Improving the Robustness of Electromyogram-Pattern Recognition for Prosthetic Control by a Postprocessing Strategy

Electromyogram (EMG) contains rich information for motion decoding. As one of its major applications, EMG-pattern recognition (PR)-based control of prostheses has been proposed and investigated in the field of rehabilitation robotics for decades. These prostheses can offer a higher level of dexterity compared to the commercially available ones. However, limited progress has been made toward clinical application of EMG-PR-based prostheses, due to their unsatisfactory robustness against various interferences during daily use. These interferences may lead to misclassifications of motion intentions, which damage the control performance of EMG-PR-based prostheses. A number of studies have applied methods that undergo a postprocessing stage to determine the current motion outputs, based on previous outputs or other information, which have proved effective in reducing erroneous outputs. In this study, we proposed a postprocessing strategy that locks the outputs during the constant contraction to block out occasional misclassifications, upon detecting the motion onset using a threshold. The strategy was investigated using three different motion onset detectors, namely mean absolute value, Teager–Kaiser energy operator, or mechanomyogram (MMG). Our results indicate that the proposed strategy could suppress erroneous outputs, during rest and constant contractions in particular. In addition, with MMG as the motion onset detector, the strategy was found to produce the most significant improvement in the performance, reducing the total errors up to around 50% (from 22.9 to 11.5%) in comparison to the original classification output in the online test, and it is the most robust against threshold value changes. We speculate that motion onset detectors that are both smooth and responsive would further enhance the efficacy of the proposed postprocessing strategy, which would facilitate the clinical application of EMG-PR-based prosthetic control

ANN Models for Shoulder Pain Detection based on Human Facial Expression Covered by Mask

Facial expressions are a method to communicate if someone feels pain. Moreover, coding facial movements to assess pain requires extensive training and is time-consuming for clinical practice. In addition, in Covid 19 pandemic, it was difficult to determine this expression due to the mask on the face. There for, it needs to develop a system that can detect the pain from facial expressions when a person is wearing a mask. There are 41 points used to form 19 geometrical features. It used 20.000 frames of 24 respondents from the dataset as secondary data . From these data, training, and testing were carried out using the ANN (Artificial Neural Network) method with a variation of the number of neurons in the hidden layer, i.e., 5, 10, 15, and 20 neurons. The results obtained from testing these data are the highest accuracy of 86% with the number of 20 hidden layers

On the Use of Deep Learning Decompositions and Physiological Measurements for the Prediction of Preterm Pregnancies in a Cohort of Patients in Active Labor †

Preterm pregnancies are one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality amongst children under the age of five. This is a global issue and has been identified as an area requiring active research. The emphasis now is to identify and develop methods of predicting the likelihood of preterm birth. This paper uses physiological data from a group of patients in active labor. The dataset contains information about fetal heart rate (FHR) and maternal heart rate (MHR) for all patients and electrohysterogram (EHG) recordings for the measurement of uterine contractions. For the physiological data analysis and associated signal processing, we utilize deep wavelet scattering (DWS). This is an unsupervised decomposition and feature extraction method combining characteristics from deep learning convolutions, as well as the classical wavelet transform, to observe and investigate the extent to which active preterm labor can be accurately identified from an acquired physiological signal, the results of which were compared with the metaheuristic linear series decomposition learner (LSDL). Additional machine learning algorithms are tested on the acquired physiological data to allow for the identification of optimal model architecture for this specific physiological data

Efficient Channel Selection Approach for Motor Imaginary Classification based on Convolutional Neural Network

