Evaluation of Innotrac Aio! Second-Generation Cardiac Troponin I Assay: The Main Characteristics for Routine Clinical Use

The availability of a simple, sensitive, and rapid test using whole blood to facilitate processing and to reduce the turnaround time could improve the management of patients presenting with chest pain. The aim of this study was an evaluation of the Innotrac Aio! second-generation cardiac troponin I (cTnI) assay. The Innotrac Aio! second-generation cTnI assay was compared with the Abbott AxSYM first-generation cTnI, Beckman Access AccuTnI, and Innotrac Aio! first-generation cTnI assays. We studied serum samples from 15 patients with positive rheumatoid factor but with no indication of myocardial infarction (MI). Additionally, the stability of the sample with different matrices and the influence of hemodialysis on the cTnI concentration were evaluated. Within-assay CVs were 3.2%–10.9%, and between-assay precision ranged from 4.0% to 17.2% for cTnI. The functional sensitivity (CV = 20 %) and the concentration giving CV of 10% were approximated to be 0.02 and 0.04, respectively. The assay was found to be linear within the tested range of 0.063–111.6 μ g/L. The correlations between the second-generation Innotrac Aio!, Access, and AxSYM cTnI assays were good (r coefficients 0.947–0.966), but involved differences in the measured concentrations, and the biases were highest with cTnI at low concentrations. The second-generation Innotrac Aio! cTnI assay was found to be superior to the first-generation assay with regard to precision in the low concentration range. The stability of the cTnI level was best in the serum, lithium-heparin plasma, and lithium-heparin whole blood samples (n = 10 , decrease < 10 % in 24 hours at +20°C and at +4°C. There was no remarkable influence of hemodialysis on the cTnI release. False-positive cTnI values occurred in the presence of very high rheumatoid factor values, that is, over 3000 U/L. The 99th percentile of the apparently healthy reference group was ≤ 0.03   μ g/L. The results demonstrate the very good analytical performance of the second-generation Innotrac Aio! cTnI assay

Design and Bandwidth Optimization on Triangle Patch Microstrip Antenna for WLAN 2.4 GHz

In this paper, single and dual element triangle patch microstrip antenna for WLAN 2.4 GHz is designed, analyzed and fabricated. Both proposed design utilized proximity feeding techniques. Afterwards the design is simulated on HFFS and optimized, which finally the dimension of both design for frequency 2.4 GHz is obtained. The best simulation result for both single and dual element triangle patch microstrip antenna is used as reference for fabrication on FR4 substrate with dielectric constant that the single element can achieve return loss (S11) -51.913 dB and VSWR 1.005 9 at 2.417 GHz, and then for dual element the result for return loss (S1) is -48.213 8 for VSWR 1.007 8 at 2.463 GHz. Compared to coaxial feeding technique, the proximity feeding has better parameter performance

Surgical treatment for acromioclavicular joint osteoarthritis: patient selection, surgical options, complications, and outcome

Osteoarthritis is one of the most common causes of pain originating from the acromioclavicular (AC) joint. An awareness of appropriate diagnostic techniques is necessary in order to localize clinical symptoms to the AC joint. Initial treatments for AC joint osteoarthritis, which include non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) and corticosteroids, are recommended prior to surgical interventions. Distal clavicle excision, the main surgical treatment option, can be performed by various surgical approaches, such as open procedures, direct arthroscopic, and indirect arthroscopic techniques. When choosing the best surgical option, factors such as avoidance of AC ligament damage, clavicular instability, and post-operative pain must be considered. This article examines patient selection, complications, and outcomes of surgical treatment options for AC joint osteoarthritis

A prospective study of shoulder pain in primary care: Prevalence of imaged pathology and response to guided diagnostic blocks

