Automatic detection and classification of leukaemia cells

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Today, there is a substantial number of software and research groups that focus on the development of image processing software to extract useful information from medical images, in order to assist and improve patient diagnosis. The work presented in this thesis is centred on processing of images of blood and bone marrow smears of patients suffering from leukaemia, a common type of cancer. In general, cancer is due to aberrant gene expression, which is caused by either mutations or epigenetic changes in DNA. Poor diet and unhealthy lifestyle may trigger or contribute to these changes, although the underlying mechanism is often unknown. Importantly, many cancer types including leukaemia are curable and patient survival and treatment can be improved, subject to prompt diagnosis. In particular, this study focuses on Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML), which can be of eight distinct types (M0 to M7), with the main objective to develop a methodology to automatically detect and classify leukaemia cells into one of the above types. The data was collected from the Department of Haematology, Universiti Sains Malaysia, in Malaysia. Three main methods, namely Cellular Automata, Heuristic Search and classification using Neural Networks are facilitated. In the case of Cellular Automata, an improved method based on the 8-neighbourhood and rules were developed to remove noise from images and estimate the radius of the potential blast cells contained in them. The proposed methodology selects the starting points, corresponding to potential blast cells, for the subsequent seeded heuristic search. The Seeded Heuristic employs a new fitness function for blast cell detection. Furthermore, the WEKA software is utilised for classification of blast cells and hence images, into AML subtypes. As a result accuracy of 97.22% was achieved in the classification of blasts into M3 and other AML subtypes. Finally, these algorithms are integrated into an automated system for image processing. In brief, the research presented in this thesis involves the use of advanced computational techniques for processing and classification of medical images, that is, images of blood samples from patients suffering from leukaemia.The Institute of Higher Education of Malaysia and the Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM)

A research framework of electronic document management systems implementation process in government

Many governments today have implemented Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS). The employment of EDMS systems has increased the operational (e.g. document storage and retrieval, auditing, workflow facilities, searching and publishing) effectiveness of governments on daily basis. However, not many studies had been undertaken into process of implementing EDMS in the government context. Therefore, this paper fills this gap by presenting a research framework for the implementation process of EDMS. Based on a content analysis of the reviewed literature, this paper identifies thirteen (13) common factors contributing to the implementation process of EDMS. The factors are: (1) Top management support; (2) Budgetary; (3) Implementation planning; (4) Anti-corruption; (5) Implementation staff; (6) Security and privacy; (7) Data quality, (8) User requirements; (9) Cooperation; (10) Systems integration; (11) Awareness; (12) Resistance to change; and (13) Staff training. All these factors subsequently were linked to the Prosci-ADKAR model of change to outline the structure of EDMS implementation process framework. The proposed framework contributes to the theoretical understanding of the EAI implementation process, which may support government practitioners in implementing the EDMS applications in their government organizations. The paper also highlights with three important issues that need to be explored further while developing the framework: 1) the EDMS implementation process meaning in system development life cycle; 2) the importance of EDMS implementation factors; and 3) the kind approach to investigate EDMS implementation process

Systematic literature review of e-Commerce implementation studies

E-Commerce implementation is a crucial process for organization to make it successful and beneficial. As a consequence, intensive research works in the area of e-Commerce implementation from a diverse range of views and findings have been studied by many researchers. However, the aspect of Business-to-Customer (B2C) e-Commerce implementation has yet been undertaken in an understandable manner in the context of a full life cycle of information systems development. This paper provides a systematic literature review of existing research studies on e-Commerce implementation to discover the extent focus of work based on theme in the implementation phases: pre-implementation, during implementation and post implementation. Sixty five (65) selected primary research studies have been analysed on the basis of implementation phase theme, research approach and research area. The results show that majority papers discussed B2C e-Commerce in the pre-implementation phase (49%) and applied quantitative approach (63%) as the most popular research method. Two other implementation phases namely during implementation phase and post implementation phase has not been sufficiently addressed in the existing literature. Furthermore, existing literature have significantly addressed factors related to e-Commerce implementation but were not mapped to the appropriate implementation phases. These factors list remains on surface without clear direction in which e-Commerce implementation process is crucial for organizations. Thus, through a systematic literature review this study suggests that more research is needed for understanding the complex process of e-Commerce implementation in a more holistic manner. In addition, there is a need for study to screen these factors to a particular and more accurately “map” in the process of e-Commerce implementatio

Comparative study for load management of HBase and Cassandra distributed databases in big data

The advancement in cloud computing, the increasing size of databases and the emergence of big data have made traditional data management system to be insufficient solution to store and manage such large-scale data. Therefore, there has been an emergence of new mechanisms for data storage that can handle large-scale data. NoSQL databases are used to store and manage large amount of data. They are intended to be open source, distributed and horizontally scalable in order to provide high performance. Scalability is one of the important features of such systems, it means that by increasing the number of nodes, more requests can be served per unit of time. Distribution and scalability are always companied with load management, which provides load balancing of work among multiple nodes. Load management efficiency varies from system to another according to the used load balancing technique. In this study, HBase and Cassandra load management with scalability will be evaluated as they are the most popular NoSQL databases modeled based on Big Table. In particular,this paper will compare and analyze the load management for the distributed performance of HBase and Cassandra using standard benchmark tool named Yahoo! Cloud Serving Benchmark (YCSB). The experiments will measure the performance of database operations with a different number of connections using different numbers of operations, database size, and processing nodes. The experimental results showed that HBase can provide better performance as the number of connections increase in the presence of horizontal scalabilit

