18th IEEE Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems (CBMS'05)

The aim of this study was to develop a method of MR image analysis able to provide parameter(s) sensitive to bone microarchitecture changes in aging and osteoporosis onset and progression. The method has been built taking into account fractal properties of many anatomic and physiologic structures. Fractal lacunarity analysis has been used to determine relevant parameter(s) to differentiate among t... View full abstract»

Characteristics of tongue pose the most important information for traditional Chinese medicine diagnosis. So far, extensive studies have been made on extracting tongue surface features, but rarely refer to sublingual vein that is also diagnostically important. This paper presents a novel approach to extract spatial characteristics of sublingual vein based on the HSI color space using the H and S c... View full abstract»

In this paper we propose a method based on a graph-theoretical cluster analysis for automatically finding cluster of micro-calcifications in mammographic images. It is applied to the image after a micro-calcification detection phase and is able to cope with the unavoidable false positives that each automatic detection algorithm produces. The proposed approach has been tested on a standard database... View full abstract»

The success of skin transplantations depends on the adequate revascularization of the transplanted dermal matrix. To induce vessel growth or angiogenesis, pharmacological substances may be applied to the dermal matrix. The effectiveness of different such substances has been evaluated in laboratory experiments. For this purpose, the surface and length of newly grown vessels have to be measured in m... View full abstract»

In many fast MR imaging techniques, K-space is sampled sparsely in order to gain a fast traverse of K-space. These techniques use non-Cartesian sampling trajectories like radial, zigzag, and spiral. In the reconstruction procedure, usually interpolation methods are used to obtain missing samples on a regular grid. In this paper, we propose an iterative method for image reconstruction which uses th... View full abstract»

An automated methodology which detects transient events in EEG recordings and classifies those as epileptic spikes, muscle activity, eye blinking activity and sharp alpha activity is presented. It is based on data mining algorithms and includes four stages: (I) EEG preprocessing and transient events detection, (II) clustering of transient events and feature extraction, (III) feature discretization... View full abstract»

In recent years emphasis has been placed upon the early detection of voice pathologies by using the signal processing of voice to evaluate certain time and spectrum domain parameters which may infer the presence of pathology. The present work is aimed at establishing the suitability of these voice spectral parameters in fixing a clear distinction between pathologic and normophonic voice, and to fu... View full abstract»

The underlying reason for the local hyperthermia changes produced after a stimulus is not very well known and the relationship between local temperature changes and other physiological parameters has never been established. Current local temperature measurements are not completely accurate over time due to the physical constraints of the sensor, such as heat accumulation and dissipation. To clarif... View full abstract»

In this paper we present an application of robotic systems in minimally invasive surgery. We have assembled a bi-manual telemanipulator capable of delicate operations. Each robotic arm has eight degrees of freedom which enables free manipulation via trocar kinematics. In addition minimally invasive instruments were equipped with strain gauge force sensors that can measure forces along three transl... View full abstract»

The present paper reports a research project aimed at developing a cluster of clinical Institutions to share data and expertise in the fields of computational neuroanatomy. In particular, our first results concern a network system to transfer magnetic resonance (MR) images, explore and use Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM)-based reports in four remote clinical settings. The cluster is composed of a ce... View full abstract»

The NCRI Informatics Initiative is overseeing the implementation of an informatics framework for the UK cancer research community. The framework advocates an integrated multidisciplinary method of working between scientific and medical communities. Key to this process is community adoption of high quality acquisition, storage, sharing and integration of diverse data elements to improve knowledge o... View full abstract»

The nomadic nature of medical professionals can hinder their ability to access efficient medical tools at locations of their choice. The portability and connectivity characteristics of handheld medical devices can help resolve this issue. However, these handhelds have a physical size constraint inhibiting their system resource capacity. This limits their ability to support a wide range of medical ... View full abstract»

Developments in teleconferencing capabilities have made changes in work practices possible and are facilitating working partnerships between institutions. This study of a teleconferencing initiative examines how the work of a multi-disciplinary team (MDT) is affected by extending the meeting to remote locations. Challenges are highlighted, particularly in relation to the management of information ... View full abstract»

In this paper, we propose a feature subset selection method based on genetic algorithms to improve the performance of false positive reduction in lung nodule CAD. It is coupled with a classifier based on support vector machines. The proposed approach determines automatically the optimal size of the feature set and chooses the most relevant features from a feature pool. Its performance was tested u... View full abstract»

In the paper a new outlier prediction method is presented that should improve the classification performance when mining the medical data. The method introduces the class confusion score metric that is based on the classification results of a set of classifiers, induced by an evolutionary decision tree induction algorithm. The classification improvement should be achieved by removing the identifie... View full abstract»

The availability of modern imaging techniques such as confocal scanning laser tomography (CSLT) for capturing high-quality optic nerve images offer the potential for developing automatic and objective methods for supporting clinical decision-making in glaucoma. We present a hybrid approach that features the analysis of CSLT images using moment methods to derive abstract image defining features, an... View full abstract»

This paper has three contributions: 1) to evaluate how changing the a priori distribution of the training set affects the performance of a back-propagation feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) in predicting PreTerm Birth (PTB) for obstetrical patients, 2) to assess the effectiveness of the weight elimination cost function in improving the ANN's classification of PTB and in identifying a ne... View full abstract»

In this paper we introduce a novel method to extract from data and graphically represent the temporal relationships between events, called precedence temporal network. The new approach first derives events from time series by exploiting the temporal abstraction technique, then derives temporal precedence between abstractions in terms of association rules and finally expresses the relationships as ... View full abstract»

A guided interactive approach to computer-aided medical diagnosis is presented. This approach is based on dynamic taxonomies, a knowledge management model that allows the guided interactive exploration of complex information bases. The problem of the diagnosis of pathologies is recasted as a problem of exploring and thinning out candidate pathologies on the basis of symptoms and other observable f... View full abstract»