ECG classification and prognostic approach towards personalized healthcare

A very important aspect of personalized healthcare is to continuously monitor an individual’s health using wearable biomedical devices and essentially to analyse and if possible to predict potential health hazards that may prove fatal if not treated in time. The prediction aspect embedded in the system helps in avoiding delays in providing timely medical treatment, even before an individual reaches a critical condition. Despite of the availability of modern wearable health monitoring devices, the real-time analyses and prediction component seems to be missing with these devices. The research work illustrated in this paper, at an outset, focussed on constantly monitoring an individual's ECG readings using a wearable 3-lead ECG kit and more importantly focussed on performing real-time analyses to detect arrhythmia to be able to identify and predict heart risk. Also, current research shows extensive use of heart rate variability (HRV) analysis and machine learning for arrhythmia classification, which however depends on the morphology of the ECG waveforms and the sensitivity of the ECG equipment. Since a wearable 3-lead ECG kit was used, the accuracy of classification had to be dealt with at the machine learning phase, so a unique feature extraction method was developed to increase the accuracy of classification. As a case study a very widely used Arrhythmia database (MIT-BIH, Physionet) was used to develop learning, classification and prediction models. Neuralnet fitting models on the extracted features showed mean-squared error of as low as 0.0085 and regression value as high as 0.99. Current experiments show 99.4% accuracy using k-NN Classification models and show values of Cross-Entropy Error of 7.6 and misclassification error value of 1.2 on test data using scaled conjugate gradient pattern matching algorithms. Software components were developed for wearable devices that took ECG readings from a 3-Lead ECG data acquisition kit in real time, de-noised, filtered and relayed the sample readings to the tele health analytical server. The analytical server performed the classification and prediction tasks based on the trained classification models and could raise appropriate alarms if ECG abnormalities of V (Premature Ventricular Contraction: PVC), A (Atrial Premature Beat: APB), L (Left bundle branch block beat), R (Right bundle branch block beat) type annotations in MITDB were detected. The instruments were networked using IoT (Internet of Things) devices and abnormal ECG events related to arrhythmia, from analytical server could be logged using an FHIR web service implementation, according to a SNOMED coding system and could be accessed in Electronic Health Record by the concerned medic to take appropriate and timely decisions. The system focused on ‘preventive care rather than remedial cure’ which has become a major focus of all the health care and cure institutions across the globe

Learn-select-track: An approach to multi-object tracking

Object tracking algorithms rely on user input to learn the object of interest. In multi-object tracking, this can be a challenge when the user has to provide a lot of locations to track. This paper presents a new approach that reduces the need for user input in multi-tracking. The approach uses density based clustering to analyse the colours in one frame and find the best separation of colours. The colours selected from the detection are learned and used in subsequent frames to track the colours through the video. With this training approach, the user interaction is limited to selecting the colours rather than selecting the multiple location to be tracked. The training algorithm also provides online training even when training on thousands of features

Investigating Habituation to Premonitory Urges in Behavior Therapy for Tic Disorders

Behavior therapy is effective for Persistent Tic Disorders (PTDs), but behavioral processes facilitating tic reduction are not well understood. One process, habituation, is thought to create tic reduction through decreases in premonitory urge severity. The current study tested whether premonitory urges decreased in youth with PTDs (N = 126) and adults with PTDs (N = 122) who participated in parallel randomized clinical trials comparing behavior therapy to psychoeducation and supportive therapy (PST). Trends in premonitory urges, tic severity, and treatment outcome were analyzed according to the predictions of a habituation model, whereby urge severity would be expected to decrease in those who responded to behavior therapy. Although adults who responded to behavior therapy showed a significant trend of declining premonitory urge severity across treatment, results failed to demonstrate that behavior therapy specifically caused changes in premonitory urge severity. In addition, reductions in premonitory urge severity in those who responded to behavior therapy were significant greater than those who did not respond to behavior therapy but no different than those who responded or did not respond to PST. Children with PTDs failed to show any significant changes in premonitory urges. Reductions in premonitory urge severity did not mediate the relationship between treatment and outcome in either adults or children. These results cast doubt on the notion that habituation is the therapeutic process underlying the effectiveness of behavior therapy, which has immediate implications for the psychoeducation and therapeutic rationale presented in clinical practice. Moreover, there may be important developmental changes in premonitory urges in PTDs, and alternative models of therapeutic change warrant investigation

Cosmic cookery : making a stereoscopic 3D animated movie.