An Adaptive Thresholding Method for Segmenting Dental X-Ray Images

Thresholding is a way of segmenting an image into foreground and background according to a fixed constant value called a threshold. Image segmentation based on a constant threshold leads to unsatisfactory results with dental X-ray images due to the uneven distribution of pixel intensity. In this paper, an adaptive thresholding method is proposed to attain promising segmentation results for dental X-ray images. The Mean, Median, Midgrey, Niblack, and OTSU thresholding methods are utilized to delineate the acceptable range of threshold values to be applied for segmenting X-ray images. Experimental results showed that the Median method provides consistency in achieving the best range of threshold values which is between 57 and 86 in greyscale

Exploring the software quality criteria and sustainable development targets: A case study of digital library in Malaysian higher learning institution

Being sustainable within social, environmental, and the economy is still a major issue to almost every company globally. Although on-going actions have been implemented via information and communication technology (ICT), studies and development efforts in seeking solutions are in scarcity, particularly for the present use of software to perform its intended task. The lack of technological innovation and development motivate us to explore the present use of software with the focus on software quality criteria (SQC) in attaining sustainable development targets (SDTs). The understanding of SQC is significant for the purpose of meeting the needs and operating environment of software that are continually changed in the future. This paper presents a semi-structured interview involving eight digital library’s stakeholders in one of Malaysian higher learning institution. By applying thematic analysis, the study finds six digital library software quality criteria (DL-SQC) and seven digital library sustainable development targets (DL-SDTs) that were heavily stressed by more than half of participants. The DL-SQC are usability, maintainability, functionality, portability, efficiency, and reliability. While the DL-SDTs are equal access to information/knowledge, energy efficiency, persistent updates the information/knowledge, collaboration & partnership, funding, green technology innovation, and information/knowledge sharing. The study contributes as a guide to researchers who are motivated to position their further studies into this topic and for a practitioner; it is to summarize the SQC and their relevant SDTs that may be applied to make decisions regarding the next level of software development and maintenance process towards being sustainable

Readiness of Information Security Management Systems (ISMS) policy on hospital staff using e-patuh system

ISO 27001:2013 is the best-known standard providing requirements for information security management systems (ISMS). An ISMS is a systematic approach to manage sensitive information through people, processes and IT systems. In a hospital, a patient's individual medical record is highly private and sensitive. This study performed qualitative questionnaire based on the ISO27001:2013 policy. Seven hospitals in Malaysia were involved in this study. This study focus on the Data Center as it contains a high risk server. This study reveals the non-compliance issues among the sampled hospitals in Malaysia. The participation of the hospitals in trainings related to information security awareness and education were still not adequate due to lack of support from the top management. The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), the Ministry of Health Malaysia and the top management in hospitals in Malaysia play vital roles to educate and ensure the compliance of ISO 27001:2013

Readiness of Information Security Management Systems (ISMS) Policy on Hospital Staff Using e-Patuh System

ISO 27001:2013 is the best-known standard providing requirements for information security management systems (ISMS). An ISMS is a systematic approach to manage sensitive information through people, processes and IT systems. In a hospital, a patient's individual medical record is highly private and sensitive. This study performed qualitative questionnaire based on the ISO27001:2013 policy. Seven hospitals in Malaysia were involved in this study. This study focus on the Data Center as it contains a high risk server. This study reveals the non-compliance issues among the sampled hospitals in Malaysia. The participation of the hospitals in trainings related to information security awareness and education were still not adequate due to lack of support from the top management. The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), the Ministry of Health Malaysia and the top management in hospitals in Malaysia play vital roles to educate and ensure the compliance of ISO 27001:2013

IntelliRehabDS (IRDS)—A Dataset of Physical Rehabilitation Movements

In this article, we present a dataset that comprises different physical rehabilitation movements. The dataset was captured as part of a research project intended to provide automatic feedback on the execution of rehabilitation exercises, even in the absence of a physiotherapist. A Kinect motion sensor camera was used to record gestures. The dataset contains repetitions of nine gestures performed by 29 subjects, out of which 15 were patients and 14 were healthy controls. The data are presented in an easily accessible format, provided as 3D coordinates of 25 body joints along with the corresponding depth map for each frame. Each movement was annotated with the gesture type, the position of the person performing the gesture (sitting or standing) as well as a correctness label. The data are publicly available and were released with to provide a comprehensive dataset that can be used for assessing the performance of different patients while performing simple movements in a rehabilitation setting and for comparing these movements with a control group of healthy individuals