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) may be the only way to communicate and control for disabled people. Someone's intention can be decoded from their brainwaves during motor imagery action. This can be used to help them control their environment without making any physical movement. To decode someone's intention from brainwaves during motor imagery activities, machine learning models trained on features extracted from the acquired EEG signals have been used. Although the technique has been successful, it has encountered several limitations and difficulties especially during feature extraction. Moreover, many current BCI systems rely on a large number of channels (e.g. 64) to capture spatial information which are necessary during training a machine learning model. In this study, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is used to decode five motor imagery intentions from EEG signals obtained from four subjects using 64 channels EEG device. A CNN model trained on raw EEG data managed to achieve a mean classification accuracy of 99.7%. Channel selection based on learned weights extracted from a trained CNN model has been performed with subsequent models trained on only two selected channels with higher weights attained a high accuracy (average of 98%) among three participants out of four

Spasticity Assessment Based on the Maximum Isometrics Voluntary Contraction of Upper Limb Muscles in Post-stroke Hemiplegia

Background: The assessment of muscle properties is an essential prerequisite in the treatment of post-stroke patients with limb spasticity. Most existing spasticity assessment approaches do not consider the muscle activation with voluntary contraction. Including voluntary movements of spastic muscles may provide a new way for the reliable assessment of muscle spasticity.Objective: In this study, we investigated the effectiveness and reliability of maximum isometrics voluntary contraction (MIVC) based method for spasticity assessment in post-stroke hemiplegia.Methods: Fourteen post-stroke hemiplegic patients with arm spasticity were asked to perform two tasks: MIVC and passive isokinetic movements. Three biomechanical signals, torque, position, and time, were recorded from the impaired and non-impaired arms of the patients. Three features, peak torque, keep time of the peak torque, and rise time, were computed from the recorded MIVC signals and used to evaluate the muscle voluntary activation characteristics, respectively. For passive movements, two features, the maximum resistance torque and muscle stiffness, were also obtained to characterize the properties of spastic stretch reflexes. Subsequently, the effectiveness and reliability of the MIVC-based spasticity assessment method were evaluated with spearman correlation analysis and intra class correlation coefficients (ICCs) metrics.Results: The results indicated that the keep time of peak torque and rise time in the impaired arm were higher in comparison to those in the contralateral arm, whereas the peak torque in the impaired side was significantly lower than their contralateral arm. Our results also showed a significant positive correlation (r = 0.503, p = 0.047) between the keep time (tk) and the passive resistant torque. Furthermore, a significantly positive correlation was observed between the keep time (tk) and the muscle stiffness (r = 0.653, p = 0.011). Meanwhile, the ICCs for intra-time measurements of MIVC ranged between 0.815 and 0.988 with one outlier.Conclusion: The findings from this study suggested that the proposed MIVC-based approach would be promising for the reliable and accurate assessment of spasticity in post-stroke patients

Towards Image-based Cancer Cell Lines Authentication Using Deep Neural Networks

Although short tandem repeat (STR) analysis is available as a reliable method for the determination of the genetic origin of cell lines, the occurrence of misauthenticated cell lines remains an important issue. Reasons include the cost, effort and time associated with STR analysis. Moreover, there are currently no methods for the discrimination between isogenic cell lines (cell lines of the same genetic origin, e.g. different cell lines derived from the same organism, clonal sublines, sublines adapted to grow under certain conditions). Hence, additional complementary, ideally low-cost and low-effort methods are required that enable 1) the monitoring of cell line identity as part of the daily laboratory routine and 2) the authentication of isogenic cell lines. In this research, we automate the process of cell line identification by image-based analysis using deep convolutional neural networks. Two different convolutional neural networks models (MobileNet and InceptionResNet V2) were trained to automatically identify four parental cancer cell line (COLO 704, EFO-21, EFO-27 and UKF-NB-3) and their sublines adapted to the anti-cancer drugs cisplatin (COLO-704rCDDP1000, EFO-21rCDDP2000, EFO-27rCDDP2000) or oxaliplatin (UKF-NB-3rOXALI2000), hence resulting in an eight-class problem. Our best performing model, InceptionResNet V2, achieved an average of 0.91 F1-score on 10-fold cross validation with an average area under the curve (AUC) of 0.95, for the 8-class problem. Our best model also achieved an average F1-score of 0.94 and 0.96 on the authentication through a classification process of the four parental cell lines and the respective drug-adapted cells, respectively, on a four-class problem separately. These findings provide the basis for further development of the application of deep learning for the automation of cell line authentication into a readily available easy-to-use methodology that enables routine monitoring of the identity of cell lines including isogenic cell lines. It should be noted that, this is just a proof of principal that, images can also be used as a method for authentication of cancer cell lines and not a replacement for the STR method

