Technology and Health Care - Volume 32, issue 6

Authors: Quan, Wentao | Guo, Xudong | Cui, Haipo | Luo, Linlaisheng | Li, Mengyun

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Multi-channel acquisition systems of brain neural signals can provide a powerful tool with a wide range of information for the clinical application of brain computer interfaces. High-throughput implantable systems are limited by size and power consumption, posing challenges to system design. OBJECTIVE: To acquire more comprehensive neural signals and wirelessly transmit high-throughput brain neural signals, a FPGA-based acquisition system for multi-channel brain nerve signals has been developed. And the Bluetooth transmission with low-power technology are utilized. METHODS: To wirelessly transmit large amount of data with limited Bluetooth bandwidth and improve the accuracy …of neural signal decoding, an improved sharing run length encoding (SRLE) is proposed to compress the spike data of brain neural signal to improve the transmission efficiency of the system. The functional prototype has been developed, which consists of multi-channel data acquisition chips, FPGA main control module with the improved SRLE, a wireless data transmitter, a wireless data receiver and an upper computer. And the developed functional prototype was tested for spike detection of brain neural signal by animal experiments. RESULTS: From the animal experiments, it shows that the system can successfully collect and transmit brain nerve signals. And the improved SRLE algorithm has an excellent compression effect with the average compression rate of 5.94%, compared to the double run-length encoding, the FDR encoding, and the traditional run-length encoding. CONCLUSION: The developed system, incorporating the improved SRLE algorithm, is capable of wirelessly capturing spike signals with 1024 channels, thereby realizing the implantable systems of High-throughput brain neural signals. Show more

Keywords: Brain nerve signal, wireless transmission, multi-channel system, improved SRLE, compression ratio

DOI: 10.3233/THC-231401

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 3955-3966, 2024

Authors: Zheng, Chichao | Tang, Yi | Wang, Yadan | Wang, Yuanguo | Peng, Hu

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Ultrasound imaging has been widely used in clinical examination because of portability, safety, and low cost. However, there are still some main challenges of imaging quality that remain in conventional ultrasound systems. OBJECTIVE: Improving image quality of SA-based methods using an improved imaging mode named far-focus compound (FSC) imaging. METHODS: A far-focus compound (FSC) imaging based on full-aperture transmission and full-aperture reception is proposed in this paper. In transmission, it uses the full aperture to transmit the focused beam to ensure image resolution and emission of sound field energy. In reception, the …full aperture is used to receive the reflected beam to ensure the image quality. A lag-one coherence-based zero-cross factor (LOCZF) is then implemented in FSC for improvement of contrast ratio (CR). The LOCZF uses lag-one coherence as zero-cross factor’s adaptive coefficient. Comparisons were made with several other weighting techniques by performing simulations and experiments for performance evaluation. RESULTS: Results confirm that LOCZF applied to FSC offers a good image contrast and simultaneously the speckle pattern. For simulated cysts, CR improvement of LOCZF reaches 194.1%. For experimental cysts, CR improvement of LOCZF reaches 220%. From the in-vivo result, compared with FSC, CR improvement of LOCZF reaches 112.7%. CONCLUSION: Proved gCNR performance. In addition, the LOCZF method shows good performance in experiments. The proposed method can be used as an effective weighting technique for improvement of image quality in ultrasound imaging. Show more

Keywords: Ultrasonic imaging, far-focus compound imaging, reversal-squart zero-cross factor, lag-one coherence-based zero-cross factor

DOI: 10.3233/THC-231452

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 3967-3984, 2024

Authors: Niu, Haiying | He, Huijie | Zhao, Zilong | Lu, Xuemei | Zhao, Gang

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Asthma is a major public health concern due to its persistent inflammation of the airways. The intricate and widely variable epidemiology of asthma among nations and populations is a result of the interplay between genetic, environmental, and socioeconomic factors. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to investigate whether VitD supplementation can reduce the frequency of exacerbations (including the frequency of exacerbations requiring systemic corticosteroids and the frequency of exacerbations necessitating trips to the hospital or emergency room, or both) and improve pulmonary function (clinical indicators such as the FEV1% predicted value). METHODS: Computers were …used to search Pubmed, Medline, ISI Web of Science, Embase, Cachrane Library, CNKI, CBM, VIP, and the Wanfang Database. Asthma/asthma, VitD/VitD, lung function/lung function, retrieval time is from database setup to October 8, 2021, to search all randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on the effect of VitD on human asthma and to retroactively incorporate references to literature were all included in the search criteria. After rigorous screening, quality evaluation, and data extraction of the included literature by two reviewers independently, heterogeneity tests and sensitivity analyses were performed. RESULTS: The findings show that a total of 12 relevant studies meeting the inclusion criteria were finally included, including 649 cases in the experimental group and 646 cases in the control group. VitD intervention reduced the number of asthma exacerbations, including the rate of exacerbations requiring systemic corticosteroid therapy and the rate of acute exacerbations requiring emergency department or hospital visits or both. CONCLUSIONS: In the outcome of lung function (FEV1% predicted value), it was shown that VitD supplementation improved lung function; in the outcome of serum 25-hydroxyVitD levels, it was shown that VitD supplementation increased serum 25-hydroxyVitD levels. Show more

