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At least 631 records · Page 35Linked to original sources
PubMed2000

Digital radiography enhancement by nonlinear multiscale processing.

Today's digital radiography systems mostly use unsharp maskinglike enhancement algorithms based on splitting input images into two or three frequency channels. This method allows fine detail enhancement as well as processing of global contrast (harmonization). However, structures of medium size are not accessible. In extension of a standard algorithm of such type, we develop and test a new enhancement algorithm based on hierarchically repeated unsharp masking, resulting in a multiscale architecture allowing consistent access to structures of all sizes. Our algorithm decomposes a radiograph by a pyramid-architecture, dividing it into eight or more channels representing structures of different sizes, known as "scales." At each scale, weakly contrasting structures are then enhanced by suitable nonlinear processing. We emphasize two points: first, backward compatibility to the standard algorithm which is used routinely in clinical practice. This allows reuse of current parametrization know-how as well as a smooth transition from current to new processing. Second, our enhancement is noise-resistant in the sense that it prevents unacceptable noise amplification. A prototype implementation of the algorithm is undergoing trials in the clinical routine of radiology departments of major German hospitals. Results strongly indicate the superior performance and high acceptance of the new processing.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1999

Chemokines and ocular pathology caused by corneal infection with herpes simplex virus.

The role played by chemokines in disease process is an active area of research that continues to uncover new players. In this report we discuss the likely role of selected chemokines in the disease herpetic stromal keratitis (HSK). This lesion occurs as a sequel to herpes simplex virus infection and is currently accepted as an immunopathological process which primarily involves CD4+ T lymphocytes. In this review we discuss the events involved in HSK, the chemokine profile associated with this disease, and speculate on cellular activities and molecular events which characterize HSK as an immunopathological disease.

Animals↗
PubMed1997

[Problems associated with setting maximum allowable concentrations (MAC) of harmful substances present in the work environment].

The major aim of setting MAC values is to reduce the risk of occupational exposure to harmful substances to the acceptable level. In the process of setting MAC values, a critical analysis of the toxicological and medical literature, used by teams of experts who try to estimate the probability of health effects with different concentrations and different duration of exposures, is most essential. This process is usually very difficult since the epidemiological data and the results of animal experiments are often incomplete, and extrapolation of experimental results from animals to humans entails a lot of doubts. Moreover, one never knows which level of the risk can be considered as acceptable. That is why MAC values set by groups of experts cannot be treated as absolutely safe to the human health. They should be verified if new data on biological effect of substances harmful to health and new criteria for occupational risk assessment become available.

Animals↗
PubMed2005

Clinical holistic medicine: chronic pain in the locomotor system.

Most pains from the locomotor system arise due to involuntary, chronic tensions in the muscles or other tissues. When the patient is motivated, the pain is easily cured in most of the cases by using the tools of consciousness-based medicine, primarily therapeutic touch, conversation, and coaching the patient in a positive philosophy of life. The pains are often caused by "blockages" that may cause problems other than just pain. Often it turns out that the blocked areas develop actual physical damage over time: a slipped disk in the back, articular degeneration, or osteoarthritis when the cartilage is affected, can often be explained in this way. Apparently, the exact areas where the blockage is situated cause cellular problems, disrupting cellular order. The holistic process theory of healing and the related quality of life theories state that return to the natural state of being is possible, whenever the person gets the resources needed for existential healing. The resources needed are "holding" in the dimensions of awareness, respect, care, acknowledgment, and acceptance with support and processing in the dimensions of feeling, understanding, and letting go of negative attitudes and beliefs. The preconditions for holistic healing are trust and the intention for the healing to take place. Case stories of holistic treatment of patients with chronic back pain, low back pain, muscle problems, knee pain, and symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis are discussed with exercises relevant for patients with these conditions in the holistic clinic.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Is there gender bias in JAMA's peer review process?