This paper describes our experience making a short stereoscopic movie visualizing the development of structure in the universe during the 13.7 billion years from the Big Bang to the present day. Aimed at a general audience for the Royal Society's 2005 Summer Science Exhibition, the movie illustrates how the latest cosmological theories based on dark matter and dark energy are capable of producing structures as complex as spiral galaxies and allows the viewer to directly compare observations from the real universe with theoretical results. 3D is an inherent feature of the cosmology data sets and stereoscopic visualization provides a natural way to present the images to the viewer, in addition to allowing researchers to visualize these vast, complex data sets. The presentation of the movie used passive, linearly polarized projection onto a 2m wide screen but it was also required to playback on a Sharp RD3D display and in anaglyph projection at venues without dedicated stereoscopic display equipment. Additionally lenticular prints were made from key images in the movie. We discuss the following technical challenges during the stereoscopic production process; 1) Controlling the depth presentation, 2) Editing the stereoscopic sequences, 3) Generating compressed movies in display speci¯c formats. We conclude that the generation of high quality stereoscopic movie content using desktop tools and equipment is feasible. This does require careful quality control and manual intervention but we believe these overheads are worthwhile when presenting inherently 3D data as the result is signi¯cantly increased impact and better understanding of complex 3D scenes

On the presence of giant particles downwind of ships in the marine boundary layer

This study examines large oceangoing ships as a source of giant cloud condensation nuclei (D_p > 2 µm) due to wake and stack emissions off the California coast. Observed particle number concentrations behind 10 ships exceeded those in “control” areas, exhibiting number concentration enhancement ratios (ERs) for minimum threshold diameters of ~2, ~10, and ~20 µm as high as 2.7, 5.5, and 7.5, respectively. ER decreases with increasing downwind distance and altitude. ER becomes better correlated with ship size variables (gross tonnage, length, and beam) as the minimum size threshold increases from 2 to 20 µm, whereas ship speed has a less distinct relationship with ER. One case study of a container ship shows that there are higher concentrations of sea-salt tracer species behind it relative to adjacent control areas. These results have implications for cloud properties and precipitation in marine boundary layers exposed to ship traffic

Orbital Debris Assesment Tesing in the AEDC Range G

The space environment presents many hazards for satellites and spacecraft. One of the major hazards is hypervelocity impacts from uncontrolled man-made space debris. Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC), The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), The United States Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), the University of Florida, and The Aerospace Corporation configured a large ballistic range to perform a series of hypervelocity destructive impact tests in order to better understand the effects of space collisions. The test utilized AEDC's Range G light gas launcher, which is capable of firing projectiles up to 7 km/s. A non-functional full-scale representation of a modern satellite called the DebriSat was destroyed in the enclosed range enviroment. Several modifications to the range facility were made to ensure quality data was obtained from the impact events. The facility modifcations were intended to provide a high impact energy to target mass ratio (>200 J/g), a non-damaging method of debris collection, and an instrumentation suite capable of providing information on the physics of the entire imapct event

Generating Bijections between HOAS and the Natural Numbers

A provably correct bijection between higher-order abstract syntax (HOAS) and the natural numbers enables one to define a "not equals" relationship between terms and also to have an adequate encoding of sets of terms, and maps from one term family to another. Sets and maps are useful in many situations and are preferably provided in a library of some sort. I have released a map and set library for use with Twelf which can be used with any type for which a bijection to the natural numbers exists. Since creating such bijections is tedious and error-prone, I have created a "bijection generator" that generates such bijections automatically together with proofs of correctness, all in the context of Twelf.Comment: In Proceedings LFMTP 2010, arXiv:1009.218

A combined computational-experimental approach to define the structural origin of antibody recognition of sialyl-Tn, a tumor-associated carbohydrate antigen.

Anti-carbohydrate monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) hold great promise as cancer therapeutics and diagnostics. However, their specificity can be mixed, and detailed characterization is problematic, because antibody-glycan complexes are challenging to crystallize. Here, we developed a generalizable approach employing high-throughput techniques for characterizing the structure and specificity of such mAbs, and applied it to the mAb TKH2 developed against the tumor-associated carbohydrate antigen sialyl-Tn (STn). The mAb specificity was defined by apparent KD values determined by quantitative glycan microarray screening. Key residues in the antibody combining site were identified by site-directed mutagenesis, and the glycan-antigen contact surface was defined using saturation transfer difference NMR (STD-NMR). These features were then employed as metrics for selecting the optimal 3D-model of the antibody-glycan complex, out of thousands plausible options generated by automated docking and molecular dynamics simulation. STn-specificity was further validated by computationally screening of the selected antibody 3D-model against the human sialyl-Tn-glycome. This computational-experimental approach would allow rational design of potent antibodies targeting carbohydrates