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A global optimisation approach to classification in medical diagnosis and prognosis

- Bagirov, Adil, Rubinov, Alex, Yearwood, John, Stranieri, Andrew

  • Authors: Bagirov, Adil , Rubinov, Alex , Yearwood, John , Stranieri, Andrew
  • Date: 2001
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: Paper presented at 34th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS-34, Maui, Hawaii, USA : 3rd-6th January 2001
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  • Description: In this paper global optimisation-based techniques are studied in order to increase the accuracy of medical diagnosis and prognosis with FNA image data from the Wisconsin Diagnostic and Prognostic Breast Cancer databases. First we discuss the problem of determining the most informative features for the classification of cancerous cases in the databases under consideration. Then we apply a technique based on convex and global optimisation to breast cancer diagnosis. It allows the classification of benign cases and malignant ones and the subsequent diagnosis of patients with very high accuracy. The third application of this technique is a method that calculates centres of clusters to predict when breast cancer is likely to recur in patients for which cancer has been removed. The technique achieves higher accuracy with these databases than reported elsewhere in the literature.
  • Description: 2003003950

Assessing health risk of reclaimed water using human cell culture

- Ackland, Margaret, Michalczyk, Agnes, Freestone, David, Stagnitti, Frank

  • Authors: Ackland, Margaret , Michalczyk, Agnes , Freestone, David , Stagnitti, Frank
  • Date: 2010
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Water Vol. 37, no. 8 (2010), p. 49-53
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  • Description: For risk analysis of reclaimed water, current animal and toxicity testing may not detect subtle effects such as interactions that could contribute to complex diseases such as cancers that develop over a long period of time. There is a need for assays that can be validated against known human physiological processes. We have previously validated sensitive human cell culture assays for their responsiveness to agents that induce carcinogenesis in vivo. In this initial study we analysed the effects of three batches of reclaimed water on human colonic cells. At concentrations of up to 10-fold, they had no significant effect on the cellular markers, indicating an overall lack of biological activity. The assay has potential but needs to be refined to maximise its sensitivity.

A fully automated breast cancer recognition system using discrete-gradient based clustering and multi category feature selection

- Ghosh, Ranadhir, Ghosh, Moumita, Yearwood, John

  • Authors: Ghosh, Ranadhir , Ghosh, Moumita , Yearwood, John
  • Date: 2005
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics Vol. 9, no. 3 (2005), p. 244-256
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  • Description: Advances in machine intelligence have provided a whole new window of opportunities in medical research. Building a fully automated computer aided diagnostic system for digital mammograms is just one of them. Given some success with semi-automated systems earlier, a fully automated CAD system is just another step forward. A proper combination of a feature selection model and a classifier for those areas of a mammogram marked by radiologists has been very successful. However a fully automated system with only two modules is a time consuming process as the suspicious areas in a mammogram can be quite small when compared to the whole image. Thus an additional clustering process can help in reducing the time complexity of the overall process. In this paper we propose a fast clustering process to identify suspicious areas. Another novelty of this paper is a multi-category feature selection approach. The choice of features to represent the patterns affects several aspects of pattern recognition problems such as accuracy, required learning time and the required number of samples. In this paper we propose a hybrid canonical based feature extraction technique as a combination of an evolutionary algorithm based classifier with a feed forward MLP model.
  • Description: C1
  • Description: 2003001358

Health workers' perceptions of psychosocial support services for cancer patients in rural Victoria

- Lee, Jillian

  • Authors: Lee, Jillian
  • Date: 2007
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Cancer Forum Vol. 31, no. 2 (2007), p. 94-98
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  • Description: Literature attests to the fact that psychosocial needs for cancer patients are not being adequately addressed. The tools, frameworks and guidelines developed, reflect differing professional perspectives and models of disease. Most studies have usually looked at what is happening from the patient and family's viewpoint in terms of medical and other needs. New national initiatives in psychosocial care include the organisation of nationwide practitioner workshops to encourage the implementation of the Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Psychosocial Care of Adults with Cancer. These guidelines focus mainly on the emotional and existential areas of need. The aim of this study was to: understand how a diversity of approaches and professional perspectives play out in everyday practice within a rural context; see how issues of distance and access affect this process; and highlight the deficiencies in the delivery of psychosocial services for cancer patients in rural Victoria. The study involved 59 questionnaire respondents (a 71% response rate), from which two interviews and six focus group discussions were drawn. Key findings were: regional and metropolitan hospitals and specialists not referring for support services; private patients missing out; general practitioners not referring to support services; late referrals to palliative care and district nursing; haphazard continuity of care for support needs of patients; and disputed responsibility for initial assessment.
  • Description: C1

