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By providing everything from electronic mail to "virtual patients," computer technology and the Internet have made enormous resources available to physicians. Science writer Beth Ellenberger gives an overview of the different levels of Internet access, as well as the e-mail addresses of some medical resources that will be useful to physicians.
To tackle the present and future demands of the health care system, a coordinated effort of science and technology is necessary. The information age is upon us, and the medical community desperately needs the assistance of the new tools technology has provided. The application of personal computers and information databases holds much promise for health care.
Interactive computer-graphics methods of computer-aided design (CAD) have been applied to problems in physical science and industry for several years; however, at the present time CAD methods have not been widely used to solve similar problems in medical education. Electrocardiogram waveform fabrication for the production of teaching materials seemed to be a well-defined area for CAD application. The availability of inexpensive, 16/32 bit word, MC68000-based microcomputers (e.g. Apple, Macintosh) and interactive graphics software (e.g. MacPaint and MacDraw) seemed to provide the necessary tools to make this application. This paper describes the authors' initial experience (from June 1984 to March 1985) in developing and employing an interactive computer graphics routine to produce ECG teaching materials.
A dedicated microcomputer system has been developed to provide voice control over a wide variety of motorized devices. Employing a 8051 microprocessor with 16 kilobytes of ROM and 16 kilobytes of non-volatile RAM, the system potentially realizes an OEM cost of under $100. Other features include: a simplified user interface, a failsafe stop and voice programmable capabilities. This system has the potential to bring voice control into the marketplace in a wide variety of applications. Currently, the system has been adapted to surgical microscopes and is used in controlling several types of hospital beds.
Biomedical image processing is a very broad field; it covers biomedical signal gathering, image forming, picture processing, and image display to medical diagnosis based on features extracted from images. This article reviews this topic in both its fundamentals and applications. In its fundamentals, some basic image processing techniques including outlining, deblurring, noise cleaning, filtering, search, classical analysis and texture analysis have been reviewed together with examples. The state-of-the-art image processing systems have been introduced and discussed in two categories: general purpose image processing systems and image analyzers. In order for these systems to be effective for biomedical applications, special biomedical image processing languages have to be developed. The combination of both hardware and software leads to clinical imaging devices. Two different types of clinical imaging devices have been discussed. There are radiological imagings which include radiography, thermography, ultrasound, nuclear medicine and CT. Among these, thermography is the most noninvasive but is limited in application due to the low energy of its source. X-ray CT is excellent for static anatomical images and is moving toward the measurement of dynamic function, whereas nuclear imaging is moving toward organ metabolism and ultrasound is toward tissue physical characteristics. Heart imaging is one of the most interesting and challenging research topics in biomedical image processing; current methods including the invasive-technique cineangiography, and noninvasive ultrasound, nuclear medicine, transmission, and emission CT methodologies have been reviewed. Two current federally funded research projects in heart imaging, the dynamic spatial reconstructor and the dynamic cardiac three-dimensional densitometer, should bring some fruitful results in the near future. Miscrosopic imaging technique is very different from the radiological imaging technique in the sense that interaction between the operator and the imaging device is very essential. The white blood cell analyzer has been developed to the point that it becomes a daily clinical imaging device. An interactive chromosome karyotyper is being clinical evaluated and its preliminary indication is very encouraging. Tremendous efforts have been devoted to automation of cancer cytology; it is hoped that some prototypes will be available for clinical trials very soon. Automation of histology is still in its infancy; much work still needs to be done in this area. The 1970s have been very fruitful in utilizing the imaging technique in biomedical application; the computerized tomographic scanner and the white blood cell analyzer being the most successful imaging devices...
Digital audiovisual media and computer-based documents will be the dominant forms of professional communication in both clinical medicine and the biomedical sciences. The design of highly interactive multimedia systems will shortly become a major activity for biocommunications professionals. The problems of human-computer interface design are intimately linked with graphic design for multimedia presentations and on-line document systems. This article outlines the history of graphic interface design and the theories that have influenced the development of today's major graphic user interfaces.
In this paper, we discuss the organizational structure for the conduct of statistical activities at medical Colleges and Universities. Here, we have particularly focused on two significant statistical activities, i.e., statistical consultation and research. The consulting service for medical researchers consists of practical statistical analysis, instruction on computer manipulation and software, response to reviewer's comments and statistical design of prospective studies. From our various experiences, we describe the actual implementation of statistical consultations for medical researchers. It has played an important role in supporting medical research. In addition, we also outline some research, with respect to new ways of applying statistics in medical science. This paper concludes that it may be practical for the existing computer center or department of medical informatics, in charge of the computing service, to conduct statistical activities until formal organizations are established at the academic institution. To realize the conduct of statistical activities by Department of Medical Informatics, it needs a team of biostatisticians, data analysts and computer personnel.
