Automated Vision-Based High Intraocular Pressure Detection Using Frontal Eye Images

Glaucoma, the silent thief of vision, is mostly caused by the gradual increase of pressure in the eye which is known as intraocular pressure (IOP). An effective way to prevent the rise in eye pressure is by early detection. Prior computer vision-based work regarding IOP relies on fundus images of the optic nerves. This paper provides a novel vision-based framework to help in the initial IOP screening using only frontal eye images. The framework first introduces the utilization of a fully convolutional neural (FCN) network on frontal eye images for sclera and iris segmentation. Using these extracted areas, six features that include mean redness level of the sclera, red area percentage, Pupil/Iris diameter ratio, and three sclera contour features (distance, area, and angle) are computed. A database of images from the Princess Basma Hospital is used in this work, containing 400 facial images; 200 cases with normal IOP; and 200 cases with high IOP. Once the features are extracted, two classifiers (support vector machine and decision tree) are applied to obtain the status of the patients in terms of IOP (normal or high). The overall accuracy of the proposed framework is over 97.75% using the decision tree. The novelties and contributions of this work include introducing a fully convolutional network architecture for eye sclera segmentation, in addition to scientifically correlating the frontal eye view (image) with IOP by introducing new sclera contour features that have not been previously introduced in the literature from frontal eye images for IOP status determination.https://doi.org/10.1109/JTEHM.2019.291553

The Impact of Board Composition on Corporate Dividends Pay-Out: "An Empirical Examination of Industrial Companies Listed in Amman Stock Exchange"

This study investigates the impact of board composition on corporate dividends pay-out of a sample of 30 Jordanian industrial companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) during the period (2007-2017). The study examine the  impact of a certain variables that represent board composition (Board size , Independent (non-executive ) director , duality of chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman position , Director nationality , Institutional investors ) .Panel-Data analysis was used to test the empirical model in the current study using a fixed affect model and Random effect model. Relevant data were collected from the (ASE) website and from the annual reports of the sampled companies.The result of the study revealed that there is a negative significant effect between Institutional investors, audit firm and dividend per share (DPS) at the 1% level. Moreover, there is a negative significant effect between Independent director and DPS at the 5% level.  In contrast, board of director size and firm profitability positively affect the DPS at the 5% level. Furthermore, Duality of CEO and chairman position, director nationality, firm size and financial leverage were found to have no effect on DPS at the 5% level. Keywords: Board Composition, Corporate Governance, Pay-out, ASE DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/11-27-16 Publication date:September 30th 201

Mobile Cloud Computing and Its Effectiveness in Business Organizations

E-commerce business organizations aim at achieving the goals and the mission effectively and efficiently so as to satisfy the diverse interests of the stakeholders. MCC is an ICT concept that enables the organizations to enhance the performance when serving the important stakeholders, who include customers, staff, managers, shareholders, and industry regulators. MCC involves the integration of the mobile devices to enable the sharing of the cloud infrastructure. The integration is done via a network and between the computer devices that operate remotely. The Internet is the most common network that enables the mobile devices to utilize the data and information stored in a cloud database. E-commerce businesses prefer the cloud infrastructure because it has a large data storage capacity and high processing speeds. Also, the cloud service providers invest substantial financial, human, and technological resources in ensuring the security of the effective management of the data resources. The main benefit of MCC is that it reduces the businesses expenses. For example, it enables the companies to offer products and services in the international market via the e-commerce infrastructure. Amazon.com is an example of a Multinational Corporation that is successful in offering high-quality services and products to customers in different countries using the website and the mobile app applications that are supported by the cloud infrastructure. Keywords: mobile cloud computing, cloud computing, E-commerce. DOI: 10.7176/IKM/9-1-0

Detecting Intraocular Pressure Using CNN on Frontal Eye Images

Glaucoma is an international disease causing vision loss for many patients around the world A gradual increase of intraocular pressure (IOP) and missing early diagnoses might cause blindness forever Observing IOP requires the patient’s presence at a healthcare facility where ophthalmologists or nurses evaluate the eye pressure through different medical tests In some cases, the healthcare professional anesthetizes the eye by dropping a numb liquid which would take at least 6 hours to totally wear off from the eyes and irritate the patient We are proposing a novel technique applied on the patient’s frontal eye images using a convolutional neural network (CNN) to extract common features of high IOP and glaucoma cases automatically This is a research work in progress built upon our previous related work in which pre determined features were extracted from eye images to distinguish healthy eye images from high IOP cases The dataset used in this work contains 473 normal and high IOP eye images However, in order to increase our data accuracy, we are working closely with few hospitals in the Middle East The result of this study has the potential to minimize the patient’s presence at healthcare facilities and offer patients’ safety by preventing glaucoma causes at the very early stages

