Description:
The extraction of Bag of Visual Words (BoVW) features from retinal images for automated classification has been shown to be effective but computationally expensive. Histogram and co-variance matrix features do not generally result in models that have the same predictive accuracy as BoVW and are still computationally expensive. The discovery of features that result in accurate image classification on computationally constrained devices such as smartphones would enable new and promising applications for image classification. For example, smartphone retinal cameras can conceivably make diabetic retinopathy widely available and potentially reduce undiagnosed retinopathy if it could be achieved with computationally simple classification algorithms. A novel image feature extraction technique inspired by N-grams in text mining, called 'Pixel N-grams' is described that can serve this purpose. Results on mammogram and texture classification have shown high accuracy despite the reduced computational complexity. However retinal scan classification results using Pixel N-grams lag behind BoVW approaches. An explanation for the relative poor performance of Pixel N-grams with diabetic retinopathy that draws on concepts associated with the No Free Lunch theorem are presented.
Description:
Gene Regulatory Networks (GRNs) offer enhanced insight into the biological functions and biochemical pathways of cells associated with gene regulatory mechanisms. However, obtaining accurate GRNs that explain gene expressions and functional associations remains a difficult task. Only a few studies have incorporated heuristics into a GRN discovery process. Doing so has the potential to improve accuracy and reduce the search space and computational time. A technique for GRN discovery that integrates heuristic information into the discovery process is advanced. The approach incorporates three elements: 1) a novel 2D visualized coexpression function that measures the association between genes; 2) a post-processing step that improves detection of up, down and self-regulation and 3) the application of heuristics to generate a Hub network as the backbone of the GRN. Using available microarray and next generation sequencing data from Escherichia coli, six synthetic benchmark GRN datasets were generated with the neighborhood addition and cluster addition methods available in SynTReN. Results of the novel 2D-visualization co-expression function were compared with results obtained using Pearson's correlation and mutual information. The performance of the biological genetics-based heuristics consisting of the 2D-Visualized Co-expression function, post-processing and Hub network was then evaluated by comparing the performance to the GRNs obtained by ARACNe and CLR. The 2D-Visualized Co-expression function significantly improved gene-gene association matching compared to Pearson's correlation coefficient (t = 3.46, df = 5, p = 0.02) and Mutual Information (t = 4.42, df = 5, p = 0.007). The heuristics model gave a 60% improvement against ARACNe (p = 0.02) and CLR (p = 0.019). Analysis of Escherichia coli data suggests that the GRN discovery technique proposed is capable of identifying significant transcriptional regulatory interactions and the corresponding regulatory networks.
Description:
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) constitute evidence of online health information management. Critical healthcare information technology (HIT) infrastructure facilitates health information exchange of 'modern' health systems. The growth and implementation of EHRs are progressing in many countries while the adoption rate is lagging and lacking momentum amidst privacy and security concerns. This paper uses an interrupted time series (ITS) analysis of OECD data related to EHRs from many countries to make predictions about EHR adoption. The ITS model can be used to explore the impact of various HIT on adoption. Assumptions about the impact of Information Accountability are entered into the model to generate projections if information accountability technologies are developed. In this way, the OECD data and ITS analysis can be used to perform simulations for improving EHR adoption.
Description:
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) constitute evidence of online health information management. Critical healthcare information technology (HIT) infrastructure facilitates health information exchange of 'modern' health systems. The growth and implementation of EHRs are progressing in many countries while the adoption rate is lagging and lacking momentum amidst privacy and security concerns. This paper uses an interrupted time series (ITS) analysis of OECD data related to EHRs from many countries to make predictions about EHR adoption. The ITS model can be used to explore the impact of various HIT on adoption. Assumptions about the impact of Information Accountability are entered into the model to generate projections if information accountability technologies are developed. In this way, the OECD data and ITS analysis can be used to perform simulations for improving EHR adoption.
Description:
Objectives The aim of the current study is to generate waist circumference to height ratio cut-off values for obesity categories from a model of the relationship between body mass index and waist circumference to height ratio. We compare the waist circumference to height ratio discovered in this way with cut-off values currently prevalent in practice that were originally derived using pragmatic criteria. Method Personalized data including age, gender, height, weight, waist circumference and presence of diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease for 847 participants over eight years were assembled from participants attending a rural Australian health review clinic (DiabHealth). Obesity was classified based on the conventional body mass index measure (weight/height(2)) and compared to the waist circumference to height ratio. Correlations between the measures were evaluated on the screening data, and independently on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey that included age categories. Results This article recommends waist circumference to height ratio cut-off values based on an Australian rural sample and verified using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey database that facilitates the classification of obesity in clinical practice. Gender independent cut-off values are provided for waist circumference to height ratio that identify healthy (waist circumference to height ratio >= 0.45), overweight (0.53) and the three obese (0.60, 0.68, 0.75) categories verified on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey dataset. A strong linearity between the waist circumference to height ratio and the body mass index measure is demonstrated. Conclusion The recommended waist circumference to height ratio cut-off values provided a useful index for assessing stages of obesity and risk of chronic disease for improved healthcare in clinical practice.
