Testing of the assisting software for radiologists analysing head CT images: lessons learned

Background: Assessing a plan for user testing and evaluation of the assisting software developed for radiologists.Methods: Test plan was assessed in experimental testing, where users performed reporting on head computed tomography studies with the aid of the software developed. The user testing included usability tests, questionnaires, and interviews. In addition, search relevance was assessed on the basis of user opinions.Results: The testing demonstrated weaknesses in the initial plan and enabled improvements. Results showed that the software has acceptable usability level but some minor fixes are needed before larger-scale pilot testing. The research also proved that it is possible even for radiologists with under a year's experience to perform reporting of non-obvious cases when assisted by the software developed. Due to the small number of test users, it was impossible to assess effects on diagnosis quality.Conclusions: The results of the tests performed showed that the test plan designed is useful, and answers to the key research questions should be forthcoming after testing with more radiologists. The preliminary testing revealed opportunities to improve test plan and flow, thereby illustrating that arranging preliminary test sessions prior to any complex scenarios is beneficial

Investigating user experience and bias mitigation of the multi-modal retrieval of historical data

Decolonisation has raised the discussion of technology having the responsibility of presenting multiple perspectives to users. This is specifically relevant to African precolonial heritage artefact data, where the data contains the bias of the curators of the artefacts and there are primary concerns surrounding the social responsibility of these systems. Historians have argued that common information retrieval algorithms may further bias results presented to users. While research for mitigating bias in information retrieval is steered in the direction of artificial intelligence and automation, an often-neglected approach is that of user-control. User-control has proven to be beneficial in other research areas and is strongly aligned with the core principles of decolonisation. Thus, the effects on user experience, bias mitigation, and retrieval effectiveness from the addition of user-control and algorithmic variation to a multimodal information retrieval system containing precolonial African heritage data was investigated in this study. This was done by conducting two experiments: 1) an experiment to provide a baseline offline evaluation of various algorithms for text and image retrieval and 2) an experiment to investigate the user experience with a retrieval system that allowed them to compare algorithms. In the first experiment, the differences in retrieval effectiveness between colour-based pre-processing algorithms, shape-based preprocessing algorithms, and pre-processing algorithms based on a combination of colour- and shape-detection, was explored. The differences in retrieval effectiveness between stemming, stopword removal and synonym query expansion was also evaluated for text retrieval. In the second experiment, the manner in which users experience bias in the context of common information retrieval algorithms for both the textual and image data that are available in typical historical archives was explored. Users were presented with the results generated by multiple algorithmic variations, in a variety of different result formats, and using a variety of different search methods, affording them the opportunity to decide what they deem provides them with a more relevant set of results. The results of the study show that algorithmic variation can lead to significantly improved retrieval performance with respect to image-based retrieval. The results also show that users potentially prefer shape-based image algorithms rather than colour-based image algorithms, and, that shape-based image algorithms can lead to significantly improved retrieval of historical data. The results also show that users have justifiable preferences for multimodal query and result formats to improve user experience and that users believe they can control bias using algorithmic variatio

An affective computing and image retrieval approach to support diversified and emotion-aware reminiscence therapy sessions

