Recent Developments in Detection of Central Serous Retinopathy through Imaging and Artificial Intelligence Techniques – A Review

Central Serous Retinopathy (CSR) or Central Serous Chorioretinopathy (CSC) is a significant disease that causes blindness and vision loss among millions of people worldwide. It transpires as a result of accumulation of watery fluids behind the retina. Therefore, detection of CSR at early stages allows preventive measures to avert any impairment to the human eye. Traditionally, several manual methods for detecting CSR have been developed in the past; however, they have shown to be imprecise and unreliable. Consequently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) services in the medical field, including automated CSR detection, are now possible to detect and cure this disease. This review assessed a variety of innovative technologies and researches that contribute to the automatic detection of CSR. In this review, various CSR disease detection techniques, broadly classified into two categories: a) CSR detection based on classical imaging technologies, and b) CSR detection based on Machine/Deep Learning methods, have been reviewed after an elaborated evaluation of 29 different relevant articles. Additionally, it also goes over the advantages, drawbacks and limitations of a variety of traditional imaging techniques, such as Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA), Fundus Imaging and more recent approaches that utilize Artificial Intelligence techniques. Finally, it is concluded that the most recent Deep Learning (DL) classifiers deliver accurate, fast, and reliable CSR detection. However, more research needs to be conducted on publicly available datasets to improve computation complexity for the reliable detection and diagnosis of CSR disease

Visual Impairment and Blindness

Blindness and vision impairment affect at least 2.2 billion people worldwide with most individuals having a preventable vision impairment. The majority of people with vision impairment are older than 50 years, however, vision loss can affect people of all ages. Reduced eyesight can have major and long-lasting effects on all aspects of life, including daily personal activities, interacting with the community, school and work opportunities, and the ability to access public services. This book provides an overview of the effects of blindness and visual impairment in the context of the most common causes of blindness in older adults as well as children, including retinal disorders, cataracts, glaucoma, and macular or corneal degeneration

Glaucoma

This book addresses the basic and clinical science of glaucomas, a group of diseases that affect the optic nerve and visual fields and is usually accompanied by increased intraocular pressure. The book incorporates the latest development as well as future perspectives in glaucoma, since it has expedited publication. It is aimed for specialists in glaucoma, researchers, general ophthalmologists and trainees to increase knowledge and encourage further progress in understanding and managing these complicated diseases

Políticas de Copyright de Publicações Científicas em Repositórios Institucionais: O Caso do INESC TEC

A progressiva transformação das práticas científicas, impulsionada pelo desenvolvimento das novas Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação (TIC), têm possibilitado aumentar o acesso à informação, caminhando gradualmente para uma abertura do ciclo de pesquisa. Isto permitirá resolver a longo prazo uma adversidade que se tem colocado aos investigadores, que passa pela existência de barreiras que limitam as condições de acesso, sejam estas geográficas ou financeiras. Apesar da produção científica ser dominada, maioritariamente, por grandes editoras comerciais, estando sujeita às regras por estas impostas, o Movimento do Acesso Aberto cuja primeira declaração pública, a Declaração de Budapeste (BOAI), é de 2002, vem propor alterações significativas que beneficiam os autores e os leitores. Este Movimento vem a ganhar importância em Portugal desde 2003, com a constituição do primeiro repositório institucional a nível nacional. Os repositórios institucionais surgiram como uma ferramenta de divulgação da produção científica de uma instituição, com o intuito de permitir abrir aos resultados da investigação, quer antes da publicação e do próprio processo de arbitragem (preprint), quer depois (postprint), e, consequentemente, aumentar a visibilidade do trabalho desenvolvido por um investigador e a respetiva instituição. O estudo apresentado, que passou por uma análise das políticas de copyright das publicações científicas mais relevantes do INESC TEC, permitiu não só perceber que as editoras adotam cada vez mais políticas que possibilitam o auto-arquivo das publicações em repositórios institucionais, como também que existe todo um trabalho de sensibilização a percorrer, não só para os investigadores, como para a instituição e toda a sociedade. A produção de um conjunto de recomendações, que passam pela implementação de uma política institucional que incentive o auto-arquivo das publicações desenvolvidas no âmbito institucional no repositório, serve como mote para uma maior valorização da produção científica do INESC TEC.The progressive transformation of scientific practices, driven by the development of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which made it possible to increase access to information, gradually moving towards an opening of the research cycle. This opening makes it possible to resolve, in the long term, the adversity that has been placed on researchers, which involves the existence of barriers that limit access conditions, whether geographical or financial. Although large commercial publishers predominantly dominate scientific production and subject it to the rules imposed by them, the Open Access movement whose first public declaration, the Budapest Declaration (BOAI), was in 2002, proposes significant changes that benefit the authors and the readers. This Movement has gained importance in Portugal since 2003, with the constitution of the first institutional repository at the national level. Institutional repositories have emerged as a tool for disseminating the scientific production of an institution to open the results of the research, both before publication and the preprint process and postprint, increase the visibility of work done by an investigator and his or her institution. The present study, which underwent an analysis of the copyright policies of INESC TEC most relevant scientific publications, allowed not only to realize that publishers are increasingly adopting policies that make it possible to self-archive publications in institutional repositories, all the work of raising awareness, not only for researchers but also for the institution and the whole society. The production of a set of recommendations, which go through the implementation of an institutional policy that encourages the self-archiving of the publications developed in the institutional scope in the repository, serves as a motto for a greater appreciation of the scientific production of INESC TEC

