Finger exoskeleton for early acute stroke rehabilitation: control design and performance analysis / Muhammad Naim Abdu Salam

The number of stroke patients suffering from upper extremity hemiparesis increases from year to year. Manual repetitive therapy applied to stroke patients by trained therapists is limited by the number of therapists available. Many types of rehabilitation devices are invented to help patients recover their hand functions including exoskeleton devices. These devices can deliver high intensity therapy for a longer period of time. Every exoskeleton rehabilitation device is made up of three components: exoskeleton mechanism, actuator and control system. Control system is central to rehabilitation devices. The accurate control algorithm implementation is very crucial for the rehabilitation aspect. The performance of the control algorithm for rehabilitation must be investigated to assess the efficiency of the devices for rehabilitation. This research aimed to apply different Proportional Integral and Derivative (PID) controller configurations for position control of the index finger exoskeleton in rehabilitation. The second objective was to assess the performance of position control for index finger in rehabilitation. The control algorithm utilized was PID control algorithm. The parameter controlled was position of index finger measured through Metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joint angle. PID parameters were tuned using heuristic method and Ziegler Nichols’ closed loop method. In order to assess the performance of the control system, desired or reference values were used. The actual data from position control were compared to reference values to investigate the performance. This study suggested that the PID controller managed to control the parameter according to the set point better than Proportional (P), Proportional and Integral (PI), and Proportional and Derivative (PD) controllers. The device could be manipulated to move to any position within the range of exoskeleton motion accurately. The results of the study also suggested that the performance of the control system for rehabilitation was very good as the error (difference between actual value and reference value) was less than 10%. Hence, the objectives of the research project were successfully achieved

ViTs are Everywhere: A Comprehensive Study Showcasing Vision Transformers in Different Domain

Transformer design is the de facto standard for natural language processing tasks. The success of the transformer design in natural language processing has lately piqued the interest of researchers in the domain of computer vision. When compared to Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Vision Transformers (ViTs) are becoming more popular and dominant solutions for many vision problems. Transformer-based models outperform other types of networks, such as convolutional and recurrent neural networks, in a range of visual benchmarks. We evaluate various vision transformer models in this work by dividing them into distinct jobs and examining their benefits and drawbacks. ViTs can overcome several possible difficulties with convolutional neural networks (CNNs). The goal of this survey is to show the first use of ViTs in CV. In the first phase, we categorize various CV applications where ViTs are appropriate. Image classification, object identification, image segmentation, video transformer, image denoising, and NAS are all CV applications. Our next step will be to analyze the state-of-the-art in each area and identify the models that are currently available. In addition, we outline numerous open research difficulties as well as prospective research possibilities.Comment: ICCD-2023. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:2208.04309 by other author

DANet: Enhancing Small Object Detection through an Efficient Deformable Attention Network

Efficient and accurate detection of small objects in manufacturing settings, such as defects and cracks, is crucial for ensuring product quality and safety. To address this issue, we proposed a comprehensive strategy by synergizing Faster R-CNN with cutting-edge methods. By combining Faster R-CNN with Feature Pyramid Network, we enable the model to efficiently handle multi-scale features intrinsic to manufacturing environments. Additionally, Deformable Net is used that contorts and conforms to the geometric variations of defects, bringing precision in detecting even the minuscule and complex features. Then, we incorporated an attention mechanism called Convolutional Block Attention Module in each block of our base ResNet50 network to selectively emphasize informative features and suppress less useful ones. After that we incorporated RoI Align, replacing RoI Pooling for finer region-of-interest alignment and finally the integration of Focal Loss effectively handles class imbalance, crucial for rare defect occurrences. The rigorous evaluation of our model on both the NEU-DET and Pascal VOC datasets underscores its robust performance and generalization capabilities. On the NEU-DET dataset, our model exhibited a profound understanding of steel defects, achieving state-of-the-art accuracy in identifying various defects. Simultaneously, when evaluated on the Pascal VOC dataset, our model showcases its ability to detect objects across a wide spectrum of categories within complex and small scenes.Comment: ICCD-2

Mortality from gastrointestinal congenital anomalies at 264 hospitals in 74 low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries: a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study