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The prevalence of imaged pathology in primary care has received little attention and the relevance of identified pathology to symptoms remains unclear. This paper reports the prevalence of imaged pathology and the association between pathology and response to diagnostic blocks into the subacromial bursa (SAB), acromioclavicular joint (ACJ) and glenohumeral joint (GHJ).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Consecutive patients with shoulder pain recruited from primary care underwent standardised x-ray, diagnostic ultrasound scan and diagnostic injections of local anaesthetic into the SAB and ACJ. Subjects who reported less than 80% reduction in pain following either of these injections were referred for a magnetic resonance arthrogram (MRA) and GHJ diagnostic block. Differences in proportions of positive and negative imaging findings in the anaesthetic response groups were assessed using Fishers test and odds ratios were calculated a for positive anaesthetic response (PAR) to diagnostic blocks.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In the 208 subjects recruited, the rotator cuff and SAB displayed the highest prevalence of pathology on both ultrasound (50% and 31% respectively) and MRA (65% and 76% respectively). The prevalence of PAR following SAB injection was 34% and ACJ injection 14%. Of the 59% reporting a negative anaesthetic response (NAR) for both of these injections, 16% demonstrated a PAR to GHJ injection. A full thickness tear of supraspinatus on ultrasound was associated with PAR to SAB injection (OR 5.02; <it>p </it>< 0.05). Ultrasound evidence of a biceps tendon sheath effusion (OR 8.0; <it>p </it>< 0.01) and an intact rotator cuff (OR 1.3; <it>p </it>< 0.05) were associated with PAR to GHJ injection. No imaging findings were strongly associated with PAR to ACJ injection (<it>p </it>≤ 0.05).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Rotator cuff and SAB pathology were the most common findings on ultrasound and MRA. Evidence of a full thickness supraspinatus tear was associated with symptoms arising from the subacromial region, and a biceps tendon sheath effusion and an intact rotator cuff were associated with an intra-articular GHJ pain source. When combined with clinical information, these results may help guide diagnostic decision making in primary care.</p

Emotion recognition using cvxEDA-based features

Abstract The MAHNOB-HCI database provides baselines for several modalities but not all. Up to now, there are no such baselines using EDA signal for valence and arousal recognitions. Because EDA is one of the important signals in affect recognition, it is necessary to have baseline accuracy using this signal. Applying cvxEDA, EDA tool analysis based on convex optimization, to GSR signals resulted phasic, tonic, and sudomotor neuron activity (SMNA) phasic driver. There were two sets of features extracted, i.e. features from stimulated stage only and ratio of features from stimulated to relaxation stages in addition to the former set. Using kNN to solve the 3-class problem, the best accuracies under subject-dependent scenario were 74.6 ± 3.8 and 77.3 ± 3.6 for valence and arousal respectively while subject-independent scenario resulted in 75.5 ± 7.7 and 77.8 ± 8.0 for valence and arousal correspondingly. Validation using LOO gave 75.2% and 77.7% for valence and arousal respectively. cvxEDA method looked promising to extract features from EDA as the results were even better than the best results in the original database baseline. Some future works are using other feature extraction method, enhancing the accuracies by employing supervised dimensionality reduction and using other classifiers

Enhancement of emotion recogniton using feature fusion and the neighborhood components analysis

Abstract Feature fusion is a common approach to improve the accuracy of the system. Several attemps have been made using this approach on the Mahnob-HCI database for affective recognition, achieving 76% and 68% for valence and arousal respectively as the highest achievements. This study aimed to improve the baselines for both valence and arousal using feature fusion of HRV-based, which used the standard Heart Rate Variability analysis, standardized to mean/standard deviation and normalized to [-1,1], and cvxEDA-based feature, calculated based on a convex optimization approach, to get the new baselines for this database. The selected features, after applying the sequential forward floating search (SFFS), were enhanced by the Neighborhood Component Analysis and fed to kNN classifier to solve 3-class classification problem, validated using leave-one-out (LOO), leave-one-subject-out (LOSO), and 10-fold cross validation methods. The standardized HRV-based features were not selected during the SFFS method, leaving feature fusion from normalized HRV-based and cvxEDA-based features only. The results were compared to previous studies using both single- and multi-modality. Applying the NCA enhanced the features such that the performances in valence set new baselines: 82.4% (LOO validation), 79.6% (10-fold cross validation), and 81.9% (LOSO validation), enhanced the best achievement from both single- and multi-modality. For arousal, the performances were 78.3%, 78.7%, and 77.7% for LOO, LOSO, and 10-fold cross validations respectively. They outperformed the best achievement using feature fusion but could not enhance the performance in single-modality study using cvxEDA-based feature. Some future works include utilizing other feature extraction methods and using more sophisticated classifier other than the simple kNN