BACKGROUND: In an era when information technology developments are being harnessed by governments to improve patient care, it is important to consider the issues raised by the use of computers in health care practice and policy. AIM: The aim of this paper is to provide an appraisal of considerations raised by the use of computers in health care. REVIEW FOCUS: Drawing on a range of studies in the social and medical sciences, the paper reviews the considerations. The introduction to the paper maps out the policy context, which is followed by three substantive sections: first, computer hardware and software considerations; second, issues around confidentiality; and third, personal, social and cultural considerations. CONCLUSION: This paper demonstrates that information technology developments must be allied with government or state direction and should be informed by evidence. Whilst the issues discussed are of primary relevance to the United Kingdom National Health Service, they have wider relevance to health care systems internationally.
Researchers in the biological sciences require access to a variety of information sources located in various places on different computer networks. In order to satisfy the information needs of a researcher, appropriate information sources must be selected and access to these information sources and the computing services supporting them must be provided in a way that does not distract the researcher from problems of real interest. At the University of Missouri-Columbia a service-oriented information sources database is being developed as a key component of a layered-model design of an intelligent system which will provide a research environment appropriate to the needs of researchers in the biological sciences.
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Current-generation vision for laparoscopic surgery involves flat two-dimensional display on a video monitor; this approach makes it difficult to accurately place the tip of a surgical instrument in the three-dimensional real space of the patient. The surgeon must rely on motion parallax, monocular cues, and other indirect evidence of depth to judge accurately the correct spatial relationship of objects in the field of view. Stereoscopic video can return accuracy to the surgeon. Critical elements in creating stereovision are the biophysical laws governing field of view, focal point, depth of field, accommodation, and convergence. In addition, engineering constraints must be followed, such as fitting a 10-mm port, which are compatible with current systems and economic feasibility. There are two methods for 3-D vision under development which are variations on the same theme of modifying standard laparoscopes by using lenses, mirrors and prisms, and optical shuttering. One method uses two video cameras to simultaneous capture two separate images from a paired optical system. Each image is alternately transmitted to the video monitor (field sequential video) and viewed with electronic or polarizing glasses for a 3-D image. Another method uses a standard laparoscope, optically splits this one image into alternating right/left images, and reconstructs the image as above. A major challenge for both systems is that the distance between the optical elements in the laparoscope is not greater than 10 mm apart and fixed, whereas the human interpupillary distance is greater than 650 mm and can accommodate.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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On the basis of state-wide longitudinal data from 80% of the hospitals in Kentucky, regression manpower models were developed. The results indicate that computers in hospital laboratories do not necessarily cut down on manpower needs but rather increase the number of higher-level manpower positions, those of medical technologists.
To analyze the benefit of a departmental IT group in comparison to support by hospital IT groups or system manufacturers in a completely digitized radiological department. The departmental IT group comprises a fulltime IT specialist, two student assistants and four clinical employees participating 1 day/week. For 18 months IT problems were quantified and specified according to urgency, responsibility and affected system by use of an intranet-based reporting system. For each IT service provider the performance and duration of problem solution was evaluated. In 18 months 3,234 IT problems emerged. 88.7% were solved by the departmental IT group. In 474 cases (14.7%) a solution within 2 h was required. The departmental IT group solved 35.8% within 30 min, system manufacturers needed 18 h 38 min in mean. The departmental IT group solved 90.2% of the problems within a time limit. System manufacturers met the limit in 60.1% with a mean duration of 7 days 21 h. In 6.7% of the cases, support by system manufacturers was indispensable. A considerable proportion of IT problems in completely digitized radiological departments can be solved by a departmental IT group, providing a fast and cost-efficient first-level IT support with effective prevention of major breaks in the workflow. In a small number of cases support by system manufacturers remains necessary.
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The flash-lag effect occurs when a flash abreast of a smoothly moving object is perceived to spatially lag the moving object. The postdiction accounts of this effect assume either that the flash "resets" motion detectors [Science 287 (2000) 2036], or that position information is not computed for moving objects until it is needed [Trends in the Neurosciences 25 (2002) 293], the latter view having also been proposed by Brenner and Smeets [Vision Research 40 (2000) 1645]. According to these accounts, events occurring before the flash should not change the magnitude of the flash-lag effect. In our experiment, pre-exposure of the moving object as a stationary stimulus, for as little as 50 ms before the flash occurred, significantly reduced the flash-lag effect.
Linking DNA sequence variation to context-specific transcriptional programs is a critical challenge in regulatory genomics, especially for non-model organisms. Here, we present PREDICT, a modular Python package for discovering cis-regulatory elements and transcription factor binding motifs. We describe steps to identify enriched k-mers from differentially expressed genes, map them to known motifs, quantify their impact on gene expression, and visualize motif co-occurrences. PREDICT provides a robust, k-mer-based approach to uncover regulatory logic in diverse genomic systems. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Yen et al. and Liu et al.1,2.
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