Summary Background Congenital anomalies are the fifth leading cause of mortality in children younger than 5 years globally. Many gastrointestinal congenital anomalies are fatal without timely access to neonatal surgical care, but few studies have been done on these conditions in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). We compared outcomes of the seven most common gastrointestinal congenital anomalies in low-income, middle-income, and high-income countries globally, and identified factors associated with mortality. Methods We did a multicentre, international prospective cohort study of patients younger than 16 years, presenting to hospital for the first time with oesophageal atresia, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, intestinal atresia, gastroschisis, exomphalos, anorectal malformation, and Hirschsprung’s disease. Recruitment was of consecutive patients for a minimum of 1 month between October, 2018, and April, 2019. We collected data on patient demographics, clinical status, interventions, and outcomes using the REDCap platform. Patients were followed up for 30 days after primary intervention, or 30 days after admission if they did not receive an intervention. The primary outcome was all-cause, in-hospital mortality for all conditions combined and each condition individually, stratified by country income status. We did a complete case analysis. Findings We included 3849 patients with 3975 study conditions (560 with oesophageal atresia, 448 with congenital diaphragmatic hernia, 681 with intestinal atresia, 453 with gastroschisis, 325 with exomphalos, 991 with anorectal malformation, and 517 with Hirschsprung’s disease) from 264 hospitals (89 in high-income countries, 166 in middleincome countries, and nine in low-income countries) in 74 countries. Of the 3849 patients, 2231 (58·0%) were male. Median gestational age at birth was 38 weeks (IQR 36–39) and median bodyweight at presentation was 2·8 kg (2·3–3·3). Mortality among all patients was 37 (39·8%) of 93 in low-income countries, 583 (20·4%) of 2860 in middle-income countries, and 50 (5·6%) of 896 in high-income countries (p<0·0001 between all country income groups). Gastroschisis had the greatest difference in mortality between country income strata (nine [90·0%] of ten in lowincome countries, 97 [31·9%] of 304 in middle-income countries, and two [1·4%] of 139 in high-income countries; p≤0·0001 between all country income groups). Factors significantly associated with higher mortality for all patients combined included country income status (low-income vs high-income countries, risk ratio 2·78 [95% CI 1·88–4·11], p<0·0001; middle-income vs high-income countries, 2·11 [1·59–2·79], p<0·0001), sepsis at presentation (1·20 [1·04–1·40], p=0·016), higher American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) score at primary intervention (ASA 4–5 vs ASA 1–2, 1·82 [1·40–2·35], p<0·0001; ASA 3 vs ASA 1–2, 1·58, [1·30–1·92], p<0·0001]), surgical safety checklist not used (1·39 [1·02–1·90], p=0·035), and ventilation or parenteral nutrition unavailable when needed (ventilation 1·96, [1·41–2·71], p=0·0001; parenteral nutrition 1·35, [1·05–1·74], p=0·018). Administration of parenteral nutrition (0·61, [0·47–0·79], p=0·0002) and use of a peripherally inserted central catheter (0·65 [0·50–0·86], p=0·0024) or percutaneous central line (0·69 [0·48–1·00], p=0·049) were associated with lower mortality. Interpretation Unacceptable differences in mortality exist for gastrointestinal congenital anomalies between lowincome, middle-income, and high-income countries. Improving access to quality neonatal surgical care in LMICs will be vital to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 3.2 of ending preventable deaths in neonates and children younger than 5 years by 2030

Fabrication and characterizations of nanocomposite flexible films of ZnO and polyvinyl chloride/poly(N-vinyl carbazole) polymers for dielectric capacitors

Polymer-based energy storage has recently attracted the attention of researchers. Herein, via the sol–gel method, we prepared zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs), as nanofiller up to 5 wt% filling levels, and a host polymeric blend matrix of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and poly (N-vinyl carbazole) (PVK) were taken to synthesize nanocomposite films via the solution casting. The ratio of PVC: PVK was 90:10 wt%. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) results indicated that the prepared nanocomposite films’ crystallinity decreased as ZnO NPs content increased; it decreased from 54.23 to 22.14 %. The scanning electron microscope (SEM) micrographs revealed good miscibility of the prepared PVC/PVK blend and the homogeneous distribution of ZnO NPs within the host blend matrix. The thermal stability of the prepared nanocomposites was studied through the TGA technique, and the thermal activation energy was calculated using the Coats-Redfern method. In the optical results, the optical absorption spectra revealed that the energy gap for the allowed direct transition reduced under adding ZnO NPs; it reduced from 3.61 eV for the pure PVC/PVK blend to 2.96 eV for the nanocomposite film with ZnO nanofiller content of 5 wt%. AC conductivity experiments revealed that the electrical/dielectric properties of the nanocomposite films get enhanced by increasing the ZnO NPs content. Following the incorporation of the ZnO NPs, the AC electrical conductivity (σac), dc electrical conductivity (σdc), dielectric constant (ε′), and dielectric loss (ε″) values of PVC/PVK/ZnO nanocomposite films get improved; the σdc values increased from 6.46 × 10−16 S/cm for the blend PVC/PVK matrix to 3.63 × 10−13 S/cm for nanocomposites with ZnO NPs content of 5 wt%. Additionally, both ε′ and ε″ values increased while increasing the ZnO NPs content. These findings could suggest that the prepared PVC/PVK/ZnO nanocomposite films could be a promise for the applications of dielectric energy storage polymer-based capacitors