Cancer incidence and soil arsenic exposure in a historical gold mining area in Victoria, Australia : A geospatial analysis

- Pearce, Dora, Dowling, Kim, Sim, Malcolm

  • Authors: Pearce, Dora , Dowling, Kim , Sim, Malcolm
  • Date: 2012
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology Vol. 22, no. 3 (2012), p. 248-257
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  • Description: Soil and mine waste around historical gold mining sites may have elevated arsenic concentrations. Recent evidence suggests some systemic arsenic absorption by residents in the goldfields region of Victoria, Australia. Victorian Cancer Registry and geochemical data were accessed for an ecological geographical correlation study, 1984-2003. Spatial empirical Bayes smoothing was applied when estimating standardised incidence ratios (SIRs) for cancers in 61 statistical local areas. The derived soil arsenic exposure metric ranged from 1.4 to 1857 mg/kg. Spatial autoregressive modelling detected increases in smoothed SIRs for all cancers of 0.05 (95% confidence interval (CI), 0.02-0.08) and 0.04 (0.01-0.07) per 2.7-fold increase in the natural log-transformed exposure metric for males and females, respectively, in more socioeconomically disadvantaged areas; for melanoma in males (0.05 (0.01-0.08) adjusted for disadvantage) and females (0.05 (0.02-0.09) in disadvantaged areas). Excess risks were estimated for all cancers (relative risk 1.21 (95% CI, 1.15-1.27) and 1.08 (1.03-1.14)), and melanoma (1.52 (1.25-1.85) and 1.29 (1.08-1.55)), for males and females, respectively, in disadvantaged areas in the highest quintile of the exposure metric relative to the lowest. Our findings suggest small but significant increases in past cancer risk associated with increasing soil arsenic in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas and demonstrate the robustness of this geospatial approach. Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology advance online publication, 21 March 2012.

A fully automated CAD system using multi-category feature selection with restricted recombination

- Ghosh, Ranadhir, Ghosh, Moumita, Yearwood, John, Mukherjee, Subhasis

  • Authors: Ghosh, Ranadhir , Ghosh, Moumita , Yearwood, John , Mukherjee, Subhasis
  • Date: 2007
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: Paper presented at 6th IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Computer and Information Science, ICIS 2007, Melbourne, Victoria : 11th-13th July 2007 p. 106-111
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  • Description: In pattern recognition problems features plays an important role for classification results. It is very important which features are used and how many features are used for the classification process. Most of the real life classification problem uses different category of features. It is desirable to find the optimal combination of features that improves the performance of the classifier. There exists different selection framework that selects the features. Mostly do not incorporate the impact of one category of features on another. Even if they incorporate, they produce conflict between the categories. In this paper we proposed a restricted crossover selection framework which incorporate the impact of different categories on each other, as well as it restricts the search within the category which searching in the global region of the search space. The results obtained by the proposed framework are promising.
  • Description: 2003005429

Cell culture metabolomics in the diagnosis of lung cancer - The influence of cell culture conditions

- Kalluri, Usha, Naiker, Mani, Myers, Mark

  • Authors: Kalluri, Usha , Naiker, Mani , Myers, Mark
  • Date: 2014
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Journal of Breath Research Vol. 8, no. 2 (June 2014), p.
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  • Description: Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths. Unfortunately, lung cancer is often diagnosed only when it becomes symptomatic or at an advanced stage when few treatment options are available. Hence, a diagnostic test suitable for screening widespread populations is required to enable earlier diagnosis. Analysis of exhaled breath provides a non-invasive method for early detection of lung cancer. Analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by various mass spectral techniques has identified potential biomarkers of disease. Nevertheless, the metabolic origins and the disease specificity of VOCs need further elucidation. Cell culture metabolomics can be used as a bottom-up approach to identify biomarkers of pathological conditions and can also be used to study the metabolic pathways that produce such compounds. This paper summarizes the current knowledge of lung cancer biomarkers in exhaled breath and emphasizes the critical role of cell culture conditions in determining the VOCs produced in vitro. Hypoxic culture conditions more closely mimic the conditions of cancer cell growth in vivo. We propose that since hypoxia influences cell metabolism and so potentially the VOCs that the cancer cells produce, the cell culture metabolomics projects should consider culturing cancer cells in hypoxic conditions.

