Colonoscopy Coverage Revisited: Identifying Scanning Gaps in Real-Time

Colonoscopy is the most widely used medical technique for preventing Colorectal Cancer, by detecting and removing polyps before they become malignant. Recent studies show that around one quarter of the existing polyps are routinely missed. While some of these do appear in the endoscopist's field of view, others are missed due to a partial coverage of the colon. The task of detecting and marking unseen regions of the colon has been addressed in recent work, where the common approach is based on dense 3D reconstruction, which proves to be challenging due to lack of 3D ground truth and periods with poor visual content. In this paper we propose a novel and complementary method to detect deficient local coverage in real-time for video segments where a reliable 3D reconstruction is impossible. Our method aims to identify skips along the colon caused by a drifted position of the endoscope during poor visibility time intervals. The proposed solution consists of two phases. During the first, time segments with good visibility of the colon and gaps between them are identified. During the second phase, a trained model operates on each gap, answering the question: Do you observe the same scene before and after the gap? If the answer is negative, the endoscopist is alerted and can be directed to the appropriate area in real-time. The second phase model is trained using a contrastive loss based on auto-generated examples. Our method evaluation on a dataset of 250 procedures annotated by trained physicians provides sensitivity of 0.75 with specificity of 0.9.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Work Hours and Self rated Health of Hospital Doctors in Norway and Germany. A comparative study on national samples

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The relationship between extended work hours and health is well documented among hospital doctors, but the effect of national differences in work hours on health is unexplored. The study examines the relationship between work hours and self rated health in two national samples of hospital doctors.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study population consisted of representative samples of 1,260 German and 562 Norwegian hospital doctors aged 25-65 years (N = 1,822) who received postal questionnaires in 2006 (Germany) and 2008 (Norway). The questionnaires contained items on demography, work hours (number of hours per workday and on-call per month) and self rated subjective health on a five point scale - dichotomized into "good" (above average) and "average or below".</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Compared to Norway, a significantly higher proportion of German doctors exceeded a 9 hour work day (58.8% vs. 26.7%) and 60 hours on-call per month (63.4% vs. 18.3%). Every third (32.2%) hospital doctor in Germany worked more than this, while this pattern was rare in Norway (2.9%). In a logistic regression model, working in Norway (OR 4.17; 95% CI 3.02-5.73), age 25-44 years (OR 1.66; 95% CI 1.29-2.14) and not exceeding 9 hour work day and 60 hours on-call per month (OR 1.35; 95% CI 1.03-1.77) were all independent significant predictors of good self reported health.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>A lower percentage of German hospital doctors reported self rated health as "good", which is partly explained by the differences in work time pattern. Initiatives to increase doctors' control over their work time are recommended.</p

Recurring alcohol-related care between 1998 and 2007 among people treated for an alcohol-related disorder in 1997: A register study in Stockholm County

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Inpatient care for alcohol intoxication is increasing in Sweden, especially among young women. Since it is well known that alcohol disorder is a chronic relapsing illness, this study examines the extent to which people return for more care.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>All inpatients with alcohol-related diagnoses in Stockholm County during 1997 were followed prospectively to 2007 through registers. The proportion reappearing for the same diagnosis, other alcohol-related inpatient, or outpatient care each year after baseline, as well as the number of years the inpatients reappeared were calculated (n = 2735). Three diagnoses were examined separately; alcohol dependence, harmful use of alcohol, and alcohol intoxication.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Three out of five inpatients with an alcohol diagnoses reappeared for more alcohol-related inpatient care during the following decade. The proportion returning was largest the year after baseline and then decreased curvilinearly over time. The inclusion of outpatient care increased proportions, but did not change patterns. Of those with an alcohol dependence diagnosis at baseline 42 percent returned for more alcohol-related inpatient care the first, 28 percent the fifth, and 25 percent the tenth year. Corresponding proportions for harmful use and intoxication were smaller. One in five among those with an alcohol dependence returned for more than five of the ten years. Ordered logistic regressions confirmed that besides diagnosis, age and gender were independently related to the number of years returning to care.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>While middle-aged males with alcohol dependence were in a revolving door, young female inpatients with intoxication diagnosis returned to a comparably lower degree.</p

Gender differences and gender convergence in alcohol use over the past three decades (1984–2008), The HUNT Study, Norway

Abstract Background To examine changes in men‘s and women’s drinking in Norway over a 20-year period, in order to learn whether such changes have led to gender convergence in alcohol drinking. Methods Repeated cross-sectional studies (in 1984–86, 1995–97, and 2006–08) of a large general population living in a geographically defined area (county) in Norway. Information about alcohol drinking is based on self-report questionnaires. Not all measures were assessed in all three surveys. Results Adult alcohol drinking patterns have changed markedly over a 20-year period. Abstaining has become rarer while consumption and rates of recent drinking and problematic drinking have increased. Most changes were in the same direction for men and women, but women have moved towards men’s drinking patterns in abstaining, recent drinking, problematic drinking and consumption. Intoxication (among recent drinkers) has decreased in both genders, but more in men than in women. The declines in gender differences, however, were age-specific and varied depending on which drinking behavior and which beverage was taken into account. Conclusions There has been a gender convergence in most drinking behaviours, including lifetime history of problem drinking, over the past 2–3 decades in this Norwegian general population, but the reasons for this convergence appear to be complex

Visual Comput (2005) DOI 10.1007/s00371-005-0341-z ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Given a database of 3D models and a query model, the objective of 3D retrieval is to obtain the most similar objects from the database. Usually, the problem is divided into two sub-problems. First, each model should be compactl