3D model is highly desirable. METHODS: Three pieces of computer software are used in the manufacturing of medical 3D models and the processing procedure is easy to understand and operate. RESULTS: This study proposes a practical and cost-effective method to obtain the corrected digital model and produce the 3D printed skull with complete structures of the nasal cavity, sellar region and different levels of pituitary tumors. The model is used for the endoscopic endonasal transsphenoidal pituitary surgery preparation. CONCLUSION: The 3D printed medical model can directly help neurosurgeons and medical students to practice their surgery skills on both general and special cases with customized structures and different levels of tumors. Show more

Keywords: Endoscopic endonasal transsphenoidal pituitary surgery, 3D printing, surgery simulation, pituitary tumor

DOI: 10.3233/THC-209014

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 28, no. S1, pp. 131-150, 2020

Authors: Le, Yingyi | Weng, Jui-Hung | Lee, Tsung-Min | Lee, Yueh-Chun | Kao, Pan-Fu | Pan, Lung-Kwang | Chen, Chien-Yi

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: OBJECTIVE: Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) as well as dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scanners were designed in July 2018 at the Nuclear Medicine Department (NM), of the Taiwan Medical University Hospital. These scanners emit substantial X-rays from the target, which are tungsten, iron. Therefore, patients undergoing SPECT and DXA diagnosis, in addition to medical personnel, are exposed to undesirable photon leakage. METHODS: Following administration of radiopharmaceuticals, patients become radioactive sources; thus, it is necessary to evaluate a possible increase in the environmental gamma exposure rates in the NM as a result of the operation of …the new scanners. A three month evaluation of environmental radiation in the NM was performed using the accurate and sensitive TLD-100H approach, which gives an error rate less than 10%. RESULTS: Detected exposure radiation rates in the NM ranged from 0.12 ± 0.02 to 1.00 ± 0.15 mSv per month, indicating that the imaging room had significantly different radiation rates. The results were compared with previous results, and no significant contribution to the enhancement of environmental gamma radiation was detected, which remained far below the occupational dose recommended by ICRP 60. The minimum detectable dose (MDD) for environmental radiation is also discussed herein to demonstrate the reliability of TLD-100H. CONCLUSION: Recommendations were sent to the authorities of AEC-ROC to implement actions that could reduce doses at these high-dose locations to meet the ALARA principle. Show more

Keywords: Environmental radiation rates, thermoluminescence dosimeter, SPECT, DXA, Nuclear Medicine Department, minimum detectable dose

DOI: 10.3233/THC-209015

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 28, no. S1, pp. 151-160, 2020

Authors: Jiang, Hong-Kun | Liang, Yong

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: DNA methylation is a molecular modification of DNA that is vital and occurs in gene expression. In cancer tissues, the 5’–C–phosphate–G–3’(CpG) rich regions are abnormally hypermethylated or hypomethylated. Therefore, it is useful to find out the diseased CpG sites by employing specific methods. CpG sites are highly correlated with each other within the same gene or the same CpG island. OBJECTIVE: Based on this group effect, we proposed an efficient and accurate method for selecting pathogenic CpG sites. METHODS: Our method aimed to combine a L 1 / 2 …regularized solver and a central node fully connected network to penalize group constrained logistic regression model. Consequently, both sparsity and group effect were brought in with respect to the correlated regression coefficients. RESULTS: Extensive simulation studies were used to compare our proposed approach with existing mainstream regularization in respect of classification accuracy and stability. The simulation results show that a greater predictive accuracy was attained in comparison to previous methods. Furthermore, our method was applied to over 20000 CpG sites and verified using the ovarian cancer data generated from Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation 27K Beadchip. In the result of the real dataset, not only the indicators of predictive accuracy are higher than the previous methods, but also more CpG sites containing genes are confirmed pathogenic. Additionally, the total number of CpG sites chosen is less than other methods and the results show higher accuracy rates in comparison to other methods in simulation and DNA methylation data. CONCLUSION: The proposed method offers an advanced tool to researchers in DNA methylation and can be a powerful tool for recognizing pathogenic CpG sites. Show more

Keywords: DNA methylation, CpG island, L1/2 regularization method, gene regulatory network, variable selection

DOI: 10.3233/THC-209016

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 28, no. S1, pp. 161-171, 2020

Authors: Cao, Lei | Fan, Chunjiang | Wang, Zijian | Hou, Lusong | Wang, Haoran | Li, Gang