Description:
Objectives The aim of the current study is to generate waist circumference to height ratio cut-off values for obesity categories from a model of the relationship between body mass index and waist circumference to height ratio. We compare the waist circumference to height ratio discovered in this way with cut-off values currently prevalent in practice that were originally derived using pragmatic criteria. Method Personalized data including age, gender, height, weight, waist circumference and presence of diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease for 847 participants over eight years were assembled from participants attending a rural Australian health review clinic (DiabHealth). Obesity was classified based on the conventional body mass index measure (weight/height(2)) and compared to the waist circumference to height ratio. Correlations between the measures were evaluated on the screening data, and independently on data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey that included age categories. Results This article recommends waist circumference to height ratio cut-off values based on an Australian rural sample and verified using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey database that facilitates the classification of obesity in clinical practice. Gender independent cut-off values are provided for waist circumference to height ratio that identify healthy (waist circumference to height ratio >= 0.45), overweight (0.53) and the three obese (0.60, 0.68, 0.75) categories verified on the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey dataset. A strong linearity between the waist circumference to height ratio and the body mass index measure is demonstrated. Conclusion The recommended waist circumference to height ratio cut-off values provided a useful index for assessing stages of obesity and risk of chronic disease for improved healthcare in clinical practice.
Description:
Continuous monitoring of patient's physiological signs has the potential to augment traditional medical practice, particularly in developing countries that have a shortage of healthcare professionals. However, continuously streamed data presents additional security, storage and retrieval challenges and further inhibits initiatives to integrate data to form electronic health record systems. Blockchain technologies enable data to be stored securely and inexpensively without recourse to a trusted authority. Blockchain technologies also promise to provide architectures for electronic health records that do not require huge government expenditure that challenge developing nations. However, Blockchain deployment, particularly with streamed data challenges existing Blockchain algorithms that take too long to place data in a block, and have no mechanism to determine whether every data point in every stream should be stored in such a secure way. This article presents an architecture that involves a Patient Agent, coordinating the insertion of continuous data streams into Blockchains to form an electronic health record.
Description:
Studies in Health Technology and Informatics
Description:
Texture image classification is very useful in many domains. It has been tried using statistical, spectral and structural approaches. A novel Pixel N-grams technique has emerged for image feature extraction recently. The aim of this paper is to analyse the efficacy of Pixel N-grams technique for texture image classification in comparison with the traditional techniques namely Intensity histogram, Haralick’s features based on co-occurrence matrix and state-of-the-art Bag-of-Visual-Words (BoVW). The experiments were carried out on the benchmark UIUC texture dataset using SVM classifier. The classification performance was compared using Fscore, Recall and Precision. The classification results using Pixel N-gram were significantly better than that using Intensity histogram and Haralick features whereas, they were comparable with the BoVW approach.
Description:
The Internet of Things (IoT) has facilitated services without human intervention for a wide range of applications, including continuous remote patient monitoring (RPM). However, the complexity of RPM architectures, the size of data sets generated and limited power capacity of devices make RPM challenging. In this paper, we propose a tier-based End to End architecture for continuous patient monitoring that has a patient centric agent (PCA) as its center piece. The PCA manages a blockchain component to preserve privacy when data streaming from body area sensors needs to be stored securely. The PCA based architecture includes a lightweight communication protocol to enforce security of data through different segments of a continuous, real time patient monitoring architecture. The architecture includes the insertion of data into a personal blockchain to facilitate data sharing amongst healthcare professionals and integration into electronic health records while ensuring privacy is maintained. The blockchain is customized for RPM with modifications that include having the PCA select a Miner to reduce computational effort, enabling the PCA to manage multiple blockchains for the same patient, and the modification of each block with a prefix tree to minimize energy consumption and incorporate secure transaction payments. Simulation results demonstrate that security and privacy can be enhanced in RPM with the PCA based End to End architecture.
