Technology and Health Care - Volume 27, issue S1

Authors: Gómez, Carlos | Schwarzacher, Severin P.

Article Type: Research Article

DOI: 10.3233/THC-199001

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 27, no. S1, pp. 1-, 2019

Authors: Wei, Qun | Lee, Jyung Hyun | Park, Hee-Joon

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Children struggle to fall asleep by themselves because of their physiological characteristics. Therefore, research has been carried on various devices (such as a smartphone) to assist in improving the sleep quality of children. However, all such devices need to be controlled by parents and do not have functions for monitoring the sleep environment. OBJECTIVE: In this paper, a smart sleep-lighting system that includes a sleep-lighting device and a smartphone dongle is developed to improve the sleep environment of children. METHODS: The temperature, humidity, and luminance of the sleep environment are monitored and analyzed …by the sleep-lighting device to control multi-color light and audio components. The colored light emitted by the multi-color light can be adjusted to improve the sleep atmosphere. Also, the audio component can play white noise to induce sleep. In addition, parents can use a smartphone dongle with a multi-channel wireless communication method to monitor and control one or more lighting devices in different locations in real time. RESULTS: For environmental monitoring, average difference between proposed device and commercial sensor from chamber setting temperature 15 ∘ C to 35 ∘ C was 0.588 ∘ C ± 0.10 ∘ C, and average error value of the humidity measurement was 0.74% at 40% ∼ 60% RH. Also, the manufactured sleep-lighting device shows good performance in multi-color light emission, and playing of white noise. As result, the smartphone connected to the proposed smartphone dongle enables monitoring and control of the proposed lighting device in a wireless well. CONCLUSIONS: The manufactured sleep-lighting device has a high-precision temperature and humidity sensor and a luminance sensor that can accurately monitor the sleeping environment. The lighting device can play white noise to induce sleep in children. Also, a multi-color LED light is operated via a smartphone application to improve the sleep atmosphere. The measured data will be sent to the lighting device and processed together with sleep environment data in order to improve the sleep quality. Additionally, the final system will be tested for real end-users with clinical experiments by sleep research center of a university hospital. Show more

Keywords: Children, sleep environment, sleep aid, mood light, wireless multi-channel communication, smartphone dongle

DOI: 10.3233/THC-199002

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 27, no. S1, pp. 3-13, 2019

Authors: Seo, Jung-Suk | Kim, Sukwon

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: A load carrying task was identified as a major factor leading to slip and fall injuries such as overexertion and bodily reaction. Holding a load in front of the body while walking would shift the whole body center-of-mass to the front, loading additional rotational torque at the foot-ground contact. OBJECTIVES: The present study evaluated if carrying a load would increase the likelihood of slip initiation and the slip severity. METHODS: Eleven young and 10 older adults participated in the present study. A dry surface or a slippery surface was introduced while walking. …Slip distance, peak sliding heel velocity, heel contact velocity, and required coefficient of friction were measured to test the study hypotheses. RESULTS: The results showed that significant main effects were found in slip distance, and peak sliding heel velocity and no main effect were found in heel contact velocity and required coefficient of friction. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, younger adults were found to slip longer and faster on the slippery surface while carrying a load. On the contrary, the older adults employed a safety-centered gait adaptation while carrying, to maintain slip initiation and severity characteristics at the same level as normal walking. Furthermore, light load carriage at 10% of body weight was suggested as a safe task for the elderly. Show more

Keywords: Load, COM, RCOF, slips, falls

DOI: 10.3233/THC-199003

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 27, no. S1, pp. 15-22, 2019

Authors: Man, Honghao | Xu, Yongtao | Zhao, Zhenming | Zhang, Shupei | Lv, Renhua | Chi, Xianglin | Li, Xia | Zhang, Zhaoqiang

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Patent foramen ovale (PFO) and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) are independent risk factors for young conscious stroke which may also be concomitant symptoms with it. But there is no sufficient attention on these phenomena. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the relationship between PFO, OSA and young stroke, and to look for proper treatment. METHODS: Three patients with young conscious stroke were reported, each of them was combined with PFO and OSA. All patients were diagnosed as wake-up stroke (WUS). Contrast-enhanced transcranial doppler ultrasound (c-TCD) and polysomnography (PSG) test were used for auxiliary diagnosis. RESULTS: …Right-to-left shunts and moderate to severe sleep apnea were observed. Increased body mass index (BMI), hemoglobin (HGB) and hematocrit (HCT) index were also observed. After continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy, the number of microbubbles was reduced in one patient. CONCLUSIONS: These suggest that coexistence of PFO and OSA may associate with a greater risk of youth stroke. Decrease risk of stroke might occur if treating with CPAP in patients with OSA. Show more

Keywords: Youth stroke, obstructive sleep apnea, patent foramen ovale, wake-up stroke, transcranial doppler, sleep monitoring