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Mental task-based brain computer interface (BCI) systems are usually developed for neural prostheses technologies and medical rehabilitation. The mental workload was too heavy for the user to manipulate BCI effectively. Fortunately, electroencephalography (EEG) signal is not only used for BCI control but also relates to the changes of mental states. OBJECTIVE: We proposed a novel method for identifying non-effective trials of Steady State Visual Evoked Potential (SSVEP)-based BCI. METHODS: We used the subject-dependent and subject-independent alertness models identifying non-effective trials of SSVEP-BCI systems. RESULTS: The result implied that the …subject-dependent alertness model was most useful for improving the classification accuracy in the task. However, the subject-independent alertness model could enhance the prediction ability of SSVEP-based BCI system. CONCLUSION: In comparison to the conventional canonical correlation analysis (CCA) method without alertness-model filtering, the raise of precision was valuable for the technical development of BCI works. It demonstrated the effectiveness of our proposed subject-dependent and subject-independent methods. Show more

Keywords: Alertness, SSVEP, sleepiness, CCA

DOI: 10.3233/THC-209017

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 28, no. S1, pp. 173-180, 2020

Authors: Yang, Lin | Sun, Ge | Wang, Anran | Jiang, Hongqing | Zhang, Song | Yang, Yimin | Li, Xuwen | Hao, Dongmei | Xu, Mingzhou | Shao, Jing

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: The risk factors of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy (HDP) could be summarized into three categories: clinical epidemiological factors, hemodynamic factors and biochemical factors. OBJECTIVE: To establish models for early prediction and intervention of HDP. METHODS: This study used the three types of risk factors and support vector machine (SVM) to establish prediction models of HDP at different gestational weeks. RESULTS: The average accuracy of the model was gradually increased when the pregnancy progressed, especially in the late pregnancy 28–34 weeks and ⩾ 35 weeks, it reached more …than 92%. CONCLUSION: Multi-risk factors combined with dynamic gestational weeks’ prediction of HDP based on machine learning was superior to static and single-class conventional prediction methods. Multiple continuous tests could be performed from early pregnancy to late pregnancy. Show more

Keywords: Support vector machine algorithm, machine learning, model research

DOI: 10.3233/THC-209018

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 28, no. S1, pp. 181-186, 2020

Authors: Zhang, Yisong | Zhang, Song | Yang, Lin | Yang, Yimin | Li, Xuwen | Hao, Dongmei | Xu, Mingzhou | Shao, Jing

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) can be obtained in a non-invasive manner to monitor fetal growth status. OBJECTIVE: In this study, a fetal heart rate (FHR) calculation system was proposed, which consists of the FECG recorder (MF-HOLTER) and the FECG monitoring software (FECG-MS). The abdomen electrocardiogram (AECG) of pregnant woman is acquired through the MF-HOLTER. The FECG-MS packs the AECG data and calls the FECG separation algorithm to obtain the separated FECG and the fetal QRS (FQRS) position. The FHR is further obtained by calculating the R-R interval value. At the same time, this study proposed a …FQRS position correction algorithm to calculate the correct FHR values. METHOD: In order to verify the accuracy of the FHR calculation, the ECG signal of FLUKE’s PS320 FETAL SIMULATOR and clinical data were simultaneously tested. RESULTS: The accuracy rate is over 98% in processing the simulator’s data. In processing clinical data, the FHR values obtained by both the system proposed in this study and Monica AN24 are very close, and the difference is less than 1 bpm. CONCLUSION: The results show that the FHR calculation system is accurate and stable, and has a positive application value and prospect. Show more

Keywords: Fetal ECG, fetal heart rate, R-R interval, fetal QRS position correction

DOI: 10.3233/THC-209019

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 28, no. S1, pp. 187-195, 2020

Authors: Zhang, Zhihong | Luo, Yingchun | Deng, Xudong | Luo, Weinan

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Digital image technology has made great progress in the field of foreign body detection and classification, which is of great help to drug purity extraction and impurity analysis and classification. OBJECTIVE: The detection and classification of foreign bodies in lyophilized powder are important. The method which can obtain a higher accuracy of recognition needs to be proposed. METHODS: We used digital image technology to detect and classify foreign bodies in lyophilized powder, and studied the process of image preprocessing, median filtering, Wiener filtering and average filtering balance to better detect and classify …foreign bodies in lyophilized powder. RESULTS: Through industrial small sample data simulation, test results show that in the process of image preprocessing, 3 × 3 median filtering is best. In the aspect of foreign body recognition, the recognition based on principal component analysis (PCA) and support vector machine (SVM) algorithm and the recognition based on PCA and Third-Nearest Neighbor classification algorithm are compared and results show that the PCA+ SVM algorithm is better. CONCLUSION: We demonstrated that integrating PCA and SVM to classify foreign bodies in lyophilized powder. Our proposed method is effective for the prediction of essential proteins. Show more

Keywords: Foreign bodies, median filtering, PCA, SVM

DOI: 10.3233/THC-209020

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 28, no. S1, pp. 197-205, 2020