A Channel Selection Approach Based on Convolutional Neural Network for Multi-channel EEG Motor Imagery Decoding

For many disabled people, brain computer interface (BCI) may be the only way to communicate with others and to control things around them. Using motor imagery paradigm, one can decode an individual's intention by using their brainwaves to help them interact with their environment without having to make any physical movement. For decades, machine learning models, trained on features extracted from acquired electroencephalogram (EEG) signals have been used to decode motor imagery activities. This method has several limitations and constraints especially during feature extraction. Large number of channels on the current EEG devices make them hard to use in real-life as they are bulky, uncomfortable to wear, and takes lot of time in preparation. In this paper, we introduce a technique to perform channel selection using convolutional neural network (CNN) and to decode multiple classes of motor imagery intentions from four participants who are amputees. A CNN model trained on EEG data of 64 channels achieved a mean classification accuracy of 99.7% with five classes. Channel selection based on weights extracted from the trained model has been performed with subsequent models trained on eight selected channels achieved a reasonable accuracy of 91.5%. Training the model in time domain and frequency domain was also compared, different window sizes were experimented to test the possibilities of realtime application. Our method of channel selection was then evaluated on a publicly available motor imagery EEG dataset

A Genetic-Neuro-Fuzzy inferential model for diagnosis of tuberculosis

AbstractTuberculosis is a social, re-emerging infectious disease with medical implications throughout the globe. Despite efforts, the coverage of tuberculosis disease (with HIV prevalence) in Nigeria rose from 2.2% in 1991 to 22% in 2013 and the orthodox diagnosis methods available for Tuberculosis diagnosis were been faced with a number of challenges which can, if measure not taken, increase the spread rate; hence, there is a need for aid in diagnosis of the disease. This study proposes a technique for intelligent diagnosis of TB using Genetic-Neuro-Fuzzy Inferential method to provide a decision support platform that can assist medical practitioners in administering accurate, timely, and cost effective diagnosis of Tuberculosis. Performance evaluation observed, using a case study of 10 patients from St. Francis Catholic Hospital Okpara-In-Land (Delta State, Nigeria), shows sensitivity and accuracy results of 60% and 70% respectively which are within the acceptable range of predefined by domain experts

International Journal of Multidisciplinary and Current Research Cloud Based Framework for Efficient Management of Research Data

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Improving the Robustness of Real-Time Myoelectric Pattern Recognition against Arm Position Changes in Transradial Amputees

Previous studies have showed that arm position variations would significantly degrade the classification performance of myoelectric pattern-recognition-based prosthetic control, and the cascade classifier (CC) and multiposition classifier (MPC) have been proposed to minimize such degradation in offline scenarios. However, it remains unknown whether these proposed approaches could also perform well in the clinical use of a multifunctional prosthesis control. In this study, the online effect of arm position variation on motion identification was evaluated by using a motion-test environment (MTE) developed to mimic the real-time control of myoelectric prostheses. The performance of different classifier configurations in reducing the impact of arm position variation was investigated using four real-time metrics based on dataset obtained from transradial amputees. The results of this study showed that, compared to the commonly used motion classification method, the CC and MPC configurations improved the real-time performance across seven classes of movements in five different arm positions (8.7% and 12.7% increments of motion completion rate, resp.). The results also indicated that high offline classification accuracy might not ensure good real-time performance under variable arm positions, which necessitated the investigation of the real-time control performance to gain proper insight on the clinical implementation of EMG-pattern-recognition-based controllers for limb amputees