Medical-Data-Models.org:A collection of freely available forms (September 2016)

MDM-Portal (Medical Data-Models) is a meta-data repository for creating, analysing, sharing and reusing medical forms, developed by the Institute of Medical Informatics, University of Muenster in Germany. Electronic forms for documentation of patient data are an integral part within the workflow of physicians. A huge amount of data is collected either through routine documentation forms (EHRs) for electronic health records or as case report forms (CRFs) for clinical trials. This raises major scientific challenges for health care, since different health information systems are not necessarily compatible with each other and thus information exchange of structured data is hampered. Software vendors provide a variety of individual documentation forms according to their standard contracts, which function as isolated applications. Furthermore, free availability of those forms is rarely the case. Currently less than 5 % of medical forms are freely accessible. Based on this lack of transparency harmonization of data models in health care is extremely cumbersome, thus work and know-how of completed clinical trials and routine documentation in hospitals are hard to be re-used. The MDM-Portal serves as an infrastructure for academic (non-commercial) medical research to contribute a solution to this problem. It already contains more than 4,000 system-independent forms (CDISC ODM Format, www.cdisc.org, Operational Data Model) with more than 380,000 dataelements. This enables researchers to view, discuss, download and export forms in most common technical formats such as PDF, CSV, Excel, SQL, SPSS, R, etc. A growing user community will lead to a growing database of medical forms. In this matter, we would like to encourage all medical researchers to register and add forms and discuss existing forms

Single session neurofeedback treatment alters theta/beta-1 and theta/alpha ratios but not sufficient to induce clinical enhancement in attention

Background and Aims: Neurofeedback treatment (NFT) may enhance attention performance in healthy individuals. This study investigated the effects of single session NFT on attention in healthy individuals performing a visual attention task. Methods: This was an open-label single-blinded trial conducted on 14 healthy university students (n=14; mean=23.35±0.58 years) of a major medical university in Iran. The subjects underwent a single session NFT while performing attentional network task (ANT). The NFT protocol was theta suppression/beta-1enhancement applied at Cz for 20 min. Before and immediately after NFT, EEG signals were recorded in subjects while performing ANT. EEGs were recorded using a 19 channel device and 10-20 placement protocol. Results: The single session NFT increased the theta/beta-1 ratio in most of the electrode sites and the increase was statistically significant compared to the pre-intervention in the T6 site (p=0.011). The ratio decreased in just three sites of C3, Fz, and Cz, of them Fz showed a significant reduction (p=0.026). Contrary, the theta/alpha ratio decreased in most of the electrodes where the reductions were statistically significant in P3, P4, Cz, Pz (p<0.05), and C3 (p<0.01). The F7, F8, T3, and T4 showed no significant increased theta/alpha ratio. The central, temporal and occipital regions were involved in the NFT induced changes. Single NFT did not significantly change alerting, executive, or orienting networks of ANT. Conclusions: Theta/beta-1 and theta/alpha ratios can be reliably used to assess NFT induced attention enhancement. However, single NFT did not induce clinical outcomes and repeated sessions seem necessary to modulate alerting, executive, or orienting networks of ANT

Alpha asymmetry index of prefrontal and temporal regions predicts treatment response to repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation

Aims: Electroencephalography (EEG) measures could be a potential markers for prediction of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) outcomes in depression. The aim of this study was to investigate the value of alpha asymmetric index (AAI) in predicting treatment response in two different protocols of rTMS in patients with intractable major depression. Methods: Patients with intractable major depression (n=34) were divided into two treatment groups underwent two different rTMS protocols. The first group received ten sessions 20 Hz rTMS The second group received 10 Hz rTMS . The EEGs were recorded in all subjects pre- and post-intervention using a 19-channel, 10-20 electrodes placement protocol. Hamilton depression rating scale-17 items (HDRS-17) was used to divide the patients into responders and non-responder. The AAI in prefrontal (Fp1-Fp2), frontal (F3-F4 and F7-F8), and temporal (T3-T4) regions were calculated and compared between pre- and post-intervention in each group and between the responder and non-responder groups. Results: In the 20 Hz rTMS group responders, 6 patients responded to the treatment, whereas 10 Hz rTMS showed 8 responders. In the responders of 20 Hz rTMS, the AAI at Fp1-Fp2, F3-F4, and T3-T4significantly decreased after the intervention (P=0.011, P=0.042, and P=0.035). The responders of 10 Hz rTMS showed significant reduction in the AAI at Fp1-Fp2 and T3-T4 regions after intervention (P= 0.023 and P=0.044). Conclusions: It seems AAI at prefrontal and temporal region scould be used for prediction of treatment response, regardless of rTMS protocol