Keywords: Asthma, VitD, FEV, lung function, 25-hydroxyVitD

DOI: 10.3233/THC-231462

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 3985-4008, 2024

Authors: Hong, Haisen | Sha, Mo | Chen, Zhangxin | Li, Yanwei | Kang, Liangqi

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Femoral neck fractures, which are fractures occurring from the femoral head to the base of the femoral neck, are prevalent in the elderly population. With the progression of societal aging, the incidence of femoral neck fractures has been steadily increasing, making it a significant global issue that urgently needs to be addressed. OBJECTIVE: To compare the efficacy and safety of dynamic hip screw (DHS) with anti-rotation screw and femoral neck system (FNS) internal fixation for the treatment of Garden II–IV type femoral neck fractures. METHODS: A total of 90 patients with Garden …II–IV type femoral neck fractures were randomly assigned to either the control group (n = 45) treated with DHS and anti-rotation screw or the experimental group (n = 45) treated with FNS. Surgical outcomes, including incision size, blood loss, operation time, fluoroscopy frequency, and fracture healing time, were compared. Postoperative complication rates, reoperation rates, Harris scores, and visual analogue scale (VAS) scores were also assessed. RESULTS: The experimental group demonstrated significantly reduced incision length, blood loss, operation time, and fluoroscopy frequency compared to the control group (P < 0.01). No significant differences were observed in fracture healing time, Garden classification, or fracture reduction outcomes between the two groups (P > 0.05). At 6 months post-treatment, both groups showed significant improvements in Harris scores and VAS scores compared to pre-treatment (P < 0.05), with no significant differences between the groups (P > 0.05). The rates of internal fixation failure, nonunion, and avascular necrosis of the femoral head, as well as overall incidence of postoperative complications and reoperation rates, showed no significant differences between the two groups (P > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Both DHS with anti-rotation screw and FNS internal fixation demonstrated comparable efficacy and safety profiles in the treatment of Garden II–IV type femoral neck fractures. The experimental group showed advantages in terms of reduced incision length, blood loss, operation time, and fluoroscopy frequency, while maintaining similar clinical outcomes and complication rates. Show more

Keywords: Femoral neck fractures, Garden II–IV classification, dynamic hip screw (DHS), anti-rotation screw, femoral neck system (FNS), internal fixation

DOI: 10.3233/THC-231547

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 4009-4017, 2024

Authors: Abu-Izneid, Tareq | Rauf, Abdur | Naz, Saima | Ibrahim, Muhammad | Muhammad, Naveed | Wadood, Abdul | Ajmal, Amar | Hemeg, Hassan A. | Fahad, Shah | Thiruvengadam, Muthu | Venkidasamy, Baskar

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Ficus benghalensis has been used by local health care practitioners to treat pain, inflammation, rheumatism, and other health issues. OBJECTIVE: In this study, the crude extract and diverse fractions, along with the isolated compound of F. benghalensis were examined for their roles as muscle relaxants, analgesics, and sedatives. METHODS: The extract and isolated compound 1 were screened for muscle-relaxant, analgesic, and sedative actions. The acetic acid-mediated writhing model was utilized for analgesic assessment, the muscle relaxant potential was quantified through traction and inclined plan tests, and the open field test was …applied for sedative effects. RESULTS: The extract/fractions (25, 50, and 100 mg/kg) and isolated compounds (2.5, 5, 10, and 20 mg/kg) were tested at various doses. A profound (p < 0.001) reduce in the acetic acid-mediated writhing model was observed against carpachromene (64.44%), followed by ethyl acetate (60.67%) and methanol (58.42%) fractions. A marked (p < 0.001) muscle relaxant activity was noticed against the isolated compound (71.09%), followed by ethyl acetate (66.98%) and methanol (67.10%) fractions. Regarding the sedative effect, a significant action was noted against the isolated compound (71.09%), followed by ethyl acetate (66.98%) and methanol (67.10%) fractions. Furthermore, the binding modes of the isolated compounds were explored using molecular docking. The molecular docking study revealed that the isolated compound possessed good binding affinity for COX2 and GABA. Our isolated compound may possess inhibitory activity against COX2 and GABA receptors. CONCLUSION: The extract and isolated compounds of Ficus benghalensis can be used as analgesics, muscle relaxants, and sedatives. However, detailed molecular and functional analyses are essential to ascertain their function as muscle relaxants, analgesics, and sedatives. Show more

