Face morphology: Can it tell us something about body weight and fat?

This paper proposes a method for an automatic extraction of geometric features, related to weight parameters, from 3D facial data acquired with low-cost depth scanners. The novelty of the method relies both on the processing of the 3D facial data and on the definition of the geometric features which are conceptually simple, robust against noise and pose estimation errors, computationally efficient, invariant with respect to rotation, translation, and scale changes. Experimental results show that these measurements are highly correlated with weight, BMI, and neck circumference, and well correlated with waist and hip circumference, which are markers of central obesity. Therefore the proposed method strongly supports the development of interactive, non-obtrusive systems able to provide a support for the detection of weight-related problems

A Protocol for the Secure Linking of Registries for HPV Surveillance

In order to monitor the effectiveness of HPV vaccination in Canada the linkage of multiple data registries may be required. These registries may not always be managed by the same organization and, furthermore, privacy legislation or practices may restrict any data linkages of records that can actually be done among registries. The objective of this study was to develop a secure protocol for linking data from different registries and to allow on-going monitoring of HPV vaccine effectiveness.A secure linking protocol, using commutative hash functions and secure multi-party computation techniques was developed. This protocol allows for the exact matching of records among registries and the computation of statistics on the linked data while meeting five practical requirements to ensure patient confidentiality and privacy. The statistics considered were: odds ratio and its confidence interval, chi-square test, and relative risk and its confidence interval. Additional statistics on contingency tables, such as other measures of association, can be added using the same principles presented. The computation time performance of this protocol was evaluated.The protocol has acceptable computation time and scales linearly with the size of the data set and the size of the contingency table. The worse case computation time for up to 100,000 patients returned by each query and a 16 cell contingency table is less than 4 hours for basic statistics, and the best case is under 3 hours.A computationally practical protocol for the secure linking of data from multiple registries has been demonstrated in the context of HPV vaccine initiative impact assessment. The basic protocol can be generalized to the surveillance of other conditions, diseases, or vaccination programs

The use of the laryngeal mask airway during guidewire dilating forceps tracheostomy

Percutaneous tracheostomy has become a common alternative to the classical open tracheostomy because of its convenience, cost effectiveness, and decreased complication rates. We retrospectively reviewed our intensive care practice using a guidewire dilatating forceps percutaneous tracheostomy technique with an endotracheal tube, as compared with the Classic Laryngeal Mask Airway (LMA) for these procedures. From 1998 to 2004, 274 patients underwent a tracheostomy procedure. Two-hundred-fifty-four (92.7%) of these patients underwent a guidewire dilatating forceps tracheostomy and 20 (7.3%) underwent a surgical tracheostomy. In the guidewire dilatating forceps group, 188 (74%) were performed by endoscopy via LMA-guided bronchoscopy, and 66 (26%) were performed through an endotracheal tube. Endoscopic views obtained via the LMA were subjectively better than those obtained with the endotracheal tube. Acute complications were significantly more frequent when using an endotracheal tube as compared with the LMA (6 of 66 versus 4 of 188; P = 0.022 Fisher's exact test, odds ratio = 4.6). There was a significant difference in terms of acute (10 of 254 versus 6 of 20; P < 0.001, odds ratio = 10.5) and chronic (0 of 254 versus 4 of 20; P < 0.001) complications between the 2 groups. There were no ventilatory complications or reports of gastric aspiration. The LMA provides a safe and effective alternative to an endotracheal tube for airway management during guidewire dilatating forceps tracheostomies in selected patients