OBJECTIVE: To assess whether manuscripts received by JAMA in 1991 possessed differing peer review and manuscript processing characteristics, or had a variable chance of acceptance, associated with the gender of the participants in the peer review process. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study of 1851 research articles. SETTING: JAMA editorial office. PARTICIPANTS: Eight male and five female JAMA editors, 2452 male and 930 female reviewers, and 1698 male and 462 female authors. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Statistically significant gender bias. RESULTS: Female editors were assigned manuscripts from female corresponding authors more often than were male editors (P < .001). Female editors used more reviewers per manuscript if sent for other review. Male reviewers assisted male editors more often than female editors, and male reviewers took longer to return manuscripts than did their female counterparts (median, 25 vs 22 days). Content reviewer recommendations were independent of corresponding author and review gender, while male statistical reviewers recommended the highest and lowest categories more frequently than did female statistical reviewers (P < .001). Manuscripts handled by female editors were rejected summarily at higher rates (P < .001). Articles submitted to JAMA in 1991 were not accepted at significantly different rates based on the gender of the corresponding author or the assigned editor (P < .4). CONCLUSIONS: Gender differences exist in editor and reviewer characteristics at JAMA with no apparent effect on the final outcome of the peer review process or acceptance for publication.

American Medical Association↗
PubMed1989

Reasoning with contrary-to-fact propositions.

In the initial study, the ability of subjects at four age levels (10, 13, 15, 18 years) (1) to accept if-then premises as a basis for reasoning and (2) to reason correctly with if-then premises was examined. Half the subjects were assessed with four reasoning problems involving factually accurate premises. The other half received factually inaccurate premises which were derived from the preceding ones by altering a single term. Both tests included an abstract problem which preceded the concrete propositions. Results indicate that the 10 year olds, and to a lesser extent the 13 year olds, did have difficulty in accepting contrary-to-fact premises as a basis for reasoning. The 15 and 18 year olds did not, but did find reasoning correctly more difficult with contrary-to-fact premises. The second study examined the ability of 5 and 7 year olds to accept contrary-to-fact premises. Subjects were given factually false premises either alone or within a fantasy context. Results indicate that the fantasy context decreases the extent to which empirical knowledge interferes with accepting contrary-to-fact premises. This result supports the notion that a representational process may be involved in accepting contrary-to-fact premises.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1994

CONTINUUM: measuring and managing the patient care process.

The authors describe the CONTINUUM project which was initiated in a community hospital to manage the appropriateness, timeliness and acceptability of the patient care process on a concurrent or day-to-day basis. CONTINUUM is a quality and data-driven approach to continuous improvement of the patient care process. The St. Thomas-Elgin General Hospital researched "appropriateness of care" measurements and adapted their use for the CONTINUUM project. A concurrent care plan evaluation tool is applied to every care every day. This intensity of service (needs-based) strategy is called the ACTIVITY index. Patients are categorized ACTIV (appropriate) or non-ACTIV (perhaps inappropriate). Non-ACTIV patients are further subdivided into various "barriers to care," from which service, hospital or physician-related factors can be stratified. Practice patterns and hospital resource use are then rapidly identified. The operational dimensions of the project (bedside, organization and community) are described as well as the inhibitors and enablers of this change process.

Canada↗
PubMed2002

[First clinical experience with a full-size, flat-panel detector for imaging the peripheral skeleton - Part II: Post-processing with a newly developed adaptive autowindow algorithm].

PURPOSE: of the second part of the investigation was the evaluation of a newly developed adaptive autowindow algorithm in comparison to the system processing radiographs of the wrist and ankle to further optimize the image quality with softcopy reading. MATERIAL AND METHODS: All 120 radiographs of the wrist and all 100 radiographs of the ankle used in the 1st part of this paper were processed with the adaptive autowindow algorithm. The evaluation was again performed by 5 radiologists with softcopy reading. For the data analysis a variation of the Visual Grading Analysis (VGA) was used. RESULTS: Up to 19 % of the wrist radiographs and 2 % of the ankle radiographs processed with the system software had to be processed manually afterwards to get acceptable results. By the application of the adaptive autowindow algorithm a manual post-processing was no longer necessary. Highly significant (p less-than-or-equal 0.001) differences for all criteria to be evaluated were found for the wrist radiographs and in the case of the ankle radiographs for the bone contrast, the contrast in soft-tissue regions, the fine details in the bone and the artifacts, the adaptive autowindow algorithm performed always better than the system software. CONCLUSION: Using half of the exposition dose on a flat-panel detector, an optimized post-processing leads to comparable or better results compared to the conventional film-screen-system concerning the image quality.

