122 research outputs found
"Analisi dell'aderenza alle linee guida nel trattamento della neutropenia e anemia del paziente onco-ematologico"
Obiettivo tesi
Lo studio si propone di analizzare lâutilizzo dei fattori di crescita e delle eritropoietine nel trattamento della neutropenia e dellâanemia nel paziente onco-ematologico, verificandone lâaderenza o meno alle linee guida AIOM 2010.
CiĂČ acquista un particolare significato anche in considerazione dellâattuale congiuntura economica che interessa il Servizio Sanitario Nazionale che vede da una parte una minore disponibilitĂ di risorse e dallâaltra una crescente richiesta di terapie ad alto costo; questo Ăš particolarmente rilevante in ambito oncologico.
In considerazione del fatto che i farmaci di cui trattiamo incidono in modo significativo sulla spesa farmaceutica risulta importante adottare tutti gli strumenti di conoscenza affinchĂš il loro uso sia appropriato e possa rispettare i profili di costo/efficacia.
Partendo dallâidea della figura del âFarmacista di Dipartimentoâ, che propone lâinserimento di questa figura professionale in reparto quale ausilio nella valutazione delle scelte terapeutiche, per favorire una corretta politica di Governo clinico che tenga conto sia dellâappropriatezza che del miglior utilizzo delle risorse, si Ăš cercato di fissare i dati una prima esperienza di osservazione diretta sulle scelte di terapia nel paziente neutropenico/anemico post trattamento chemioterapico.
Questo potrebbe essere un punto di partenza per la definizione di linee guida di indirizzo e per la pianificazione di possibili strumenti di monitoraggio per la sorveglianza dei trattamenti in uso, per ottenere una condivisione con gli specialisti ed elaborare delle raccomandazioni e degli indicatori per evidenziare lâaderenza o meno alle stesse
Multiple-instance Learning as a Framework to Explain with Shapley Coefficients
Explainability and interpretability have become questions of fundamental importance for a safe and responsible deployment of modern machine learning models in high-stakes scenarios. Many examples exist of accidental behavior of autonomous systems that systematically under perform on minorities, or emulate hateful human behavior. Notwithstanding the recent advances in fair and interpretable machine learning, several theoretical issues remain open on the validity of popular explanation methods.
In this thesis, we study multiple-instance learning as a framework to explaining model predictions with Shapley coefficients. In particular, we focus on local explanations, i.e. we seek to find the most important features in an input towards a modelâs prediction. We show that a principle approach to explainability can produce fast and exact explanation methods that provide precise mathematical guarantees on their speed and accuracy. We apply our new explanation method to a medical imaging task of clinical importanceâ intracranial hemorrhage detectionâwhere the use of autonomous systems can support radiologists in their daily work, for example, by prioritizing the most severe cases or provide a second opinion for subtle ones. We find that an explainability-driven approach can significantly reduce the number of labels needed to train a model, and therefore make collecting new datasets cheaper
From Shapley back to Pearson: Hypothesis Testing via the Shapley Value
The complex nature of artificial neural networks raises concerns on their
reliability, trustworthiness, and fairness in real-world scenarios. The Shapley
value -- a solution concept from game theory -- is one of the most popular
explanation methods for machine learning models. More traditionally, from the
perspective of statistical learning, feature importance is defined in terms of
conditional independence. So far, these two approaches to interpretability and
feature importance have been considered separate and distinct. In this work, we
show that Shapley-based explanation methods and conditional independence
testing are closely related. We introduce the ley
ocal ndependence est (),
a novel testing procedure inspired by the Conditional Randomization Test (CRT)
for a specific notion of local (i.e., on a sample) conditional independence.
With it, we prove that for binary classification problems, each marginal
contribution in the Shapley value is an upper bound to the -value of this
conditional independence test. Furthermore, we show that the Shapley value
itself provides an upper bound to the -value of a global SHAPLIT null
hypothesis. As a result, we grant the Shapley value with a precise statistical
sense of importance with false positive rate control
How to Trust Your Diffusion Model: A Convex Optimization Approach to Conformal Risk Control
Score-based generative modeling, informally referred to as diffusion models,
continue to grow in popularity across several important domains and tasks.