Keywords: Ficus benghalensis, Moraceae, carpachromene, analgesic, muscle relaxant, sedative, molecular docking

DOI: 10.3233/THC-231703

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 4019-4030, 2024

Authors: Li, Zhaoxi | Guo, Xiaohui | Shi, Wei | He, Rongxia | Zhong, Hua

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Electronic foetal monitoring (EFM), a method to monitor foetal intrauterine conditions and foetal reserve capacity, is the most extensively used intrauterine monitoring technology in obstetrics. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to compare the Thoth wearable foetal electrocardiogram (foetal ECG [FECG]) monitoring system with a traditional Doppler foetal heart monitoring system before labour to investigate their respective values in clinical application. METHODS: A total of 393 pregnant women admitted to our hospital between 2020 and 2022 participated in this study. They were recruited using the convenience sampling method. We employed a paired design to …assess the confusion rate, trend overlap, and foetal heart rate/ECG monitoring consistency, whereas a completely randomised design was used to measure pregnancy outcome indicators. The participants were divided into two groups using a random number table: the Thoth group (n = 196) and the traditional Doppler group (n = 197). Each group was monitored using the corresponding system. RESULTS: The Thoth monitor demonstrated a lower confusion rate compared with the traditional Doppler monitor (0.25% vs 2.04%; χ 2 = 5.508, P = 0.019). The trend overlap in foetal heart rates was consistently 100%, with 91.2% of readings showing a consistency rate of ⩾ 95%. Additionally, the Thoth monitor recorded a higher cumulative interruption time in the foetal heart rate curve (12.13 ± 2.22 vs 21.02 ± 2.34; t = 18.471, P < 0.001) and more abnormal ECGs (21.21 ± 4.32 vs 18.21 ± 2.91; t = 7.582, P < 0.001) than the traditional Doppler system. CONCLUSION: The Thoth wearable FECG monitor offers several advantages over the traditional Doppler foetal heart monitoring system. These include a reduced confusion rate, more accurate data collection, a lower rate of clinical misjudgement, reduced workload for medical staff, and enhanced comfort during vaginal delivery. The rates of emergency caesarean sections and neonatal asphyxia in the Thoth group were marginally lower than those in the Doppler group, which may be attributed to issues such as ECG disconnection or interference from the maternal heart rate. Show more

Keywords: Foetal heart monitoring, foetal ECG monitor, Thoth wearable device, Doppler device, heart rates

DOI: 10.3233/THC-231752

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 4031-4040, 2024

Authors: Wang, Zuoshan | Wang, Shilin | Wang, Manya | Sun, Yan

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Healthcare is crucial to patient care because it provides vital services for maintaining and restoring health. As healthcare technology evolves, cutting-edge tools facilitate faster diagnosis and more effective patient treatment. In the present age of pandemics, the Internet of Things (IoT) offers a potential solution to the problem of patient safety monitoring by creating a massive quantity of data about the patient through the linked devices around them and then analyzing it to estimate the patient’s current status. Utilizing the IoT-based meta-heuristic algorithm allows patients to be remotely monitored, resulting in timely diagnosis and improved care. Meta-heuristic algorithms …are successful, resilient, and effective in solving real-world enhancement, clustering, predicting, and grouping. Healthcare organizations need an efficient method for dealing with big data since the prevalence of such data makes it challenging to analyze for diagnosis. The current techniques used in medical diagnostics have limitations due to imbalanced data and the overfitting issue. OBJECTIVE: This study introduces the particle swarm optimization and convolutional neural network to be used as a meta-heuristic optimization method for extensive data analysis in the IoT to monitor patients’ health conditions. METHOD: Particle Swarm Optimization is used to optimize the data used in the study. Information for a diabetes diagnosis model that includes cardiac risk forecasting is collected. Particle Swarm Optimization and Convolutional Neural Networks (PSO-CNN) results effectively make illness predictions. Support Vector Machine has been used to predict the possibility of a heart attack based on the classification of the collected data into projected abnormal and normal ranges for diabetes. RESULTS: The results of the simulations reveal that the PSO-CNN model used to predict diabetic disease increased in accuracy by 92.6%, precision by 92.5%, recall by 93.2%, F1-score by 94.2%, and quantization error by 4.1%. CONCLUSION: The suggested approach could be applied to identify cancer cells. Show more

Keywords: Healthcare, disease diagnosis, meta-heuristic algorithm, IoT, patient monitoring, Particle Swarm Optimization, convolutional neural network, diabetes, cardiac risk forecasting, support vector machine, cancer cells