Algorithms↗
PubMed2003

Prospects for controlling cervical cancer at the turn of the century.

Cervical cancer morbidity and mortality have decreased substantially during the last 50 years mostly due to successful organized or opportunistic screening with Pap cytology in high and middle income countries. In many low income countries Pap cytology screening is yet to be effectively implemented or has failed to reduce cervical cancer rates to an appreciable extent. The fact that infection with certain human papillomavirus (HPV) types is now recognized as a necessary cause of this disease has led to new research fronts on prevention of cervical cancer. Testing for HPV DNA has shown great promise as a screening tool with better sensitivity but somewhat lower specificity than Pap cytology. In combination with the latter, HPV testing has the potential to improve the negative predictive value of cytology, thus allowing for increased testing intervals, which would lower program costs with acceptable safety. Advances in cytology processing and automation have also led to new screening approaches that are increasingly gaining acceptance in high and middle income countries. For low income countries, visual inspection with acetic acid has proven to be an effective alternative to conventional Pap cytology, especially in settings where no screening programs have been implemented. Concerning primary prevention of cervical cancer, recent research on the safety and efficacy of candidate prophylactic vaccines against HPV have shown very promising results with nearly 100% efficacy in preventing persistent infections and development of cervical cancer precursors. However, policy makers are strongly cautioned to avoid deferring decisions concerning the implementation of cervical cancer screening under the expectation that a successful vaccine could obviate the need for secondary prevention strategies. This paper is available too at: http://www.insp.mx/salud/index.html.

Female↗
PubMed1999

Immunology of type 1 diabetes. Intervention and prevention strategies.

Type 1 diabetes is the outcome of a progressive and selective destruction of insulin-producing cells in the pancreatic islets of Langerhans. The precise cause and mechanism(s) that trigger the insulin-producing cell destruction are still unclear, although it is well accepted that an autoimmune process plays a central role in diabetes development among genetically susceptible children. Additionally, certain viral infections, especially those caused by Coxsackievirus B, have been associated with the onset of type 1 diabetes. Possible gene therapy-based prevention and intervention strategies are discussed, based on the most accepted models of type 1 diabetes pathogenesis.

Autoimmune Diseases↗
PubMed1996

Cervical cancer screening: meeting the needs of minority ethnic women.

Understanding of the uptake of cervical screening among women from minority ethnic groups, and how acceptable they find the process, still requires some considerable progress. This paper attempts to review the material available, identify the issues and discuss ways in which progress might be made in future. Mortality from cervical cancer is higher among women born in the Caribbean Commonwealth than the standardised rate for women living in England and Wales. By contrast, mortality among women born in the Indian subcontinent and African Commonwealth is comparatively lower. Data about the incidence of cervical cancer among minority ethnic women are in short supply and some research findings are contradictory. For instance, Asian women may have either higher or lower rates of cervical cancer than the rest of the female population. Clearly further work is needed to establish whether Asian or other minority populations are high risk groups and why. There is also a need to assess trends regularly to see what impact migration has on incidence and mortality rates. Recent publication by the Health Education Authority of the results of its survey of health and lifestyles among black and minority ethnic groups in England provided welcome information about their uptake of cervical screening. Rates differ considerably between the different minority groups surveyed and the challenge now is to use all this information to inform the process of developing an approach to increasing uptake that is culturally appropriate.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2004

APART: automated preprocessing for NMR assignments with reduced tedium.