Computer Vision and the Eye: Determining Intraocular Pressure from Frontal Eye Images

INTRODUCTION Glaucoma, the silent thief of vision, is mostly caused by the gradual increase of pressure in the eye which is known as Intraocular Pressure (IOP). An effective way to prevent the rise in eye pressure is by early detection Prior computer vision based work regarding IOP rely on fundus images of the optic nerves. OBJECTIVE This paper provides a novel computer vision based framework to help in the initial IOP screening using only frontal eye images. METHODS The framework first introduces the utilization of a fully convolutional network (FCN); as an instance of deep learning on frontal eye images for sclera and iris segmentation. Using these extracted areas, six features that include mean redness level (MRL) of the sclera, red area percentage (RAP), Pupil/Iris diameter ratio and three sclera contour features (distance, area and angle) are computed. RESULTS A database of images from the Princess Basma Hospital is used in this work, containing 400 facial images; 200 cases with normal IOP and 200 cases with high IOP. Once the features are extracted, two classifiers (support vector machine and decision tree) are applied to obtain the status of the patients in terms IOP (normal or high) The overall accuracy of the proposed framework is over 97 75 using decision tree. CONCLUSION The novelties and contributions of this work include introducing a fully convolutional network architecture for eye sclera segmentation, in addition to scientifically correlating the frontal eye view (image) with IOP by introducing new sclera contour features that have not been previously introduced in the literature from frontal eye images for IOP status determination

A study to test whether intrinsically photosensitive ganglion cells (ipRGCs) activity contribute to the response to chromatic pattern ERGs

Aim: Many studies have described the functions of ipRGCs, but the interaction between ipRGCs and other retinal cells is not fully understood. However, an interaction between melanopsin, the light sensitive pigment of ipRGCs, and S-cones has been reported (Spitschan et al., 2014). S-cone activity can be recorded as a small positive peak (P) of the transient PERG, recorded with a blue/black checkerboard stimulus after adaptation to a yellow light (Niepel & Dodt, 1989). As S-cones and melanopsin have similar spectral sensitivities, it is possible that melanopsin participates in the S-cone peak of the PERG. Therefore, in this study we sought to correlate this P peak with the activity of melanopsin and to examine whether the PERG to blue stimulation also induces the activity of ipRGCs. For this purpose, we compared recordings of the PERG with those of pupillography parameters, as melanopsin is known to participate in the pupil response. We collected results from healthy volunteers, as well as from patients with glaucoma, who have been shown to have a reduced ipRGC activity (Kankipati et al., 2011). Methods: Ten healthy volunteers and 10 patients with open-angle glaucoma were examined. Only one eye from each participant was considered. The PERG was performed with a blue / black stimulus, 1 minute and 2 minutes after yellow light adaptation. Pupillography was performed with a blue and a red stimulus after light and dark adaptation. In addition, blood pressure, O2 and pulse were measured 3 times, i. e. before, between and at the end of the recordings, to ensure that changes in these parameters do not affect the results. Results: The majority of PERG recordings after yellow light adaptation showed a small peak (P) after the P50 peak with an implicit time between 90-110 msec. The amplitude of P was significantly different between healthy subjects and glaucoma patients in the first minute after light adaptation (p = 0.018). The redilation times from the pupillography recordings, significant differences were also found between healthy controls and glaucoma patients after a blue stimulus with light adaptation (p = 0.047), as well as after dark adaptation (p = 0.001). Moderately positive correlations were found in healthy volunteers between the amplitude of P and the redilation time with a blue stimulus 2 min after DA (CC = 0.620) and in glaucoma patients 2 min after adaptation with a red or blue stimulus (CC = 0.678 and 0.508, respectively). In the healthy group, there was a moderately negative correlation between P in the first minute after yellow light adaptation and the redilation time with blue stimulus and light adaptation (CC = -0.550). Discussion: The results corroborate the theory that healthy ipRGCs have an influence on the S-cone peak (P) amplitude in the PERG recordings. The results of the pupillography additionally show that the mean redilation time is higher in the healthy group than in the glaucoma group, except for the blue stimulus with light adaptation. This can be explained by the known influence of ipRGCs on the regulation of pupil function, which is reduced in glaucoma patients. The results suggest a possible indirect participation of ipRGCs in the P-amplitude of the S-cone, but due to several limitations in our study, further studies are necessary to confirm this involvement and to better understand the correlation between ipRGCs and the P amplitude of the S-cone

