A Conflictive Triuvirate Consruct of Epidemiologic Systems Failure

Epidemiologic systems failure (ESF) is a major hurdle in minimizing the spread of infectious diseases during outbreaks. The reasons for ESF include the technical limitation of personnel handling epidemic crises, strictly defined health policies that limit the actions of epidemiologists, and personal perspective\u27s reservations towards the intentions of health agencies. The purpose of this triumvirate mixed-methods case study was to examine factors of infectious disease control mechanisms useful for determining ESF. Three juxtaposed pre-emptive factors (technical [T], organizational [O], and personal [P] perspectives were used to determine how the multiple perspectives inquiring systems and fuzzy logic revealed factors causing ESF so that remedial tools may be constructed. The juxtaposed ESF-TOP model formed the research theoretical framework and allowed for clustering the ESF factors. Data sources were direct quotations from TOP based secondary data of 4 well-publicized participants; who had Ebola, HIV-AIDS, Tuberculosis, or Typhoid disease; and randomized quantitative TOP hypothetical data sets were created with Microsoft Excel software and used to model an Ebola outbreak of 10 theoretical subjects. Data were analyzed using TOP guidelines from which T, O, and P perspective themes emerged. The findings indicated that a disjointed TOP perspective specifies a serious ESF, a strictly overlapped TOP indicates an effective containment of ESF, and the overall fuzzy set with T given O and P indicates the actual ESF. The findings may result in positive social change by helping epidemiologists identify critical outbreak control factors which may minimize the outbreak impact

A Conflictive Triuvirate Consruct of Epidemiologic Systems Failure

Epidemiologic systems failure (ESF) is a major hurdle in minimizing the spread of infectious diseases during outbreaks. The reasons for ESF include the technical limitation of personnel handling epidemic crises, strictly defined health policies that limit the actions of epidemiologists, and personal perspective\u27s reservations towards the intentions of health agencies. The purpose of this triumvirate mixed-methods case study was to examine factors of infectious disease control mechanisms useful for determining ESF. Three juxtaposed pre-emptive factors (technical [T], organizational [O], and personal [P] perspectives were used to determine how the multiple perspectives inquiring systems and fuzzy logic revealed factors causing ESF so that remedial tools may be constructed. The juxtaposed ESF-TOP model formed the research theoretical framework and allowed for clustering the ESF factors. Data sources were direct quotations from TOP based secondary data of 4 well-publicized participants; who had Ebola, HIV-AIDS, Tuberculosis, or Typhoid disease; and randomized quantitative TOP hypothetical data sets were created with Microsoft Excel software and used to model an Ebola outbreak of 10 theoretical subjects. Data were analyzed using TOP guidelines from which T, O, and P perspective themes emerged. The findings indicated that a disjointed TOP perspective specifies a serious ESF, a strictly overlapped TOP indicates an effective containment of ESF, and the overall fuzzy set with T given O and P indicates the actual ESF. The findings may result in positive social change by helping epidemiologists identify critical outbreak control factors which may minimize the outbreak impact

Data-driven methods for respiratory signal detection in positron emission tomography

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a nuclear medicine imaging technique which allows quantitative assessment of functional processes, by determining the distribution of radioactive tracers inside the patient body. It is mainly used in oncology. Respiration during PET data acquisition of the chest leads to blurring and other artefacts in the images, lowering their quantitative accuracy. If a respiratory signal is available, these issues can be overcome by splitting the data into different motion states. In current clinical practice this signal is obtained using external devices. However, these are expensive, require prior setup and can cause patient discomfort. This thesis develops and evaluates Data-Driven (DD) techniques based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to generate the signal directly from the PET data. Firstly, the arbitrary relation between the sign of the PCA signal and the respiratory motion is addressed: a maximum in the signal could refer either to end-inspiration or end-expiration, possibly causing inaccurate motion correction. A new correction method is proposed and compared with two already existing methods. Subsequently, the methods are extended to Time-of-Flight (TOF) PET data, proposing a data processing step prior to using PCA, in order to benefit from the increased spatial information provided by TOF. The proposed methods are then extensively tested on lower lung patient data (non-TOF and TOF). The obtained respiratory signal is compared with that of an external device and with internal motion observed with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Lastly, to investigate the performance of PCA where respiratory motion is minimal, the methods are applied to patient and simulation data of the upper lung, showing that they could potentially be utilised for detecting respiratory-induced density variations in the upper lung. This study shows that the presented methods could replace external devices for obtaining a respiratory signal, providing a simple and cost-effective tool for motion management in PET

Proceedings of the Workshop on Identification and Control of Flexible Space Structures, Volume 3

The results of a workshop on identification and control of flexible space structures are reported. This volume deals mainly with control theory and methodologies as they apply to space stations and large antennas. Integration and dynamics and control experimental findings are reported. Among the areas of control theory discussed were feedback, optimization, and parameter identification