MOTIVATION: High-throughput NMR structure determination is a goal that will require progress on many fronts, one of which is rapid resonance assignment. An important rate-limiting step in the resonance assignment process is accurate identification of resonance peaks in the NMR spectra. Peak-picking schemes range from incomplete (which lose essential assignment connectivities) to noisy (which obscure true connectivities with many false ones). We introduce an automated preassignment process that removes false peaks from noisy peak lists by requiring consensus between multiple NMR experiments and exploiting a priori information about NMR spectra. This process is designed to accept multiple input formats and generate multiple output formats, in an effort to be compatible with a variety of user preferences. RESULTS: Automated preprocessing with APART rapidly identifies and removes false peaks from initial peak lists, reduces the burden of manual data entry, and documents and standardizes the peak filtering process. Successful preprocessing is demonstrated by the increased number of correct assignments obtained when data are submitted to an automated assignment program. AVAILABILITY: APART is available from http://sir.lanl.gov/NMR/APART.htm CONTACT: npawley@lanl.gov; rmichalczyk@lanl.gov SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Manual pages with installation instructions, procedures and screen shots can also be found at http://sir.lanl.gov/NMR/APART_Manual1.pdf.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1996

Technological and sensorial evaluation of Lactobacillus strains as starter cultures in fermented sausages.

The performance of several lactobacilli strains isolated from naturally fermented sausages as starter cultures was evaluated. Microbiological, physical and chemical changes, in addition to sensorial aspects were studied. From the 12 different strains tested, 10 were capable of leading the fermentation in every batch throughout the process. The monitoring of the inoculated strains was easily carried out by plasmid profiles and by checking the pH rate drop of the sausages, which was slower for the non-inoculated lots. Treatment using natural fermentation resulted in a product where hydrogen sulphide odours, which could be related to the higher content of Enterobacteriaceae throughout the ripening process, diminished its overall acceptability. The lots seeded with different L. sake strains were found to be low in acid in sensory evaluation, correlating with a low lactic acid content. In contrast, the L. plantarum lot gave rise to an overacidified product related to having the highest amount of lactic acid at the end of the process. As a general rule lactobacilli strains isolated from meat origins are good candidates as starter cultures in the manufacture of dry-fermented sausages and produce satisfactory products depending on the specific strains used more than on the species.

Fermentation↗
PubMed1996

Information technology: the next wave. Clinician acceptance of information technology.

Information systems have yet to make a significant inroad at the interface between clinicians and patients. The obstacles to implementing information systems at the clinical level are formidable. As these systems have begun to mature and marketplace pressures have created changing needs for clinicians and the integrated delivery systems they are working in, the need for these systems has increased. Understanding the pressures that managed care brings to bear on clinical processes will facilitate clinicians' acceptance of these technologies.

Attitude to Computers↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis in a trial--results of multicenter acceptability and practicability study].

During a multicentric field trial involving 134 diagnosticans from 16 centres in a first phase and 38 diagnosticans from 5 centres in a second phase a preliminary version of the manual "Operational Psychodynamic Diagnosis (OPD)" was tested. Focussing on feasibility, practicability and interrater-reliability the different axes of the new system were assessed as comparatively easy to use. The goodness of fit for diagnostic categories and the confidence in the diagnostic process showed a sufficient acceptance of the system. The percentage and chance-corrected inter-rater-reliability coefficients were acceptable for the most axes. It could be demonstrated that interrater-reliability depends on the degree of experiences with the OPD approach. Therefore a systematic training is necessary to use the system.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Workload and availability of technology in metropolitan community pharmacies.