A demência é uma das principais causas de dependência e incapacidade entre as pessoas idosas em todo o mundo. A terapia de reminiscência é uma terapia não farmacológica comummente utilizada nos cuidados com demência devido ao seu valor terapêutico para as pessoas com demência. Esta terapia é útil para criar uma comunicação envolvente entre pessoas com demência e o resto do mundo, utilizando as capacidades preservadas da memória a longo prazo, em vez de enfatizar as limitações existentes por forma a aliviar a experiência de fracasso e isolamento social. As soluções tecnológicas de assistência existentes melhoram a terapia de reminiscência ao proporcionar uma experiência mais envolvente para todos os participantes (pessoas com demência, familiares e clínicos), mas não estão livres de lacunas: a) os dados multimédia utilizados permanecem inalterados ao longo das sessões, e há uma falta de personalização para cada pessoa com demência; b) não têm em conta as emoções transmitidas pelos dados multimédia utilizados nem as reacções emocionais da pessoa com demência aos dados multimédia apresentados; c) a perspectiva dos cuidadores ainda não foi totalmente tida em consideração. Para superar estes desafios, seguimos uma abordagem de concepção centrada no utilizador através de inquéritos mundiais, entrevistas de seguimento, e grupos de discussão com cuidadores formais e informais para informar a concepção de soluções tecnológicas no âmbito dos cuidados de demência. Para cumprir com os requisitos identificados, propomos novos métodos que facilitam a inclusão de emoções no loop durante a terapia de reminiscência para personalizar e diversificar o conteúdo das sessões ao longo do tempo. As contribuições desta tese incluem: a) um conjunto de requisitos funcionais validados recolhidos com os cuidadores formais e informais, os resultados esperados com o cumprimento de cada requisito, e um modelo de arquitectura para o desenvolvimento de soluções tecnológicas de assistência para cuidados de demência; b) uma abordagem end-to-end para identificar automaticamente múltiplas informações emocionais transmitidas por imagens; c) uma abordagem para reduzir a quantidade de imagens que precisam ser anotadas pelas pessoas sem comprometer o desempenho dos modelos de reconhecimento; d) uma técnica de fusão tardia interpretável que combina dinamicamente múltiplos sistemas de recuperação de imagens com base em conteúdo para procurar eficazmente por imagens semelhantes para diversificar e personalizar o conjunto de imagens disponíveis para serem utilizadas nas sessões.Dementia is one of the major causes of dependency and disability among elderly subjects worldwide. Reminiscence therapy is an inexpensive non-pharmacological therapy commonly used within dementia care due to its therapeutic value for people with dementia. This therapy is useful to create engaging communication between people with dementia and the rest of the world by using the preserved abilities of long-term memory rather than emphasizing the existing impairments to alleviate the experience of failure and social isolation. Current assistive technological solutions improve reminiscence therapy by providing a more lively and engaging experience to all participants (people with dementia, family members, and clinicians), but they are not free of drawbacks: a) the multimedia data used remains unchanged throughout sessions, and there is a lack of customization for each person with dementia; b) they do not take into account the emotions conveyed by the multimedia data used nor the person with dementia’s emotional reactions to the multimedia presented; c) the caregivers’ perspective have not been fully taken into account yet. To overcome these challenges, we followed a usercentered design approach through worldwide surveys, follow-up interviews, and focus groups with formal and informal caregivers to inform the design of technological solutions within dementia care. To fulfil the requirements identified, we propose novel methods that facilitate the inclusion of emotions in the loop during reminiscence therapy to personalize and diversify the content of the sessions over time. Contributions from this thesis include: a) a set of validated functional requirements gathered from formal and informal caregivers, the expected outcomes with the fulfillment of each requirement, and an architecture’s template for the development of assistive technology solutions for dementia care; b) an end-to-end approach to automatically identify multiple emotional information conveyed by images; c) an approach to reduce the amount of images that need to be annotated by humans without compromising the recognition models’ performance; d) an interpretable late-fusion technique that dynamically combines multiple content-based image retrieval systems to effectively search for similar images to diversify and personalize the pool of images available to be used in sessions

Феноменологическая неоанглистика: теоретико-методологические принципы

Феноменологічні ознаки різнорівневих інноваційних елементів англійської мови сфери комп’ютерних технологій виокремлюють новий напрям неологічних студій – феноменологічну неоанглістику. У роботі параметризовано англомовну інноваційну логосферу комп’ютерного буття як макро- та мікроконсолідований об’єкт, що кваліфікується феноменологічними й динамічними характеристиками.A methodologу of English computer vocabulary innovative elements phenomenological features identification is introduced supplying the template for a new study field – phenomenological neology of English. The study approach provides for the innovative English computer logosphere definition and stock inventory in terms of its integrity as a macro-body of phenomenological and dynamic specificity.Идентификация феноменологических признаков разноуровневых инновационных элементов словарного состава английского языка в сфере компьтерных технологий позволяет выделить новое направление неологических студий – феноменологическую неоанглистику. Англоязычная инновационная логосфера компьютерного бытия в рамках феноменологического подхода определяется как макроинтегрированная и микроинтегрированная совокупность англоязычных вербальных новообразований, которые представляют собой условно исчерпывающие феноменологические корреляты разносубстратных элементов компьютерного бытия