DOI: 10.3233/THC-199004

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 27, no. S1, pp. 23-30, 2019

Authors: Gao, Yongsheng | Luo, Yang | Zhao, Jie | Li, Qiang

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: In the practical implementation of control of electromyography (sEMG) driven devices, algorithms should recognize the human’s motion from sEMG with fast speed and high accuracy. This study proposes two feature engineering (FE) techniques, namely, feature-vector resampling and time-lag techniques, to improve the accuracy and speed of least square support vector machine (LSSVM) for wrist palmar angle estimation from sEMG feature. The root mean square error and correlation coefficients of LSSVM with FE are 9.50 ± 2.32 degree and 0.971 ± 0.018 respectively. The average training time and average execution time of LSSVM with FE …in processing 12600 sEMG points are 0.016 s and 0.053 s respectively. To evaluate the proposed algorithm, its estimation results are compared with those of three other methods, namely, LSSVM, radial basis function (RBF) neural network, and RBF with FE. Experimental results verify that introduction of time-lag into feature vector can greatly improve the estimation accuracy of both RBF and LSSVM; meanwhile the application of feature-vector resampling technique can significantly increase the training and execution speed of RBF neural network and LSSVM. Among different algorithms applied in this study, LSSVM with FE techniques performed best in terms of training and execution speed, as well as estimation accuracy. Show more

Keywords: Least square support vector machine, feature engineering, angle estimation, electromyograph

DOI: 10.3233/THC-199005

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 27, no. S1, pp. 31-46, 2019

Authors: Altikardes, Zehra Aysun | Kayikli, Abdulkadir | Korkmaz, Hayriye | Erdal, Hasan | Baba, Ahmet Fevzi | Fak, Ali Serdar

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: In the classical process, it was proven that ABPM data were the most significant attributes both by physician and ranking algorithms for dipper/non-dipper pattern classification as mentioned in our previous papers. To explore if any algorithm exists that would let the physician skip this diagnosis step is the main motivation of the study. OBJECTIVE: The main goal of the study is to build up a classification model that could reach a high-performance metrics by excluding ABPM data in hypertensive and non-diabetic patients. METHODS: The data used in this research have been drawn …from 29 hypertensive patients without diabetes in endocrinology clinic of Marmara University in 2011. Five of 29 patient data were later removed from the dataset because of null data. RESULTS: The findings showed that dipper/non-dipper pattern can be classified by artificial neural network algorithms, the highest achieved performance metrics are accuracy 87.5%, sensitivity 71%, and specificity 94%. CONCLUSIONS: This novel method uses just two attributes: Ewing-score and HRREP. It offers a fast and low-cost solution when compared with the current diagnosis procedure. This attribute reduction method could be beneficial for different diseases using a big dataset. Show more

Keywords: Hypertension, dipper, non-dipper, ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, classification, attribute reduction

DOI: 10.3233/THC-199006

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 27, no. S1, pp. 47-57, 2019

Authors: Korkmaz, Hayriye | Canayaz, Emre | Birtane Akar, Sibel | Altikardes, Zehra Aysun

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: In 2005, global cardiovascular diseases caused 30% of deaths in Europe, which is 46% of total deaths for all death groups. Today, according to the International Adult Diabetes Federation, 20% to 25% of the adult population in the world has Metabolic Syndrome. Turkish Statistical Institute claims that in Turkey 408782 people died of circulatory system diseases in 2016 and it is expected that numbers will dramatically increase. In 2003, total worldwide healthcare budget of Diabetes Mellitus was up to 64.9 billion International Dollars with the continuing rise in prevalence, it is expected that total costs will increase to 396 billion …International Dollars by 2025. The main purpose of this study was to present a clinical decision support system that calculates Metabolic Syndrome existence and evaluate HeartScore risk level for Turkish population. The second objective was to create a detailed personal report about individual’s risk level of Metabolic Syndrome and HeartScore and give advice to him/her to reduce it. The fuzzy logic risk assessment system (FLRAS) was formed in LabVIEW graphical development platform according to International Diabetes Federation and European Heart Journal’s criteria. Mamdani type fuzzy logic sets were identified for each input variable and membership functions were assigned depending on the magnitude of the input limits. System’s performance was tested on 96 (72 females, 24 males) patient data. Results show that the proposed system was able to evaluate the Metabolic Syndrome risk with 0.9285 specificity, 0.92708 accuracy and 0.925 sensitivity. Show more

Keywords: Fuzzy logic, decision support system, automatic report generation, individualized medical advices

DOI: 10.3233/THC-199007

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 27, no. S1, pp. 59-66, 2019

Authors: Ren, Yifei | Du, Junyi | Du, Xianchao | Xin, Guobin | Chang, Jing | Zhou, Hong | Hao, Hongxia

