252,709 research outputs found
A Review of Atrial Fibrillation Detection Methods as a Service
Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is a common heart arrhythmia that often goes undetected, and even if it is detected, managing the condition may be challenging. In this paper, we review how the RR interval and Electrocardiogram (ECG) signals, incorporated into a monitoring system, can be useful to track AF events. Were such an automated system to be implemented, it could be used to help manage AF and thereby reduce patient morbidity and mortality. The main impetus behind the idea of developing a service is that a greater data volume analyzed can lead to better patient outcomes. Based on the literature review, which we present herein, we introduce the methods that can be used to detect AF efficiently and automatically via the RR interval and ECG signals. A cardiovascular disease monitoring service that incorporates one or multiple of these detection methods could extend event observation to all times, and could therefore become useful to establish any AF occurrence. The development of an automated and efficient method that monitors AF in real time would likely become a key component for meeting public health goals regarding the reduction of fatalities caused by the disease. Yet, at present, significant technological and regulatory obstacles remain, which prevent the development of any proposed system. Establishment of the scientific foundation for monitoring is important to provide effective service to patients and healthcare professionals
Latency Optimized Asynchronous Early Output Ripple Carry Adder based on Delay-Insensitive Dual-Rail Data Encoding
Asynchronous circuits employing delay-insensitive codes for data
representation i.e. encoding and following a 4-phase return-to-zero protocol
for handshaking are generally robust. Depending upon whether a single
delay-insensitive code or multiple delay-insensitive code(s) are used for data
encoding, the encoding scheme is called homogeneous or heterogeneous
delay-insensitive data encoding. This article proposes a new latency optimized
early output asynchronous ripple carry adder (RCA) that utilizes single-bit
asynchronous full adders (SAFAs) and dual-bit asynchronous full adders (DAFAs)
which incorporate redundant logic and are based on the delay-insensitive
dual-rail code i.e. homogeneous data encoding, and follow a 4-phase
return-to-zero handshaking. Amongst various RCA, carry lookahead adder (CLA),
and carry select adder (CSLA) designs, which are based on homogeneous or
heterogeneous delay-insensitive data encodings which correspond to the
weak-indication or the early output timing model, the proposed early output
asynchronous RCA that incorporates SAFAs and DAFAs with redundant logic is
found to result in reduced latency for a dual-operand addition operation. In
particular, for a 32-bit asynchronous RCA, utilizing 15 stages of DAFAs and 2
stages of SAFAs leads to reduced latency. The theoretical worst-case latencies
of the different asynchronous adders were calculated by taking into account the
typical gate delays of a 32/28nm CMOS digital cell library, and a comparison is
made with their practical worst-case latencies estimated. The theoretical and
practical worst-case latencies show a close correlation....Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1704.0761
EChO Payload electronics architecture and SW design
EChO is a three-modules (VNIR, SWIR, MWIR), highly integrated spectrometer,
covering the wavelength range from 0.55 m, to 11.0 m. The baseline
design includes the goal wavelength extension to 0.4 m while an optional
LWIR module extends the range to the goal wavelength of 16.0 m.
An Instrument Control Unit (ICU) is foreseen as the main electronic subsystem
interfacing the spacecraft and collecting data from all the payload
spectrometers modules. ICU is in charge of two main tasks: the overall payload
control (Instrument Control Function) and the housekeepings and scientific data
digital processing (Data Processing Function), including the lossless
compression prior to store the science data to the Solid State Mass Memory of
the Spacecraft. These two main tasks are accomplished thanks to the Payload On
Board Software (P-OBSW) running on the ICU CPUs.Comment: Experimental Astronomy - EChO Special Issue 201
Designer cell signal processing circuits for biotechnology
Microorganisms are able to respond effectively to diverse signals from their environment and internal metabolism owing to their inherent sophisticated information processing capacity. A central aim of synthetic biology is to control and reprogramme the signal processing pathways within living cells so as to realise repurposed, beneficial applications ranging from disease diagnosis and environmental sensing to chemical bioproduction. To date most examples of synthetic biological signal processing have been built based on digital information flow, though analogue computing is being developed to cope with more complex operations and larger sets of variables. Great progress has been made in expanding the categories of characterised biological components that can be used for cellular signal manipulation, thereby allowing synthetic biologists to more rationally programme increasingly complex behaviours into living cells. Here we present a current overview of the components and strategies that exist for designer cell signal processing and decision making, discuss how these have been implemented in prototype systems for therapeutic, environmental, and industrial biotechnological applications, and examine emerging challenges in this promising field
Predictive biometrics: A review and analysis of predicting personal characteristics from biometric data
Interest in the exploitation of soft biometrics information has continued to develop over the last decade or so. In comparison with traditional biometrics, which focuses principally on person identification, the idea of soft biometrics processing is to study the utilisation of more general information regarding a system user, which is not necessarily unique. There are increasing indications that this type of data will have great value in providing complementary information for user authentication. However, the authors have also seen a growing interest in broadening the predictive capabilities of biometric data, encompassing both easily definable characteristics such as subject age and, most recently, `higher level' characteristics such as emotional or mental states. This study will present a selective review of the predictive capabilities, in the widest sense, of biometric data processing, providing an analysis of the key issues still adequately to be addressed if this concept of predictive biometrics is to be fully exploited in the future
Contour Detector and Data Acquisition System for the Left Ventricular Outline
A real-time contour detector and data acquisition system is described for an angiographic apparatus having a video scanner for converting an X-ray image of a structure characterized by a change in brightness level compared with its surrounding into video format and displaying the X-ray image in recurring video fields. The real-time contour detector and data acqusition system includes track and hold circuits; a reference level analog computer circuit; an analog compartor; a digital processor; a field memory; and a computer interface
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