Signal Processing

Contains reports on two research projects.Joint Services Electronics Programs (U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DA 28-043-AMC-02536(E

Mild Stimulation versus Conventional IVF: A Cost-Effectiveness Evaluation

Purpose: To compare the strategy for mild stimulation IVF versus conventional stimulation IVF. Methods: A decision tree analytic model was created to compare IVF with mild stimulation versus convention stimulation in infertile women <38 years of age to evaluate which strategy is the least costly per live birth. Results: Using base-case estimates of costs and probabilities in women <38 years old with unexplained infertility, the cumulative live birth rate in the mild versus conventional stimulation group was 15.8% versus 28.6%, respectively. The average cost for mild and convention IVF was $8789 and$14,364 per arm, respectively. In base case analysis, the ICER was $43,516 representing the additional cost per live birth with conventional IVF. One-way sensitivity analysis evaluated the robustness of the data and revealed a tradeoff in which mild IVF stimulation had lower total costs and also lower live births versus conventional stimulation. Conclusions: Mild stimulation IVF has a lower cost per cycle but is also associated with lower live birth rates. Patient care decisions should be individualized irrespective of cost

Bimodal Fusion in Audio-Visual Speech Recognition

Extending automatic speech recognition (ASR) to the visual modality has been shown to greatly increase recognition accuracy and improve system robustness over purely acoustic systems. especially in acoustically hostile environments. An important aspect of designing such systems is how to incorporate the visual component Into the acoustic speech recognizer to achieve optimal performance. In this paper, we investigate methods of Integrating the audio and visual modalities within HMM-based classification models. We examine existing integration schemes and propose the use of a coupled hidden Markov model (CHMM) to exploit audio-visual interaction. Our experimental results demonstrate that the CHMM consistently outperforms other integration models for a large range of acoustic noise levels and suggest that it better captures temporal correlations between the two streams of information

Digital Signal Processing

Contains reports on three research projects.U. S. Navy Office of Naval Research (Contract N00014-67-A-0204-0064)National Science Foundation (Grant GK-31353

Infertile women who screen positive for depression are less likely to initiate fertility treatments

Are infertile women who screen positive for depression less likely to initiate infertility treatments? Infertile women who screen positive for depression are less likely to initiate treatment for infertility. Infertility imposes a psychological burden on many couples. Depression and anxiety have been demonstrated in ~40% of infertile women, which is twice that of fertile women. Further, the psychological burden associated with infertility treatment has been cited as a major factor for discontinuation of infertility care. Prospective, observational study in a clinical-based cohort of 416 women who completed a questionnaire after the new patient visit, from January 2013 until December 2014 inclusive. All new female infertility patients (n = 959) seen between January 2013 and December 2014 at University of North Carolina Fertility received an electronic questionnaire to screen for mental health disorders and to evaluate their perception of mental health disorders on infertility. Of 959 surveys sent, 416 women completed the questionnaire (43%). The prevalence screening positive for depression, using the NIH PROMIS screening tool, was 41%. Sixty-two percent of all women initiated infertility treatment, and of these, 81% did so within 4 months. In multivariate analysis, women who screened positive for depression had 0.55 times the odds of initiating treatment for infertility (95% CI: 0.31-0.95). Similarly, women who screened positive for depression had 0.58 times the odds of initiating infertility treatment within 4 months (95% CI: 0.35-0.97), which was the time of censoring from the most recent patient evaluated. Women who screened positive for depression were less likely to pursue treatment with oral medications or IVF (P = 0.01 and P = 0.03, respectively), as compared to women who did not screen positive for depression. Questionnaire-based evaluations may result in a lower prevalence of psychological disorder as some participants feign emotional well-being. Although we did not identify differences in women who responded to our survey and those who did not, responder bias may still be present. In addition, infertility is a couple's disease. However, this study only included psychological evaluation of the female partner. We have no information about the women's previous treatment. Screening for depression is important in the infertility patient population, as further evaluation and psychological interventions may improve compliance with fertility treatments, quality of life, and potentially, the overall chance of pregnancy. None

Signal Processing

Contains reports on three research projects.Joint Services Electronics Programs (U.S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract DAAB07-71-C-0300U. S. Coast Guard (Contract DOT-CG -13446-A)M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory Purchase Order CC-57

Digital Signal Processing

Contains research objectives and summary of research.National Science Foundation (Grant GK-31353)U. S. Navy Office of Naval Research (Contract N00014-67-A-0204-0064

Automatic Speechreading with Application to Speaker Verification

Speech not only conveys the linguistic information, but also characterizes the talker\u27s identify and therefore can be used in personal authentication. While most of the speech information is contained in the acoustic channel, the lip movement during speech production also provides useful information. In this paper we investigate the effectiveness of visual speech features in a speaker veri pound sterling cation task. We pound sterling rst present the visual front-end of the automatic speechreading system. We then develop a recognition engine to train and recognize sequences of visual parameters. The experimental results based on the XM2VTS database [1] demonstrate that visual information is highly effective in reducing both false acceptance and false rejection rates in speaker verification tasks

Speech Communication

Contains research objectives, summary of research and reports on three research projects.U. S. Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories under Contract F19628-69-C-0044National Institutes of Health (Grant 5 R01 NS04332-09)M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory Purchase Order CC-57

To preserve or not to preserve: How difficult is the decision about fertility preservation?

The decision to pursue fertility preservation (FP) after a cancer diagnosis is complex. We examined the prevalence of high decisional conflict and specific factors that influence this decision using the decisional conflict scale (DCS)