6,519 research outputs found
Monitoring thermal ablation via microwave tomography. An ex vivo experimental assessment
Thermal ablation treatments are gaining a lot of attention in the clinics thanks to their reduced invasiveness and their capability of treating non-surgical patients. The effectiveness of these treatments and their impact in the hospital's routine would significantly increase if paired with a monitoring technique able to control the evolution of the treated area in real-time. This is particularly relevant in microwave thermal ablation, wherein the capability of treating larger tumors in a shorter time needs proper monitoring. Current diagnostic imaging techniques do not provide effective solutions to this issue for a number of reasons, including economical sustainability and safety. Hence, the development of alternative modalities is of interest. Microwave tomography, which aims at imaging the electromagnetic properties of a target under test, has been recently proposed for this scope, given the significant temperature-dependent changes of the dielectric properties of human tissues induced by thermal ablation. In this paper, the outcomes of the first ex vivo experimental study, performed to assess the expected potentialities of microwave tomography, are presented. The paper describes the validation study dealing with the imaging of the changes occurring in thermal ablation treatments. The experimental test was carried out on two ex vivo bovine liver samples and the reported results show the capability of microwave tomography of imaging the transition between ablated and untreated tissue. Moreover, the discussion section provides some guidelines to follow in order to improve the achievable performances
Towards Avatars with Artificial Minds: Role of Semantic Memory
he first step towards creating avatars with human-like artificial minds is to give them human-like memory structures with an access to general knowledge about the world. This type of knowledge is stored in semantic memory. Although many approaches to modeling of semantic memories have been proposed they are not very useful in real life applications because they lack knowledge comparable to the common sense that humans have, and they cannot be implemented in a computationally efficient way. The most drastic simplification of semantic memory leading to the simplest knowledge representation that is sufficient for many applications is based on the Concept Description Vectors (CDVs) that store, for each concept, an information whether a given property is applicable to this concept or not. Unfortunately even such simple information about real objects or concepts is not available. Experiments with automatic creation of concept description vectors from various sources, including ontologies, dictionaries, encyclopedias and unstructured text sources are described. Haptek-based talking head that has an access to this memory has been created as an example of a humanized interface (HIT) that can interact with web pages and exchange information in a natural way. A few examples of applications of an avatar with semantic memory are given, including the twenty questions game and automatic creation of word puzzles
The Bases of Association Rules of High Confidence
We develop a new approach for distributed computing of the association rules
of high confidence in a binary table. It is derived from the D-basis algorithm
in K. Adaricheva and J.B. Nation (TCS 2017), which is performed on multiple
sub-tables of a table given by removing several rows at a time. The set of
rules is then aggregated using the same approach as the D-basis is retrieved
from a larger set of implications. This allows to obtain a basis of association
rules of high confidence, which can be used for ranking all attributes of the
table with respect to a given fixed attribute using the relevance parameter
introduced in K. Adaricheva et al. (Proceedings of ICFCA-2015). This paper
focuses on the technical implementation of the new algorithm. Some testing
results are performed on transaction data and medical data.Comment: Presented at DTMN, Sydney, Australia, July 28, 201
A canonical theory of dynamic decision-making
Decision-making behavior is studied in many very different fields, from medicine and eco- nomics to psychology and neuroscience, with major contributions from mathematics and statistics, computer science, AI, and other technical disciplines. However the conceptual- ization of what decision-making is and methods for studying it vary greatly and this has resulted in fragmentation of the field. A theory that can accommodate various perspectives may facilitate interdisciplinary working. We present such a theory in which decision-making is articulated as a set of canonical functions that are sufficiently general to accommodate diverse viewpoints, yet sufficiently precise that they can be instantiated in different ways for specific theoretical or practical purposes. The canons cover the whole decision cycle, from the framing of a decision based on the goals, beliefs, and background knowledge of the decision-maker to the formulation of decision options, establishing preferences over them, and making commitments. Commitments can lead to the initiation of new decisions and any step in the cycle can incorporate reasoning about previous decisions and the rationales for them, and lead to revising or abandoning existing commitments. The theory situates decision-making with respect to other high-level cognitive capabilities like problem solving, planning, and collaborative decision-making. The canonical approach is assessed in three domains: cognitive and neuropsychology, artificial intelligence, and decision engineering
Advanced Knowledge Technologies at the Midterm: Tools and Methods for the Semantic Web
The University of Edinburgh and research sponsors are authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints and on-line copies for their purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation hereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are the authorâs and shouldnât be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of other parties.In a celebrated essay on the new electronic media, Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1962:Our private senses are not closed systems but are endlessly translated into each other in that experience which we call consciousness. Our extended senses, tools, technologies, through the ages, have been closed systems incapable of interplay or collective awareness. Now, in the electric age, the very
instantaneous nature of co-existence among our technological instruments has created a crisis quite new in human history. Our extended faculties and senses now constitute a single field of experience which demands that they become collectively conscious. Our technologies, like our private senses, now demand an interplay and ratio that makes rational co-existence possible. As long as our technologies were as slow as the wheel or the alphabet or money, the fact that
they were separate, closed systems was socially and psychically supportable. This is not true now when sight and sound and movement are simultaneous and global in extent. (McLuhan 1962, p.5, emphasis in original)Over forty years later, the seamless interplay that McLuhan demanded between our
technologies is still barely visible. McLuhanâs predictions of the spread, and increased importance, of electronic media have of course been borne out, and the worlds of business, science and knowledge storage and transfer have been revolutionised. Yet
