A Community-Driven Validation Service for Standard Medical Imaging Objects

Digital medical imaging laboratories contain many distinct types of equipment provided by different manufacturers. Interoperability is a critical issue and the DICOM protocol is a de facto standard in those environments. However, manufacturers' implementation of the standard may have non-conformities at several levels, which will hinder systems' integration. Moreover, medical staff may be responsible for data inconsistencies when entering data. Those situations severely affect the quality of healthcare services since they can disrupt system operations. The existence of software able to confirm data quality and compliance with the DICOM standard is important for programmers, IT staff and healthcare technicians. Although there are a few solutions that try to accomplish this goal, they are unable to deal with certain situations that require user input. Furthermore, these cases usually require the setup of a working environment, which makes the sharing of validation information more difficult. This article proposes and describes the development of a Web DICOM validation service for the community. This solution requires no configuration by the user, promotes validation results share-ability in the community and preserves patient data privacy since files are de-identified on the client side.Comment: Computer Standards & Interfaces, 201

The determinants of success in university entrance

This paper proposes that high school graduates applying to higher education institutions do not have equal chances of succeeding. Therefore, admission outcomes must be taken into account by researchers and policy makers analysing college-going behaviour and the equity and efficiency of higher education systems.Educational economics, higher education, chances of success

Recuperação e identificação de momentos em imagens

In our modern society almost anyone is able to capture moments and record events due to the ease accessibility to smartphones. This leads to the question, if we record so much of our life how can we easily retrieve specific moments? The answer to this question would open the door for a big leap in human life quality. The possibilities are endless, from trivial problems like finding a photo of a birthday cake to being capable of analyzing the progress of mental illnesses in patients or even tracking people with infectious diseases. With so much data being created everyday, the answer to this question becomes more complex. There is no stream lined approach to solve the problem of moment localization in a large dataset of images and investigations into this problem have only started a few years ago. ImageCLEF is one competition where researchers participate and try to achieve new and better results in the task of moment retrieval. This complex problem, along with the interest in participating in the ImageCLEF Lifelog Moment Retrieval Task posed a good challenge for the development of this dissertation. The proposed solution consists in developing a system capable of retriving images automatically according to specified moments described in a corpus of text without any sort of user interaction and using only state-of-the-art image and text processing methods. The developed retrieval system achieves this objective by extracting and categorizing relevant information from text while being able to compute a similarity score with the extracted labels from the image processing stage. In this way, the system is capable of telling if images are related to the specified moment in text and therefore able to retrieve the pictures accordingly. In the ImageCLEF Life Moment Retrieval 2020 subtask the proposed automatic retrieval system achieved a score of 0.03 in the F1-measure@10 evaluation methodology. Even though this scores are not competitve when compared to other teams systems scores, the built system presents a good baseline for future work.Na sociedade moderna, praticamente qualquer pessoa consegue capturar momentos e registar eventos devido à facilidade de acesso a smartphones. Isso leva à questão, se registamos tanto da nossa vida, como podemos facilmente recuperar momentos específicos? A resposta a esta questão abriria a porta para um grande salto na qualidade da vida humana. As possibilidades são infinitas, desde problemas triviais como encontrar a foto de um bolo de aniversário até ser capaz de analisar o progresso de doenças mentais em pacientes ou mesmo rastrear pessoas com doenças infecciosas. Com tantos dados a serem criados todos os dias, a resposta a esta pergunta torna-se mais complexa. Não existe uma abordagem linear para resolver o problema da localização de momentos num grande conjunto de imagens e investigações sobre este problema começaram há apenas poucos anos. O ImageCLEF é uma competição onde investigadores participam e tentam alcançar novos e melhores resultados na tarefa de recuperação de momentos a cada ano. Este problema complexo, em conjunto com o interesse em participar na tarefa ImageCLEF Lifelog Moment Retrieval, apresentam-se como um bom desafio para o desenvolvimento desta dissertação. A solução proposta consiste num sistema capaz de recuperar automaticamente imagens de momentos descritos em formato de texto, sem qualquer tipo de interação de um utilizador, utilizando apenas métodos estado da arte de processamento de imagem e texto. O sistema de recuperação desenvolvido alcança este objetivo através da extração e categorização de informação relevante de texto enquanto calcula um valor de similaridade com os rótulos extraídos durante a fase de processamento de imagem. Dessa forma, o sistema consegue dizer se as imagens estão relacionadas ao momento especificado no texto e, portanto, é capaz de recuperar as imagens de acordo. Na subtarefa ImageCLEF Life Moment Retrieval 2020, o sistema de recuperação automática de imagens proposto alcançou uma pontuação de 0.03 na metodologia de avaliação F1-measure@10. Mesmo que estas pontuações não sejam competitivas quando comparadas às pontuações de outros sistemas de outras equipas, o sistema construído apresenta-se como uma boa base para trabalhos futuros.Mestrado em Engenharia Eletrónica e Telecomunicaçõe