Innate-like T cells in patients with cancer

- Minoda, Yosuke

  • Authors: Minoda, Yosuke
  • Date: 2017
  • Type: Text , Thesis , PhD
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  • Description: Innate-like T cells, including invariant natural killer T (NKT), mucosal associated invariant T (MAIT) cells or g T cells are associated with regulation of anti-tumour responses in humans and mice, although their exact role remains controversial. We have studied innate-like T cells from tumour infiltrating lymphocytes (TILS), peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and bone marrow (BM) derived cells from patients undergoing treatment for cancer and compared their characteristics to cells from healthy donors. We identifed that the overall frequency of innate-like T cells was variably deficient in patients with blood or solid cancers. Interestingly, the deficiency of innate-like T cells appeared to be more severe than that of other T cells suggesting a specific impact. An increased proportion of activated g T cells and MAIT cells suggested they could have a functional role in responses to cancer cells. Despite the deficiency of these subsets in patient tissue samples, we showed that anti-tumour capacity of innate-like T cells was intact as innate-like T cells in most patient groups had a similar cytokine response to stimulation as cells from healthy donors. Finally, we also showed that innate-like T cells appeared not to broadly recognize cancer cells, as no direct impact was identified in their overall frequency or cytokine expression when exposed to autologous tumour cells, cancer lysates or lipids extracted from patient tumours, or colorectal cancer cell lines. This project was aimed at providing an overview of potential defects in innate-like T cells based on my analysis of a wide range of samples in the Fiona Elsey Cancer Research Institute (FECRI) Tissue Bank. As a result of my studies, we have established a clear understanding of innate cells in cancer, which provides a basis for future studies. Our novel findings include analysis of frequency distribution and functional capacity of MAIT cells in solid tumours other than colorectal cancer and in patients with blood cancers such as chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL), non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), multiple myeloma (MM) or other haematological malignancies, something not previously reported. Taken together, we showed that a deficiency of innate-like T cells is common in patient groups with cancer and could be a risk factor for disease and possibly a target for immunotherapies, but the functional capacity was intact for cytokine responses.
  • Description: Doctor of Philosophy
  • Description: Innate-like T cells, including invariant natural killer T (NKT), mucosal associated invariant T (MAIT) cells or

Multivariate analysis of apoptotic markers versus cell cycle phase in living human cancer cells by microfluidic cytometry

- Akagi, Jin, Skommer, Joanna, Matuszek, Anna, Takeda, Kazuo, Fujimura, Yuu, Khoshmanesh, Khashayar, Kalantar-zadeh, Kourosh, Mitchell, Arnan, Errington, Rachel, Smith, Paul, Darzynkiewicz, Zbigniew, Wlodkowic, Donald

  • Authors: Akagi, Jin , Skommer, Joanna , Matuszek, Anna , Takeda, Kazuo , Fujimura, Yuu , Khoshmanesh, Khashayar , Kalantar-zadeh, Kourosh , Mitchell, Arnan , Errington, Rachel , Smith, Paul , Darzynkiewicz, Zbigniew , Wlodkowic, Donald
  • Date: 2013
  • Type: Text , Conference paper
  • Relation: Microfluidics, BioMEMS, and Medical Microsystems XI
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  • Description: Measurement of apoptotic markers in tumors can be directly correlated with the cell cycle phase using flow cytometry (FCM). The conventional DNA content analysis requires cell permeabilization to stain nuclei with fluorescent probes such as propidium iodide or use of a costly UV-excitation line for Hoechst 33342 probe. The access to FCM is also still limited to centralized core facilities due to its inherent high costs and complex operation. This work describes development and proof-of-concept validation of a portable and user-friendly microfluidic flow cytometer (μFCM) that can perform multivariate real time analysis on live cells using sampling volumes as small as 10 microliters. The μFCM system employs disposable microfluidic cartridges fabricated using injection molding in poly(methylmethacrylate) transparent thermoplastic. Furthermore, the dedicated and miniaturized electronic hardware interface enables up to six parameter detection using a combination of spatially separated solid-state 473 (10 mW) and 640 nm (20 mW) lasers and x-y stage for rapid laser alignment adjustment. We provide new evidence that a simple 2D flow focusing on a chip is sufficient to measure cellular DNA content in live tumor cells using a far-red DNA probe DRAQ5. The feasibility of using the μFCM system for a dose-response profiling of investigational anti-cancer agents on human hematopoietic cancer cells is also demonstrated. The data show that μFCM can provide a viable novel alternative to conventional FCM for multiparameter detection of caspase activation and dissipation of mitochondrial inner membrane potential (ΔΨm) in relation to DNA content (cell cycle phase) in live tumor cells.
  • Description: Measurement of apoptotic markers in tumors can be directly correlated with the cell cycle phase using flow cytometry (FCM). The conventional DNA content analysis requires cell permeabilization to stain nuclei with fluorescent probes such as propidium iodide or use of a costly UV-excitation line for Hoechst 33342 probe. The access to FCM is also still limited to centralized core facilities due to its inherent high costs and complex operation. This work describes development and proof-of-concept validation of a portable and user-friendly microfluidic flow cytometer (