the integration of electronic systems as open systems remains in its infancy.Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) aims to address this problem, to create a view of knowledge and its management across its lifecycle, to research and create the
services and technologies that such unification will require. Half way through its sixyear span, the results are beginning to come through, and this paper will explore some of the services, technologies and methodologies that have been developed. We hope to give a sense in this paper of the potential for the next three years, to discuss the insights and lessons learnt in the first phase of the project, to articulate the challenges and issues that remain.The WWW provided the original context that made the AKT approach to knowledge
management (KM) possible. AKT was initially proposed in 1999, it brought together an interdisciplinary consortium with the technological breadth and complementarity to create the conditions for a unified approach to knowledge across its lifecycle. The
combination of this expertise, and the time and space afforded the consortium by the
IRC structure, suggested the opportunity for a concerted effort to develop an approach
to advanced knowledge technologies, based on the WWW as a basic infrastructure.The technological context of AKT altered for the better in the short period between the development of the proposal and the beginning of the project itself with the development of the semantic web (SW), which foresaw much more intelligent manipulation and querying of knowledge. The opportunities that the SW provided for e.g., more intelligent retrieval, put AKT in the centre of information technology innovation and knowledge management services; the AKT skill set would clearly be central for the exploitation of those opportunities.The SW, as an extension of the WWW, provides an interesting set of constraints to
the knowledge management services AKT tries to provide. As a medium for the
semantically-informed coordination of information, it has suggested a number of ways in which the objectives of AKT can be achieved, most obviously through the
provision of knowledge management services delivered over the web as opposed to the creation and provision of technologies to manage knowledge.AKT is working on the assumption that many web services will be developed and provided for users. The KM problem in the near future will be one of deciding which services are needed and of coordinating them. Many of these services will be largely or entirely legacies of the WWW, and so the capabilities of the services will vary. As well as providing useful KM services in their own right, AKT will be aiming to exploit this opportunity, by reasoning over services, brokering between them, and providing essential meta-services for SW knowledge service management.Ontologies will be a crucial tool for the SW. The AKT consortium brings a lot of expertise on ontologies together, and ontologies were always going to be a key part of the strategy. All kinds of knowledge sharing and transfer activities will be mediated by ontologies, and ontology management will be an important enabling task. Different
applications will need to cope with inconsistent ontologies, or with the problems that will follow the automatic creation of ontologies (e.g. merging of pre-existing
ontologies to create a third). Ontology mapping, and the elimination of conflicts of
reference, will be important tasks. All of these issues are discussed along with our
proposed technologies.Similarly, specifications of tasks will be used for the deployment of knowledge services over the SW, but in general it cannot be expected that in the medium term there will be standards for task (or service) specifications. The brokering metaservices
that are envisaged will have to deal with this heterogeneity.The emerging picture of the SW is one of great opportunity but it will not be a wellordered, certain or consistent environment. It will comprise many repositories of legacy data, outdated and inconsistent stores, and requirements for common understandings across divergent formalisms. There is clearly a role for standards to play to bring much of this context together; AKT is playing a significant role in these efforts. But standards take time to emerge, they take political power to enforce, and they have been known to stifle innovation (in the short term). AKT is keen to understand the balance between principled inference and statistical processing of web content. Logical inference on the Web is tough. Complex queries using traditional AI inference methods bring most distributed computer systems to their knees. Do we set up semantically well-behaved areas of the Web? Is any part of the Web in which
semantic hygiene prevails interesting enough to reason in? These and many other
questions need to be addressed if we are to provide effective knowledge technologies
for our content on the web
CBR and MBR techniques: review for an application in the emergencies domain
The purpose of this document is to provide an in-depth analysis of current reasoning engine practice and the integration strategies of Case Based Reasoning and Model Based Reasoning that will be used in the design and development of the RIMSAT system.
RIMSAT (Remote Intelligent Management Support and Training) is a European Commission funded project designed to:
a.. Provide an innovative, 'intelligent', knowledge based solution aimed at improving the quality of critical decisions
b.. Enhance the competencies and responsiveness of individuals and organisations involved in highly complex, safety critical incidents - irrespective of their location.
In other words, RIMSAT aims to design and implement a decision support system that using Case Base Reasoning as well as Model Base Reasoning technology is applied in the management of emergency situations.
This document is part of a deliverable for RIMSAT project, and although it has been done in close contact with the requirements of the project, it provides an overview wide enough for providing a state of the art in integration strategies between CBR and MBR technologies.Postprint (published version
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Automatic indexing and retrieval of encounter-specific evidence for point-of-care support
Evidence-based medicine relies on repositories of empirical research evidence that can be used to support clinical decision making for improved patient care. However, retrieving evidence from such repositories at local sites presents many challenges. This paper describes a methodological framework for automatically indexing and retrieving empirical research evidence in the form of the systematic reviews and associated studies from The Cochrane Library, where retrieved documents are specific to a patient-physician encounter and thus can be used to support evidence-based decision making at the point of care. Such an encounter is defined by three pertinent groups of concepts - diagnosis, treatment, and patient, and the framework relies on these three groups to steer indexing and retrieval of reviews and associated studies. An evaluation of the indexing and retrieval components of the proposed framework was performed using documents relevant for the pediatric asthma domain. Precision and recall values for automatic indexing of systematic reviews and associated studies were 0.93 and 0.87, and 0.81 and 0.56, respectively. Moreover, precision and recall for the retrieval of relevant systematic reviews and associated studies were 0.89 and 0.81, and 0.92 and 0.89, respectively. With minor modifications, the proposed methodological framework can be customized for other evidence repositories
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