Overview on lightweight multifunctional materials

Lightweight multifunctional materials represent an increasing field in materials science and engineering based on their technological applications in a wide variety of areas ranging from sensors and actuators, materials for structural and environmental applications, energy generation and storage, or biomedicine, among others. This chapter presents an overview on the main types, preparation techniques and applications of the most relevant lightweight multifunctional materials, as well as on relevant materials to be applied and/or implemented in lightweight structures.FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) for financial support under the framework of Strategic Funding grants UID/CTM/50025/2019, UID/FIS/04650/2019; and supported by FEDER funds through the COMPETE 2020 Programme under the project number PTDC/FIS-MAC/28157/2017 and POCI-01-0145- FEDER-007688. The authors also thank the FCT for financial support under grants SFRH/BPD/112547/2015 (C.M.C.) and SFRH/BPD/110914/2015 (P. C.). Financial support from the Basque Government under the ELKARTEK, HAZITEK and PIBA (PIBA-2018-06

Caso clínico bioquímico

Bisalbuminemia is a qualitative albumin variation defined by coexistence of two types of serum albumin with different electrophoretic mobilities in the same individual. It can be of two different types: hereditary (or permanent) and acquired (or transient). Herein is described a rare case of hereditary bisalbuminemia in a healthy infant, incidentally found during elevated aminotransferase study. Despite not having pathological significance, acknowledgement of this analytical alteration is key for adequate management of these patients.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Multimodal access to social media services

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto, Microsoft Language Development Center. 201

ESTIMATING THE SAMPLING ERROR FROM THE COVARIOGRAM OF SPATIALLY CORRELATED DATA: Estimando erro amostral a partir de covariogramas de dados espacialmente correlacionados

The total sampling-error attached to a set of samples has a central role in the selection of the statistical method to extract information from this noisy data. However, commonly direct measurements of the sampling error are not available and then, the magnitude of the error is unknown. In this article, we present a mathematically sound solution for estimating the sampling error directly from spatially correlated observations. The method is based on the difference between the global variance and the inferred y-axis intercept of the covariogram computed from the same data. We developed the mathematical proofs of the method, and its performance is analyzed by applying it to five variables from a stream-sediments dataset of a multi-element geochemical survey. The estimated total sampling error is satisfactory close to the value experimentally measured by field replicates.O erro amostral total associado com um conjunto de amostras tem um papel central na seleção do método estatístico a ser utilizado para extrair informação desses dados com ruído. No entanto, é comum que a magnitude desses erros amostrais seja desconhecida porque medições diretas desse erro não estão disponíveis. No presente artigo apresentamos um método sólido do ponto de vista matemático para estimar o erro amostral diretamente de observações especialmente correlacionadas. O método se baseia na diferença entre a variância global e a interseção do eixo-y do covariograma calculado para os mesmos dados. As provas matemáticas são desenvolvidas e sua performance é analisada ao se aplicar o método para cinco variáveis de amostras de sedimento corrente de uma campanha geoquímica multivariada. A proximidade entre o erro inferido e o valor experimentalmente medido por replicatas de campo foi satisfatório

