Association of regional cerebral perfusion impairment with gait and balance performance in dizzy patients using brain perfusion spect: Voxel-based analysis of a pilot sample

Objective(s): The purpose of this study was to investigate regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) reduction in patients with dizziness and perfusion-related clinical impairment using brain perfusion single photon emission tomography (SPECT). Methods: Thirty-four patients with subjective dizziness and 13 age-and sexmatched healthy controls were studied. Dizziness-related impairments were assessed using the Dizziness Handicap Inventory (DHI) and Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB). Brain perfusion SPECT scan was acquired from all participants. The carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) was also measured. Brain perfusion data were qualitatively interpreted in all cases. Voxel-wise analysis was also conducted in 11 patients compared to healthy controls. Results: Thirty-four patients (mean age=53.8±13.4 years, m/f: 19/15) and 13 ageand sex-matched controls (mean age=51.5±13.1, m/f: 7/6) were included. The dizziness severity was mild in 58.8% (n=20), moderate in 26.5% (n=9), and severe in 14.7% (n=5). Qualitative interpretation of SPECT images showed normal scans in 4 (11.2%) patients and abnormal scans in 30 (88.2%) patients. Patients with dizziness showed a significantly decreased brain perfusion in the precuneus, cuneus, occipital lobe (superior and inferior parts), frontal lobe (inferior and middle parts), temporal lobe, parietal lobe (inferior and superior parts), cerebellum, insula, and putamen nucleus. Based on both qualitative SPECT interpretation and voxel-wise analysis, perfusion defect had a significant association with the total SPPB score and the scores of two sub-domains (p[removed]0.05) score . Conclusion: The perfusion-and atherosclerosis-related impairments of gait and balance were largely independent of subjective dizziness and dizziness severity. Moreover, this study provided support for contribution of perfusion impairment to the disturbance of gait and balance in older populations along with other pathologic processes. © 2021 mums.ac.ir All rights reserved

Physicians’ and nurses’ decision making to encounter neonates with poor prognosis in the neonatal intensive care unit

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Sage in Clinical Ethics on 03/06/2020. Available online: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1477750920927173This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Sage in Clinical Ethics on 03/06/2020.Available online: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1477750920927173acceptedVersio

Application placement in fog computing with AI approach : taxonomy and a state of the art survey

With the increasing use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in various fields and the need to process and store huge volumes of generated data, Fog computing was introduced to complement Cloud computing services. Fog computing offers basic services at the network for supporting IoT applications with low response time requirements. However, Fogs are distributed, heterogeneous, and their resources are limited, therefore efficient distribution of IoT applications tasks in Fog nodes, in order to meet quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) constraints is challenging. In this survey, at first, we have an overview of basic concepts of Fog computing, and then review the application placement problem in Fog computing with focus on Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. We target three main objectives with considering a characteristics of AI-based methods in Fog application placement problem: (i) categorizing evolutionary algorithms, (ii) categorizing machine learning algorithms, and (iii) categorizing combinatorial algorithms into subcategories includes a combination of machine learning and heuristic, a combination of evolutionary and heuristic, and a combinations of evolutionary and machine learning. Then the security considerations of application placement have been reviewed. Finally, we provide a number of open questions and issues as future works