Description:
The Internet of Things (IoT) has facilitated services without human intervention for a wide range of applications, including continuous remote patient monitoring (RPM). However, the complexity of RPM architectures, the size of data sets generated and limited power capacity of devices make RPM challenging. In this paper, we propose a tier-based End to End architecture for continuous patient monitoring that has a patient centric agent (PCA) as its center piece. The PCA manages a blockchain component to preserve privacy when data streaming from body area sensors needs to be stored securely. The PCA based architecture includes a lightweight communication protocol to enforce security of data through different segments of a continuous, real time patient monitoring architecture. The architecture includes the insertion of data into a personal blockchain to facilitate data sharing amongst healthcare professionals and integration into electronic health records while ensuring privacy is maintained. The blockchain is customized for RPM with modifications that include having the PCA select a Miner to reduce computational effort, enabling the PCA to manage multiple blockchains for the same patient, and the modification of each block with a prefix tree to minimize energy consumption and incorporate secure transaction payments. Simulation results demonstrate that security and privacy can be enhanced in RPM with the PCA based End to End architecture.
Description:
Scoring systems such as the Glasgow-Coma scale used to assess consciousness AusDrisk to assess the risk of diabetes, are prevalent in clinical practice. Scoring systems typically include relevant variables with ordinal values where each value is assigned a weight. Weights for selected values are summed and compared to thresholds for health care professionals to rapidly generate a score. Scoring systems are prevalent in clinical practice because they are easy and quick to use. However, most scoring systems comprise many variables and require some time to calculate an final score. Further, expensive population-wide studies are required to validate a scoring system. In this article, we present a new approach for the generation of a scoring system. The approach uses a search procedure invoking iterative decision tree induction to identify a suite of scoring rules, each of which requires values on only two variables. Twelve scoring rules were discovered using the approach, from an Australian screening program for the assessment of Type 2 Diabetes risk. However, classifications from the 12 rules can conflict. In this paper we argue that a simple rule preference relation is sufficient for the resolution of rule conflicts.
Description:
Many complementary and alternative medical practices (CAM) are readily assessable in Australia alongside Allopathic practitioners. Although CAM practices are prevalent, little is known about how patients seek and use information when deciding which system to consult. We report some preliminary findings of a longitudinal study, designed to solicit factors that influence the Australian public when selecting from diverse medical systems. Fifty-four general public participants, willing to provide their confidential and anonymous opinion were included. The magnitudes of importance, critical in influencing factors, were screened. Results indicated a medical system was selected for its effectiveness, safety, credentials and care (p<0.001). Consultation time, convenience, cost, empowerment and rapport were less important factors (p<0.001) influencing selection of a medical system. The level of choices by participants [χ2 (1, N=54) = 53.445, p<0.001] follow similar trends found for those in conventional medical systems. This contrasts with findings in other locations, where cost and time were major contributing factors when selecting medical systems.
Description:
Background: This regional pilot site ‘end-user attitudes’ study explored nurses’ experiences and impressions of using the Nurses’ Behavioural Assistant (NBA) (a knowledge-based, interactive ehealth system) to assist them to better respond to behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) and will be reported here. Methods: Focus groups were conducted, followed by a four-week pilot site ‘end-user attitudes’ trial of the NBA at a regional aged care residential facility (ACRF). Brief interviews were conducted with consenting nursing staff. Results: Focus group feedback (N = 10) required only minor cosmetic changes to the NBA prototype. Post pilot site end-user interview data (N = 10) indicated that the regional ACRF nurses were positive and enthusiastic about the NBA, however several issues were also identified. Conclusions: Overall the results supported the utility of the NBA to promote a person centred care approach to managing BPSD. Slight modifications may be required to maximise its uptake across all ACRF nursing staff.
Description:
Heart rate variability (HRV) measures including the standard deviation of inter-beat variations (SDNN) require at least 5 min of ECG recordings to accurately measure HRV. In this paper, we predict, using counts data derived from a 3-min ECG recording, the 5-min SDNN and also detect premature ventricular contraction (PVC) beats with a high degree of accuracy. The approach uses counts data combined with a Poisson-generated function that requires minimal computational resources and is well suited to remote patient monitoring with wearable sensors that have limited power, storage and processing capacity. The ease of use and accuracy of the algorithm provide opportunity for accurate assessment of HRV and reduce the time taken to review patients in real time. The PVC beat detection is implemented using the same count data model together with knowledge-based rules derived from clinical knowledge.