An integrative assessment to determine the genotoxic hazard of estuarine sediments: combining cell and whole-organism responses

The application of the Comet assay in environmental monitoring remains challenging in face of the complexity of environmental stressors, e.g., when dealing with estuarine sediments, that hampers the drawing of cause-effect relationships. Although the in vitro Comet assay may circumvent confounding factors, its application in environmental risk assessment (ERA) still needs validation. As such, the present work aims at integrating genotoxicity and oxidative DNA damage induced by sediment-bound toxicants in HepG2 cells with oxidative stress-related effects observed in three species collected from an impacted estuary. Distinct patterns were observed in cells exposed to crude mixtures of sediment contaminants from the urban/industrial area comparatively to the ones from the rural/riverine area of the estuary, with respect to oxidative DNA damage and oxidative DNA damage. The extracts obtained with the most polar solvent and the crude extracts caused the most significant oxidative DNA damage in HepG2 cells, as measured by the formamidopyrimidine-DNA glycosylase (FPG)-modified Comet assay. This observation suggests that metals and unknown toxicants more hydrophilic than polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons may be important causative agents, especially in samples from the rural part of the estuary, where oxidative DNA damage was the most significant. Clams, sole, and cuttlefish responded differentially to environmental agents triggering oxidative stress, albeit yielding results accordant with the oxidative DNA damage observed in HepG2 cells. Overall, the integration of in vivo biomarker responses and Comet assay data in HepG2 cells yielded a comparable pattern, indicating that the in vitro FPG-modified Comet assay may be an effective and complementary line-of-evidence in ERA even in particularly challenging, natural, scenarios such as estuarine environments

Inundações na região de Lisboa (1967) : um olhar sobre o impacto político e social

Na noite de 25 para 26 de Novembro de 1967, chuvas intensas abateram-se sobre algumas regiões de Portugal. Particularmente afetada foi a área da Grande Lisboa (Lisboa, Loures, Odivelas, Vila Franca de Xira e Alenquer), com as inundações a causarem um elevado número de mortos, milhares de desalojados e inúmeras habitações destruídas. Apesar dos impactos impressionantes então originados, o episódio permanece pouco evocado. A sua inscrição na memória pública é escassa, o que convida desde logo a um olhar futuro que confira os diferentes níveis de memorialização das cheias e as razões que ajudariam a compreender os processos de visibilização e invisibilização de que são objeto. Por outro lado, as abordagens teóricas e académicas ao assunto têm mais em conta o fenómeno meteorológico e os efeitos produzidos no território e menos as consequências sociais e a observação dos impactos de natureza política. Com base na consulta e análise de centenas de fontes documentais, sobretudo de jornais nacionais e internacionais, revistas, blogues, artigos científicos, relatórios e correspondência, tentamos reconstituir alguns episódios sociais e políticos que marcaram o pós-crise das inundações de 1967, na região de Lisboa.On the night of 25 to 26 November 1967, heavy rains swept over some regions of Portugal. Particularly affected was the area of Lisbon (Lisboa, Loures, Odivelas, Vila Franca de Xira and Alenquer), with flooding to cause a high number of deaths, thousands of homeless and destroyed countless homes. Despite the impressive impacts originated then, the episode remains poorly evoked. Its inscription in the public memory is scarce, which immediately invites a future look conferring the different levels of memorialization of flooding and the reasons that would help to understand its processes of visibility and invisibility. On the other hand, the theoretical and academic approaches to the subject have more focused on the weather phenomenon and the effects produced in the territory and less in the social consequences and the observation of the impacts of political nature. Based on consultation and analysis of hundreds of documentary sources, especially from national and international newspapers, magazines, blogs, scientific articles, reports and correspondence, we try to reconstruct some social and political events that marked the post-crisis of floods 1967 in the region Lisbon