OBJECTIVE: To assess workload characteristics and the presence of prescription processing technologies within metropolitan community pharmacies in the United States. DESIGN: Cross-sectional postal survey. SETTING: 18 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the United States. PARTICIPANTS: 3000 managers located in community pharmacies processing at least 500 third-party claims per month for four major pharmacy benefits managers. INTERVENTIONS: 34-item survey instrument designed to collect data about the pharmacy including demographics, workload issues, handling of drug-drug interactions (DDIs), and pharmacists' attitudes toward computerized DDI alerts. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Workload (hours of operation, prescription volume, staffing hours, prescription processing intensity) and prescription processing technologies (telecommunication systems, automated counting/filling or verification devices, number of computer terminals, and computer software vendors). RESULTS: Overall, 736 usable surveys were returned (response rate, 25.3%). On average, respondents reported a volume of approximately 1340 prescriptions per week processed at a rate of almost 17 prescriptions per hour. Independent pharmacies processed approximately 3 prescriptions per hour more than chain pharmacies even though a statistically equal or slightly lower proportion of those pharmacies had automated technologies. The presence of technology was generally high for all pharmacies, particularly countertop tablet/capsule-counting devices and telefacsimile machines. The most common software vendors differed considerably between chain and independent pharmacies. CONCLUSION: The number of prescriptions processed per hour and number of technologies available increased with the total weekly volume of prescriptions processed in this national survey. A majority of pharmacies had at least one type of automated prescription processing technology and an automated telecommunication system for accepting new or refill prescriptions. Independent pharmacies processed more prescriptions per hour than did chains but did so with fewer categories of technologies.

Automation↗
PubMed2006

Influence of staging, mean cell residence time, and thermophilic temperature on the thermophilic anaerobic digestion process.

As Class B biosolids land application has become less acceptable to many local jurisdictions, low-cost processes to achieve Class A standards have become more popular. Prominent among these low-cost processes is thermophilic anaerobic digestion. As a result, thermophilic anaerobic digestion is now a popular topic in wastewater treatment literature, but quantifiable methods for selecting a particular thermophilic process have not been offered. To provide for this need, an empirical model was developed from data collected in thermophilic anaerobic digestion studies conducted using East Bay Municipal Utility District's (Oakland, California) primary and waste activated sludge to feed both bench- and full-scale digesters. The model predicts at which thermophilic temperature and mean cell residence time (MCRT) one process will outperform or equal another, with respect to fecal coliform reduction. The different disinfection efficiencies in the different thermophilic processes might be explained by the presence or absence of high volatile acid and/or un-ionized ammonia levels in the processes' digested sludges. Data from these studies also show an apparent relationship between increased thermophilic temperatures and volatile solids destruction, and between increased temperatures and specific volatile acids production, for digesters operating at a 13-day MCRT and higher, but not for digesters operating at a 2-day MCRT.

Anaerobiosis↗
PubMed2006

The Eurotransplant High-Urgency Heart Transplantation Program: an option for patients in acute heart failure?

OBJECTIVE: The Eurotransplant High-Urgency (HU) Heart Transplantation Program allows urgent heart transplants to be carried out in rapidly deteriorating patients with acute-to-chronic heart failure on the elective waiting list. But do the results of HU heart transplantation justify performing primary heart transplantation in these critically ill patients and offer an acceptable outcome? METHODS: Between 2000 and 2004, 64 heart transplantations (HTx) (32 elective and 32 HU-HTx) were performed in our department. After having been accepted in an auditing process based on HU criteria, intensive care patients in NYHA functional class IV (cardiac index 1.7 l/min/qm BS), in end-organ failure (creatinine 1.5 mg/dl), and with catecholamine dependence (dobutamine 8 microg/kg/min), are given priority with respect to organ allocation, and their data were compared to data from elective patients from the same period. RESULTS: HU requests were accepted in 97 % of cases. Two requests were not accepted, and both patients with contraindications for assist device implantation died within one week. The HU patients were 100 % in NYHA class IV, 93 % of the elective patients were in NYHA class III. Waiting time on the HU list was 13 days, and 7 of these patients died before HTx. Following heart transplantation, survival rates at 30 days and at one year of the HU group were 88 % and 85 % versus 94 % and 93 % in the elective group. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that end-stage heart failure patients in the HU program can be transplanted primarily with good results if an organ is available in time. We are still in the position where the HU program only manages the organ shortage; there are still too many patients on the waiting list who die before receiving a donor organ.

Acute Disease↗