Health effects associated with inhalation of airborne arsenic arising from mining operations

- Martin, Rachael, Dowling, Kim, Pearce, Dora, Sillitoe, Jim, Florentine, Singarayer

  • Authors: Martin, Rachael , Dowling, Kim , Pearce, Dora , Sillitoe, Jim , Florentine, Singarayer
  • Date: 2014
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Geosciences (Switzerland) Vol. 4, no. 3 (2014), p. 128-175
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  • Description: Arsenic in dust and aerosol generated by mining, mineral processing and metallurgical extraction industries, is a serious threat to human populations throughout the world. Major sources of contamination include smelting operations, coal combustion, hard rock mining, as well as their associated waste products, including fly ash, mine wastes and tailings. The number of uncontained arsenic-rich mine waste sites throughout the world is of growing concern, as is the number of people at risk of exposure. Inhalation exposures to arsenic-bearing dusts and aerosol, in both occupational and environmental settings, have been definitively linked to increased systemic uptake, as well as carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic health outcomes. It is therefore becoming increasingly important to identify human populations and sensitive sub-populations at risk of exposure, and to better understand the modes of action for pulmonary arsenic toxicity and carcinogenesis. In this paper we explore the contribution of smelting, coal combustion, hard rock mining and their associated waste products to atmospheric arsenic. We also report on the current understanding of the health effects of inhaled arsenic, citing results from various toxicological, biomedical and epidemiological studies. This review is particularly aimed at those researchers engaged in the distinct, but complementary areas of arsenic research within the multidisciplinary field of medical geology. © 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

High-intensity interval training improves cardiorespiratory fitness in cancer patients and survivors : a meta-analysis

- Wallen, Matthew, Hennessy, Declan, Brown, Stephen, Evans, Luke, Rawstorn, Jonathan, Wong Shee, Anna, Hall, Adrian

  • Authors: Wallen, Matthew , Hennessy, Declan , Brown, Stephen , Evans, Luke , Rawstorn, Jonathan , Wong Shee, Anna , Hall, Adrian
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article , Review
  • Relation: European Journal of Cancer Care Vol. 29, no. 4 (2020), p.
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  • Description: Objective: The primary objective of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to compare the effects of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) versus moderate-intensity continuous training (MICT) and usual care (UC) on cardiorespiratory fitness (peak V̇O2) in cancer patients and survivors. Secondary objectives were to compare the effects of HIIT versus MICT and UC on other cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) indices. Safety and adherence to HIIT were also evaluated. Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis of controlled trials were undertaken using eligible studies from electronic database searching (inception—December 2019). Mean differences (MD) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were compared and heterogeneity assessed using Cochran's Q and I2 statistic. Results: Twelve eligible studies included 516 participants with post-intervention CPET data. No serious adverse events occurred. Adherence to HIIT ranged between 71.2% and 95.6%. HIIT had significantly higher peak V̇O2 compared with UC (MD = 2.11 ml kg−1 min−1, 95% CI 0.75–3.47, p =.002). No significant difference was found between HIIT and MICT (MD = 2.03 ml kg−1 min−1, 95%CI −0.75–4.83, p =.15). HIIT was more effective than UC to improve peak oxygen pulse (MD = 1.59 ml/beat, 95%CI 0.06–3.12, p =.04). Conclusions: Quantitative assessment of HIIT studies indicates good compliance, with a significant effect on peak V̇O2 and peak oxygen pulse compared with UC in cancer patients and survivors. HIIT demonstrates a comparable effect with MICT to improve peak V̇O2. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
  • Description: Western Alliance Academic Health Science Centre , WA-739501

Barriers to accessing psychosocial support services among men with cancer living in rural Australia : Perceptions of men and health professionals

- Corboy, Denise, McDonald, John, McLaren, Suzanne

  • Authors: Corboy, Denise , McDonald, John , McLaren, Suzanne
  • Date: 2011
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: International Journal of Men's Health Vol. 10, no. 2 (2011), p. 163-183
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  • Description: Little research has investigated formal psychosocial support use among men with cancer living in rural areas. The current study investigated perceived barriers to support service use among such men, within the framework of the Behavioral Model of Health Service Use. In a mixed methodology study, 82 men with cancer living in rural Australia were surveyed, and nine of these men, plus three health professionals, participated in semi-structured interviews. Reasons for not participating in formal support were sufficient informal support and subjective judgements about perceived need. Service availability was rarely endorsed by the men as a reason for non-participation, but was emphasised by health professionals. Identifying factors that impede or facilitate service use might enable rural men experiencing cancer-related distress to seek the extra psychosocial support they need. © 2011 by the Men's Studies Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
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