While they provide high-quality and diverse samples from empirical
distributions, important questions remain on the reliability and
trustworthiness of these sampling procedures for their responsible use in
critical scenarios. Conformal prediction is a modern tool to construct
finite-sample, distribution-free uncertainty guarantees for any black-box
predictor. In this work, we focus on image-to-image regression tasks and we
present a generalization of the Risk-Controlling Prediction Sets (RCPS)
procedure, that we term -RCPS, which allows to provide entrywise
calibrated intervals for future samples of any diffusion model, and
control a certain notion of risk with respect to a ground truth image with
minimal mean interval length. Differently from existing conformal risk control
procedures, ours relies on a novel convex optimization approach that allows for
multidimensional risk control while provably minimizing the mean interval
length. We illustrate our approach on two real-world image denoising problems:
on natural images of faces as well as on computed tomography (CT) scans of the
abdomen, demonstrating state of the art performance
Social modulation of peripersonal space boundaries
The space around the body, i.e., peripersonal space (PPS), is conceived as a multisensory-motor interface between body and environment. PPS is represented by frontoparietal neurons integrating tactile, visual, and auditory stimuli occurring near the body [1-7]. PPS is plastic, because it extends by using a tool to reach far objects [8-10]. Although interactions with others occur within PPS, little is known about how social environment modulates it. Here, we show that presence and interaction with others shape PPS representation. Participants performed a tactile detection task on their face while concurrent task-irrelevant sounds approached toward or receded from their face. Because a sound affects touch when occurring within PPS [6, 10-12], we calculated the critical distance where sounds speeded up tactile reaction time as a proxy of PPS boundaries. Experiment 1 shows that PPS boundaries shrink when subjects face another individual, as compared to a mannequin, placed in far space. Experiment 2 and 3 show that, after playing an economic game with another person, PPS boundaries between self and other merge, but only if the other behaved cooperatively. These results reveal that PPS representation is sensitive to social modulation, showing a link between low-level sensorimotor processing and high-level social cognition. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd
Disentangling predictive processing in the brain: A meta-analytic study in favour of a predictive network
According to the predictive coding (PC) theory, the brain is constantly engaged in predicting its upcoming states and refning these predictions through error signals. Despite extensive research investigating the neural bases of this theory, to date no previous study has systematically attempted to defne the neural mechanisms of predictive coding across studies and sensory channels, focussing on functional connectivity. In this study, we employ a coordinate-based meta-analytical approach to address this issue. We frst use the Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) algorithm to detect spatial convergence across studies, related to prediction error and encoding. Overall, our ALE results suggest the ultimate role of the left inferior frontal gyrus and left insula in both processes. Moreover, we employ a meta-analytic connectivity method (Seed-Voxel Correlations Consensus). This technique reveals a large, bilateral predictive network, which resembles large-scale networks involved in taskdriven attention and execution. In sum, we fnd that: (i) predictive processing seems to occur more in certain brain regions than others, when considering diferent sensory modalities at a time; (ii) there is no evidence, at the network level, for a distinction between error and prediction processing
The Mindedness of Maternal Touch: An Investigation of Maternal Mind-Mindedness and Mother-Infant Touch Interactions
Increasing evidence shows that maternal touch may promote emotion regulation in infants, however less is known about how parental higher-order social cognition abilities are translated into tactile, affect-regulatory behaviours towards their infants. During 10âŻmin book-reading, mother-infant sessions when infants were 12 months old (NâŻ=âŻ45), we investigated maternal mind-mindedness (MM), the social cognitive ability to understand an infantâs mental state, by coding the contingency of maternal verbal statements towards the infantsâ needs and desires. We also rated spontaneous tactile interactions in terms of their emotional contingency. We found that frequent non-attuned mind-related comments were associated with touch behaviours that were not contingent with the infantâs emotions; ultimately discouraging affective tactile responses from the infant. However, comments that were more appropriate to infantâs mental states did not necessarily predict more emotionally-contingent tactile behaviours. These findings suggest that when parental high-order social cognitive abilities are compromised, they are also likely to translate into inappropriate, tactile attempts to regulate infantâs emotions
WNT signalling in prostate cancer
Genome sequencing and gene expression analyses of prostate tumours have highlighted the potential importance of genetic and epigenetic changes observed in WNT signalling pathway components in prostate tumours-particularly in the development of castration-resistant prostate cancer. WNT signalling is also important in the prostate tumour microenvironment, in which WNT proteins secreted by the tumour stroma promote resistance to therapy, and in prostate cancer stem or progenitor cells, in which WNT-ÎČ-catenin signals promote self-renewal or expansion. Preclinical studies have demonstrated the potential of inhibitors that target WNT receptor complexes at the cell membrane or that block the interaction of ÎČ-catenin with lymphoid enhancer-binding factor 1 and the androgen receptor, in preventing prostate cancer progression. Some WNT signalling inhibitors are in phase I trials, but they have yet to be tested in patients with prostate cancer
Interpersonal distance adjustments after interactions with a generous and selfish trustee during a repeated trust game
Listening to a conversation with aggressive content expands the interpersonal space
The distance individuals maintain between themselves and others can be defined as âinterpersonal spaceâ. This distance can be modulated both by situational factors and individual characteristics. Here we investigated the influence that the interpretation of other people interaction, in which one is not directly involved, may have on a personâs interpersonal space. In the current study we measured, for the first time, whether the size of interpersonal space changes after listening to other people conversations with neutral or aggressive content. The results showed that the interpersonal space expands after listening to a conversation with aggressive content relative to a conversation with a neutral content. This finding suggests that participants tend to distance themselves from an aggressive confrontation even if they are not involved in it. These results are in line with the view of the interpersonal space as a safety zone surrounding oneâs body
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