A multinational Delphi consensus to end the COVID-19 public health threat

Despite notable scientific and medical advances, broader political, socioeconomic, and behavioural factors continue to undercut the response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic1,2. This Delphi study convened a diverse, multidisciplinary panel of 386 academic, health, NGO, government and other experts in COVID-19 response from 112 countries and territories to recommend specific actions to end this persistent global public health threat. The panel developed a set of 41 consensus statements and 57 recommendations to governments, health systems, industry, and other key stakeholders across six domains: communication; health systems; vaccination; prevention; treatment and care; and inequities. In the wake of nearly three years of ragmented global and national responses, it is instructive to note that three of the highest-ranked recommendations call for the adoption of whole-of-society and whole-of-government approaches1, while maintaining proven prevention measures using a vaccines-plus approach2 that employs a range of public health and financial support measures to complement vaccination. Other recommendations with at least 99% combined agreement advise governments and other stakeholders to improve communication, rebuild public trust, and engage communities3 in the management of pandemic responses. The findings of the study, which have been further endorsed by organisations globally, include points of unanimous agreement, as well as six recommendations with >5% disagreement, that provide health and social policy actions to address inadequacies in the pandemic response and help bring this public health threat to an end

A multinational Delphi consensus to end the COVID-19 public health threat

Abstract Despite notable scientific and medical advances, broader political, socioeconomic and behavioural factors continue to undercut the response to the COVID-19 pandemic 1,2 . Here we convened, as part of this Delphi study, a diverse, multidisciplinary panel of 386 academic, health, non-governmental organization, government and other experts in COVID-19 response from 112 countries and territories to recommend specific actions to end this persistent global threat to public health. The panel developed a set of 41 consensus statements and 57 recommendations to governments, health systems, industry and other key stakeholders across six domains: communication; health systems; vaccination; prevention; treatment and care; and inequities. In the wake of nearly three years of fragmented global and national responses, it is instructive to note that three of the highest-ranked recommendations call for the adoption of whole-of-society and whole-of-government approaches 1 , while maintaining proven prevention measures using a vaccines-plus approach 2 that employs a range of public health and financial support measures to complement vaccination. Other recommendations with at least 99% combined agreement advise governments and other stakeholders to improve communication, rebuild public trust and engage communities 3 in the management of pandemic responses. The findings of the study, which have been further endorsed by 184 organizations globally, include points of unanimous agreement, as well as six recommendations with >5% disagreement, that provide health and social policy actions to address inadequacies in the pandemic response and help to bring this public health threat to an end

A multinational Delphi consensus to end the COVID-19 public health threat

Abstract Despite notable scientific and medical advances, broader political, socioeconomic and behavioural factors continue to undercut the response to the COVID-19 pandemic . Here we convened, as part of this Delphi study, a diverse, multidisciplinary panel of 386 academic, health, non-governmental organization, government and other experts in COVID-19 response from 112 countries and territories to recommend specific actions to end this persistent global threat to public health. The panel developed a set of 41 consensus statements and 57 recommendations to governments, health systems, industry and other key stakeholders across six domains: communication; health systems; vaccination; prevention; treatment and care; and inequities. In the wake of nearly three years of fragmented global and national responses, it is instructive to note that three of the highest-ranked recommendations call for the adoption of whole-of-society and whole-of-government approaches , while maintaining proven prevention measures using a vaccines-plus approach that employs a range of public health and financial support measures to complement vaccination. Other recommendations with at least 99% combined agreement advise governments and other stakeholders to improve communication, rebuild public trust and engage communities in the management of pandemic responses. The findings of the study, which have been further endorsed by 184 organizations globally, include points of unanimous agreement, as well as six recommendations with >5% disagreement, that provide health and social policy actions to address inadequacies in the pandemic response and help to bring this public health threat to an end