Description:
Heart rate variability (HRV) measures including the standard deviation of inter-beat variations (SDNN) require at least 5 min of ECG recordings to accurately measure HRV. In this paper, we predict, using counts data derived from a 3-min ECG recording, the 5-min SDNN and also detect premature ventricular contraction (PVC) beats with a high degree of accuracy. The approach uses counts data combined with a Poisson-generated function that requires minimal computational resources and is well suited to remote patient monitoring with wearable sensors that have limited power, storage and processing capacity. The ease of use and accuracy of the algorithm provide opportunity for accurate assessment of HRV and reduce the time taken to review patients in real time. The PVC beat detection is implemented using the same count data model together with knowledge-based rules derived from clinical knowledge.
Description:
An effective relationship between business processes and their relevant strategies helps enterprises achieve their goals. As a business organisation changes quickly, business processes implement their relevant business operations for efficiency. It is important to know which business process achieves which business strategies dynamically. To the best of our knowledge, there exists a framework which aims to automatically determine the strategy-process relationship (Morrison et al. 2011). However, this framework can only work when the effect of the business process is known, but it is difficult to determine such effect accurately. Moreover, by optimising business processes to satisfy business strategies, higher efficiency may be achieved but there is a high chance of losing discriminative information. It therefore creates certain level of uncertainty in achieving accurate strategy-process relationship. To reduce this uncertainty and determine the relationship accurately between business processes and their relevant strategies as defined by business domain experts, in this paper, we introduce a rule-based inference model. This model not only helps business organisations realize which business processes need to be involved for the organisation to achieve their goals when strategies are made, but also reduces the possibility of losing important details from business process optimisation. We have developed a business case to validate our proposed model and the results show that our model can infer the relation accurately for each rule defined for the related business case.
Description:
The CRISP-DM methodology is commonly used in data analytics exercises within an organisation to provide system and structure to data mining processes. However, in providing a rigorous framework, CRISP-DM overlooks two facets of data analytics in organisational contexts; data mining exercises are far more agile and subject to change than presumed in CRISP-DM and central decisions regarding the interpretation of patterns discovered and the direction of analytics exercises are typically not made by individuals but by committees or groups within an organisation. The current study provides a case study of data mining in a hospital setting and suggests how the agile nature of an analytics exercise and the group reasoning inherent in key decisions can be accommodated within a CRISP-DM methodology.
Description:
The protocol diversities of mobile ad hoc have already got hold of the field to a peak of a matured and developed area. Still, the restraint of delay and bandwidth of mobile ad hoc network have kept a little room to draft a routing protocol for the pursuit of providing quality of service. In the paper, we proposed protocol namely Efficient Route Selection in Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing. We select the best path among multiple paths from source to destination using covariance and delay. We consider the delay, link stability and energy to devise a covariance-based metric to discover the most balanced path. We also propose a metric for the selection of a node that acts as a local backup node for the most vulnerable nodes on the selected path. We accomplish our implementation in NS3and it shows the more reliable path and less end to end delay than other counterpart protocols.
Description:
The protocol diversities of mobile ad hoc have already got hold of the field to a peak of a matured and developed area. Still, the restraint of delay and bandwidth of mobile ad hoc network have kept a little room to draft a routing protocol for the pursuit of providing quality of service. In the paper, we proposed protocol namely Efficient Route Selection in Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing. We select the best path among multiple paths from source to destination using covariance and delay. We consider the delay, link stability and energy to devise a covariance-based metric to discover the most balanced path. We also propose a metric for the selection of a node that acts as a local backup node for the most vulnerable nodes on the selected path. We accomplish our implementation in NS3and it shows the more reliable path and less end to end delay than other counterpart protocols.
Description:
In healthcare systems, medical devices help physicians and specialists in diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutics. As research shows, validation of medical devices is significantly optimized by accurate signal processing. Biomedical Signal and Image Processing in Patient Care is a pivotal reference source for progressive research on the latest development of applications and tools for healthcare systems. Featuring extensive coverage on a broad range of topics and perspectives such as telemedicine, human machine interfaces, and multimodal data fusion, this publication is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, students, and practitioners seeking current scholarly research on real-life technological inventions. In healthcare systems, medical devices help physicians and specialists in diagnosis, prognosis, and therapeutics. As research shows, validation of medical devices is significantly optimized by accurate signal processing. Biomedical Signal and Image Processing in Patient Care is a pivotal reference source for progressive research on the latest development of applications and tools for healthcare systems. Featuring extensive coverage on a broad range of topics and perspectives such as telemedicine, human machine interfaces, and multimodal data fusion, this publication is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, students, and practitioners seeking current scholarly research on real-life technological inventions.