Activity recognition in smart homes with self verification of assignments

Activity recognition in smart homes provides valuable benefits in the field of health and elderly care by remote monitoring of patients. In health care, capabilities of both performing the correct recognition and reducing the wrong assignments are of high importance. The novelty of the proposed activity recognition approach lies in being able to assign a category to the incoming activity, while measuring the confidence score of the assigned category that reduces the false positives in the assignments. Multiple sensors deployed at different locations of a smart home are used for activity observations. For multi-class activity classification, we propose a binary solution using support vector machines, which simplifies the problem to correct/incorrect assignments. We obtain the confidence score of each assignment by estimating the activity distribution within each class such that the assignments with low confidence are separated for further investigation by a human operator. The proposed approach is evaluated using a comprehensive performance evaluation metrics. Experimental results obtained from nine publicly available smart home datasets demonstrate a better performance of the proposed approach compared to the state of the art

Extracranial metastasis of recurrent glioblastoma to the parotid gland: a case report and review of the literature

Abstract Background Glioblastomas are the most common and highly malignant primary brain tumors in adults with a median survival of 15 months even with appropriate treatment. Extracranial metastases are extremely rare due to the poor prognosis not allowing sufficient time to spread. We report an extremely rare case of extracranial metastasis of supra-tentorial glioblastoma involving the skin, subcutaneous and muscular layers, periauricular region and parotid gland, and review the literature. A total of 13 glioblastoma parotid gland metastases cases have been hitherto described. Main body of the abstract A 42-year-old man underwent surgery for right temporal glioblastoma and received 60 Gy/30 fractions radiotherapy together with temozolomide at 75 mg/m2. Seven months later, the tumor relapsed and the patient underwent a second surgery while chemotherapy continued. Fifteen months later, he complained of swelling in the right neck region. Fine needle aspiration and tru-cut biopsy revealed a high-grade malignant tumor infiltration within the parotid gland. Despite salvage chemotherapy and adjuvant radiotherapy, in his follow-up after 6 months neck swelling increased. The patient declined any treatment modality and continues his life 39 months after the primary diagnosis of intracranial glioblastoma. Short conclusion Due to the recurrence rate of intracranial glioblastoma and its malignant nature; close imaging follow-up is highly crucial. The increase in reported cases of its extracranial metastases is generally due to the modern diagnostic tools and prolonged survival attributed to the improvement in treatment modalities where now radical surgery with adjuvant radiotherapy and chemotherapy is standard protocol. Patients with glioblastomas presenting with swelling in the cervical region should be investigated to rule out parotid gland metastasis

Transorbital penetrating head trauma leading to serious cerebral edema - A case report

Penetrating transorbital head injuries are rarely seen. We present a 6-year old male patient who was referred to our department after a wooden stick penetrated his right eye. On admission his general condition was well and he showed no neurologic deficits. On his cranial computed tomography (CT) there was a fracture on his right orbital wall and minimal subarachnoid hemorrhage in his right frontal lobe. On later follow-ups the patient's condition worsened and his control CT showed diffuse cerebral edema. The patient underwent emergent decompressive surgery. Due to this immediate intervention the patient was released from the hospital with no major deficits later. Up to our knowledge, there are no cases in the literature reported in which decompressive craniectomy was necessary after a transorbital penetrating head trauma

Multi-Level forestier syndrome in the cervical vertebra with an unusual radiographic appearance: Case report

We present a rare case of Forestier disease with multi-level vertebra involvement from the upper cervical to the thoracic area which has not been reported in the literature before.A 65- year old male patient was admitted to our outpatient clinic with neck pain, dysphagia and sleep apnea for over 5 months. On his cervical CT scan revealed broad ossification of the anterior longitudinal ligament from C2 to T1 with anteriorly beaking osteophytes surrounding the vertebral bodies causing compression of the trachea and esophagus on C2 and C3. With the diagnosis of Diffuse Idiopathic Skeletal Hyperostosis (DISH), the patient underwent surgery. With an anterolateral approach the ossified pathological segment was removed with a high-speed drill and the patient’s symptoms revealed immediately after the surgery.Forestier disease or DISH is defined as a non-inflammatory ossification of spinal and peripheral elements. It is mostly seen in the thoracic region. In the cervical region it is mostly seen in the subaxial segment between C4-C7. Dysphagia, being the most prominent symptom in patients with cervical DISH. The fact that makes our case unique is the multiple cervical vertebra involvement of DISH starting in the upper cervical vertebra which has not been reported in the literature in this variety before.In our patient the ossification mimicking a bird’s beak had vertical growing characteristics despite being in the upper cervical area. Also, multi-level involvement in the cervical spine is rare because the cervical vertebrae are more mobile than the ones in the thoracic area. In our patient ossification from C2 to T1 was present which has not been presented in the literature before. Rapid improvement of the patient’s symptoms confirmed with the radiological images strenghten the hypothesis that patients with dysphagia, especially in the ones with weight loss due to it, have better outcomes when approached surgically than conservatively</p