Temporospatial Context-Aware Vehicular Crash Risk Prediction

With the demand for more vehicles increasing, road safety is becoming a growing concern. Traffic collisions take many lives and cost billions of dollars in losses. This explains the growing interest of governments, academic institutions and companies in road safety. The vastness and availability of road accident data has provided new opportunities for gaining a better understanding of accident risk factors and for developing more effective accident prediction and prevention regimes. Much of the empirical research on road safety and accident analysis utilizes statistical models which capture limited aspects of crashes. On the other hand, data mining has recently gained interest as a reliable approach for investigating road-accident data and for providing predictive insights. While some risk factors contribute more frequently in the occurrence of a road accident, the importance of driver behavior, temporospatial factors, and real-time traffic dynamics have been underestimated. This study proposes a framework for predicting crash risk based on historical accident data. The proposed framework incorporates machine learning and data analytics techniques to identify driving patterns and other risk factors associated with potential vehicle crashes. These techniques include clustering, association rule mining, information fusion, and Bayesian networks. Swarm intelligence based association rule mining is employed to uncover the underlying relationships and dependencies in collision databases. Data segmentation methods are employed to eliminate the effect of dependent variables. Extracted rules can be used along with real-time mobility to predict crashes and their severity in real-time. The national collision database of Canada (NCDB) is used in this research to generate association rules with crash risk oriented subsequents, and to compare the performance of the swarm intelligence based approach with that of other association rule miners. Many industry-demanding datasets, including road-accident datasets, are deficient in descriptive factors. This is a significant barrier for uncovering meaningful risk factor relationships. To resolve this issue, this study proposes a knwoledgebase approximation framework to enhance the crash risk analysis by integrating pieces of evidence discovered from disparate datasets capturing different aspects of mobility. Dempster-Shafer theory is utilized as a key element of this knowledgebase approximation. This method can integrate association rules with acceptable accuracy under certain circumstances that are discussed in this thesis. The proposed framework is tested on the lymphography dataset and the road-accident database of the Great Britain. The derived insights are then used as the basis for constructing a Bayesian network that can estimate crash likelihood and risk levels so as to warn drivers and prevent accidents in real-time. This Bayesian network approach offers a way to implement a naturalistic driving analysis process for predicting traffic collision risk based on the findings from the data-driven model. A traffic incident detection and localization method is also proposed as a component of the risk analysis model. Detecting and localizing traffic incidents enables timely response to accidents and facilitates effective and efficient traffic flow management. The results obtained from the experimental work conducted on this component is indicative of the capability of our Dempster-Shafer data-fusion-based incident detection method in overcoming the challenges arising from erroneous and noisy sensor readings

Molecular Imaging

The present book gives an exceptional overview of molecular imaging. Practical approach represents the red thread through the whole book, covering at the same time detailed background information that goes very deep into molecular as well as cellular level. Ideas how molecular imaging will develop in the near future present a special delicacy. This should be of special interest as the contributors are members of leading research groups from all over the world

Computerized cancer malignancy grading of fine needle aspirates

According to the World Health Organization, breast cancer is a leading cause of death among middle-aged women. Precise diagnosis and correct treatment significantly reduces the high number of deaths caused by breast cancer. Being successful in the treatment strictly relies on the diagnosis. Specifically, the accuracy of the diagnosis and the stage at which a cancer was diagnosed. Precise and early diagnosis has a major impact on the survival rate, which indicates how many patients will live after the treatment. For many years researchers in medical and computer science fields have been working together to find the approach for precise diagnosis. For this thesis, precise diagnosis means finding a cancer at as early a stage as possible by developing new computer aided diagnostic tools. These tools differ depending on the type of cancer and the type of the examination that is used for diagnosis. This work concentrates on cytological images of breast cancer that are produced during fine needle aspiration biopsy examination. This kind of examination allows pathologists to estimate the malignancy of the cancer with very high accuracy. Malignancy estimation is very important when assessing a patients survival rate and the type of treatment. To achieve precise malignancy estimation, a classification framework is presented. This framework is able to classify breast cancer malignancy into two malignancy classes and is based on features calculated according to the Bloom-Richardson grading scheme. This scheme is commonly used by pathologists when grading breast cancer tissue. In Bloom-Richardson scheme two types of features are assessed depending on the magnification. Low magnification images are used for examining the dispersion of the cells in the image while the high magnification images are used for precise analysis of the cells' nuclear features. In this thesis, different types of segmentation algorithms were compared to estimate the algorithm that allows for relatively fast and accurate nuclear segmentation. Based on that segmentation a set of 34 features was extracted for further malignancy classification. For classification purposes 6 different classifiers were compared. From all of the tests a set of the best preforming features were chosen. The presented system is able to classify images of fine needle aspiration biopsy slides with high accurac

Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal cancer is one of the commonest cancers affecting individuals across the world. An improvement in survival has been attributed to multidisciplinary management, better diagnostics, improved surgical options for the primary and metastatic disease and advances in adjuvant therapy. In this book, international experts share their experience and knowledge on these different aspects in the management of colorectal cancer. An in depth analysis of screening for colorectal cancer, detailed evaluation of diagnostic modalities in staging colorectal cancer, recent advances in adjuvant therapy and principles and trends in the surgical management of colorectal cancer is provided. This will certainly prove to be an interesting and informative read for any clinician involved in the management of patients with colorectal cancer

EPR Effect-Based Tumor Targeted Nanomedicine

I am honored to undertake the work for Guest Editor for this Special Issue of EPR Effect-Based Tumor Targeted Nanomedicine for the Journal of Personalized Medicine. It has already been 35 years since we published the concept of the EPR effect for the first time. The discovery of the new concept of EPR effect gave an impetus effect of growth momentum in nanomedicine, and numerous works are focused on tumor delivery, although the initial idea was based on vascular permeability in infection-induced inflamed tissue, where we discovered bradykinin in the key mediator of vascular permeability.I know, however, there are pros and cons to EPR effect. Cons stem either from a poor understanding of EPR effect, or somehow a biased view of the EPR effect, or from the tumor models being used, particularly in the clinical settings where vascular blood flow is so frequently obstructed. I hope scientists in the clinic, or basic researchers working on the tumor drug delivery, will join the forum of this Special Issue and express their data and opinions.The scope of this issue includes an in-depth understanding of the EPR effect, and issues associated with tumor microenvironment and also further exploitation of EPR effect in human cancer. In addition, new strategies for enhancement of the EPR effect using nanomedicine will be welcome, which is as important as the EPR effect itself. These papers cover not only cancer therapy, but also imaging techniques using nanofluorescent agents, including photodynamic therapy for inflammation, and boron neutron capture therapy