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: In recent years, drug-abuse problem is growing by leaps and bounds all over the world. The master minds spearheading its proliferation among the youth are difficult to identify, so drug-abuse case has become a hard nut to crack even with the help of best international experts in forensic science and criminology. Because most nations have tightened their controls on traditional drugs, the younger generation is now hooked onto new-type drugs: 1-(3- trifluoromethylphenyl) piperazine (TFMPP), 1-(3-chlorophenyl) piperazine (mCPP) and other new piperazine-drugs, acting as hallucinogens like ‘ecstasy’, are being consumed by vulnerable masses all over the world. However, only few research …studies have focused on developing highly effective detection methods for TFMPP and mCPP in biological fluids; the number of detection methods for these new-type drugs is almost nil in China. Therefore, it is difficult to detect and prevent drug abuse cases related to piperazine drugs in China. There is an urgent need to develop some simple, fast, and reliable methods for detecting piperazine-drugs in vulnerable masses. Thus, the development of novel detection methods with high sensitivity and selectivity is a difficult task for the officials working in the department of forensic science in China. In this work, a new method was developed for the detection of piperazine derivatives: it was performed under the various specific conditions required for conducting chromatography and mass spectrometry analysis. With this novel method, TFMPP and mCPP was successfully detected with high accuracy in various biological samples. By comparing the purification effect of different solid-phase extraction columns for TFMPP and mCPP in biological fluids (urine and blood), we confirmed the validity of the novel method. In addition, this method has good linear relationship and a low detection line when GC/MS was performed for detecting TFMPP, mCPP in the biological fluids (urine and blood). It is a simple, reproducible method that is highly specific in the detection of piperazine-drugs. Thus, it is indeed a reliable method in forensic science. Show more

Keywords: 1-[3-(Trifluoromethyl) phenyl] piperazine, 1-(3-Chlorophenyl) piperazine, TFMPP, mCPP, piperazine derivatives, GC-MS, biological fluids, forensic drug, toxicology tests

DOI: 10.3233/THC-199008

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 27, no. S1, pp. 67-84, 2019

Authors: Wang, Sai | Zhang, Hui | Chai, Hua | Liang, Yong

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: Biomarker selection or feature selection from survival data is a topic of considerable interest. Recently various survival analysis approaches for biomarker selection have been developed; however, there are growing challenges to currently methods for handling high-dimensional and low-sample problem. We propose a novel Log-sum regularization estimator within accelerated failure time (AFT) for predicting cancer patient survival time with a few biomarkers. This approach is implemented in path seeking algorithm to speed up solving the Log-sum penalty. Additionally, the control parameter of Log-sum penalty is modified by Bayesian information criterion (BIC). The results indicate that our proposed approach is able to …achieve good performance in both simulated and real datasets with other ℓ 1 type regularization methods for biomarker selection. Show more

Keywords: Biomarker selection, Log-sum regularization, path seeking scheme, Bayesian information criterion

DOI: 10.3233/THC-199009

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 27, no. S1, pp. 85-93, 2019

Authors: Wu, Keng-Yi | Chen, Wei-Ting | Kuo, Hsun-Nan | Pan, Lung-Fa | Pan, Lung-Kwang

Article Type: Research Article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Effective and skin doses gain much attention since the cardiac catheterization laboratory (CCL) is a place where both patients and medical staff are exposed to X-ray or fluoroscopy environment and gain a cumulative dose during the cardiac interventional procedure. OBJECTIVE: These doses for pediatric and adult patients undergone cardiac interventional examination using five PMMA phantoms and thermoluminescence dosimeter (TLD)/ionization chamber technique were estimated in this work with the further clinical verification. METHODS: Five PMMA phantoms (10, 30, 50, 70, and 90 kg) were customized to represent baby, child, adult female, adult male, and …overweight adult (by Asian complexion standards), respectively, in accordance with the ICRU-48 report. Each phantom could be disassembled into 31 plates to insert TLD chips for measuring X-ray exposed dose or assisted with an auxiliary plate to insert high-sensitivity ionization chamber for surveying low-energy fluoroscopy dose. RESULTS: The data acquired from five phantoms were integrated into four semi-empirical formulas, in order to fit the binary quadratic form “Dose = A⋅ BMI 2 +B⋅ DAP 2 +C⋅ BMI + D⋅ DAP +E”. The latter linked the X-ray and fluoroscopy effective/skin doses, respectively, with a high coefficient of determination R 2 (from 0.888 to 0.986). CONCLUSIONS: The model refinement with DAP share adjustment is envisaged. Show more

Keywords: Effective dose, TLD, cardiac interventional examination, phantom, semi-empirical formula

DOI: 10.3233/THC-199010

Citation: Technology and Health Care, vol. 27, no. S1, pp. 95-108, 2019