DOI: 10.3233/THC-231755

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 4041-4061, 2024

Authors: Jiang, Yangzheng | Yang, Jiantao | Tian, Hui | Jiang, Chuan | Wang, Hongzhu

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Flatfoot (pes planus) is a common foot deformity, and its causes are mainly related to age, gender, weight, and genetics. Previous studies have shown that custom-made insoles could have a positive effect in improving plantar pressure and symptoms in individuals with flexible flatfeet, but it remains to be explored whether they can still show benefits in daily walking on different slopes. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to investigate a custom-made insole based on plantar pressure redistribution and to verify its effectiveness by gait analysis on different slopes. METHODS: We recruited 10 subjects and …compared the peak pressure and impulse in each area between custom-made insole (CI) and ordinary insole (OI) groups. RESULTS: The results illustrate that CI raises the pressure in T area, improves the ability of the subjects to move forward in the slope walking, which was beneficial to gait stability. CONCLUSION: The redistribution of pressure in MF and MH area is promoted to provide active protection for subjects. Meanwhile, CI could decrease the impulse in MF area during uphill and level walking, which effectively reduces the accumulation of fatigue during gait. Moreover, avoiding downhill walking could be able to protect foot from injury in daily life. Show more

Keywords: Flatfoot, custom-made insole, slope, pressure, impulse

DOI: 10.3233/THC-231785

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 4063-4075, 2024

Authors: Yang, Ping | Wu, Xiaoneng

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: The objective performance evaluation of an athlete is essential to allow detailed research into elite sports. The automatic identification and classification of football teaching and training exercises overcome the shortcomings of manual analytical approaches. Video monitoring is vital in detecting human conduct acts and preventing or reducing inappropriate actions in time. The video’s digital material is classified by relevance depending on those individual actions. OBJECTIVE: The research goal is to systematically use the data from an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and data from computer vision analysis for the deep Learning of football teaching motion recognition …(DL-FTMR). There has been a search for many libraries. The studies included have examined and analyzed training through profound model construction learning methods. Investigations show the ability to distinguish the efficiency of qualified and less qualified officers for sport-specific video-based decision-making assessments. METHODS: Video-based research is an effective way of assessing decision-making due to the potential to present changing in-game decision-making scenarios more environmentally friendly than static picture printing. The data showed that the filtering accuracy of responses is improved without losing response time. This observation indicates that practicing with a video monitoring system offers a play view close to that seen in a game scenario. It can be an essential way to improve the perception of selection precision. This study discusses publicly accessible training datasets for Human Activity Recognition (HAR) and presents a dataset that combines various components. The study also used the UT-Interaction dataset to identify complex events. RESULTS: Thus, the experimental results of DL-FTMR give a performance ratio of 94.5%, behavior processing ratio of 92.4%, athletes energy level ratio of 92.5%, interaction ratio of 91.8%, prediction ratio of 92.5%, sensitivity ratio of 93.7%, and the precision ratio of 94.86% compared to the optimized convolutional neural network (OCNN), Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM), you only look once (YOLO), Human Activity Recognition- state-of-the-art methodologies (HAR-SAM). CONCLUSION: This finding proves that exercising a video monitoring system that provides a play view similar to that seen in a game scenario can be a valuable technique to increase selection accuracy perception. Show more

Keywords: Football, training, deep learning, video surveillance, skills, detection

DOI: 10.3233/THC-231860

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 4077-4096, 2024

Authors: Zhao, Dechun | Luo, Zixin | Yao, Mingcai | Wei, Li | Qin, Lu | Wang, Ziqiong

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: The local field potential (LFP) signals are a vital signal for studying the mechanisms of deep brain stimulation (DBS) and constructing adaptive DBS containing information related to the motor symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (PD). OBJECTIVE: A Parkinson’s disease state identification algorithm based on the feature extraction strategy of transfer learning was proposed. METHODS: The algorithm uses continuous wavelet transform (CWT) to convert one-dimensional LFP signals into two-dimensional gray-scalogram images and color images respectively, and designs a Bayesian optimized random forest (RF) classifier to replace the three fully connected layers for the classification …task in the VGG16 model, to realize automatic identification of the pathological state of PD patients. RESULTS: It was found that consistently superior performance of gray-scalogram images over color images. The proposed algorithm achieved an accuracy of 97.76%, precision of 99.01%, recall of 96.47%, and F1-score of 97.73%, outperforming feature extractors such as VGG19, InceptionV3, ResNet50, and the lightweight network MobileNet. CONCLUSIONS: This algorithm has high accuracy and can distinguish the disease states of PD patients without manual feature extraction, effectively assisting the working of doctors. Show more

Keywords: Parkinson’s disease, deep brain stimulation, local field potential, transfer learning, state identification

DOI: 10.3233/THC-231929

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 32, no. 6, pp. 4097-4107, 2024