41 research outputs found
A Performant Web-Based Visualization, Assessment, and Collaboration Tool for Multidimensional Biosignals
Biosignal-based research is often multidisciplinary and benefits greatly from multi-site collaboration. This requires appropriate tooling that supports collaboration, is easy to use, and is accessible. However, current software tools do not provide the necessary functionality, usability, and ubiquitous availability. The latter is particularly crucial in environments, such as hospitals, which often restrict users' permissions to install software. This paper introduces a new web-based application for interactive biosignal visualization and assessment. A focus has been placed on performance to allow for handling files of any size. The proposed solution can load local and remote files. It parses data locally on the client, and harmonizes channel labels. The data can then be scored, annotated, pseudonymized and uploaded to a clinical data management system for further analysis. The data and all actions can be interactively shared with a second party. This lowers the barrier to quickly visually examine data, collaborate and make informed decisions
Brain Viscoelasticity Alteration in Chronic-Progressive Multiple Sclerosis
Introduction: Viscoelastic properties indicate structural alterations in biological tissues at multiple scales with high sensitivity. Magnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE) is a novel technique that directly visualizes and quantitatively measures biomechanical tissue properties in vivo. MRE recently revealed that early relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) is associated with a global decrease of the cerebral mechanical integrity. This study addresses MRE and MR volumetry in chronic-progressive disease courses of MS
Auf dem Weg zur individualisierten Medizin - Grid-basierte Services fĂŒr die EPA der Zukunft.
Personalized Medicine is of paramount interest for many areas in Medical Informatics. Therefore genotype data as well a phenotype data about patients have to be available. This data will be stored in Electronic Health Records or â patient controlled - in Personal Health Records. As the amount of (raw) data is rising continuously, methods for a secure data administration have to be found. Grid Services offer data storage, can support data retrieval and the presentation of the data. The basic security services could be provided by the German health professional infrastructure, but there are many security challenges to be faced
Corona Health -- A Study- and Sensor-based Mobile App Platform Exploring Aspects of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Physical and mental well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic is typically
assessed via surveys, which might make it difficult to conduct longitudinal
studies and might lead to data suffering from recall bias. Ecological momentary
assessment (EMA) driven smartphone apps can help alleviate such issues,
allowing for in situ recordings. Implementing such an app is not trivial,
necessitates strict regulatory and legal requirements, and requires short
development cycles to appropriately react to abrupt changes in the pandemic.
Based on an existing app framework, we developed Corona Health, an app that
serves as a platform for deploying questionnaire-based studies in combination
with recordings of mobile sensors. In this paper, we present the technical
details of Corona Health and provide first insights into the collected data.
Through collaborative efforts from experts from public health, medicine,
psychology, and computer science, we released Corona Health publicly on Google
Play and the Apple App Store (in July, 2020) in 8 languages and attracted 7,290
installations so far. Currently, five studies related to physical and mental
well-being are deployed and 17,241 questionnaires have been filled out. Corona
Health proves to be a viable tool for conducting research related to the
COVID-19 pandemic and can serve as a blueprint for future EMA-based studies.
The data we collected will substantially improve our knowledge on mental and
physical health states, traits and trajectories as well as its risk and
protective factors over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and its diverse
prevention measures
The German National Pandemic Cohort Network (NAPKON): rationale, study design and baseline characteristics
Schons M, Pilgram L, Reese J-P, et al. The German National Pandemic Cohort Network (NAPKON): rationale, study design and baseline characteristics. European Journal of Epidemiology . 2022.The German government initiated the Network University Medicine (NUM) in early 2020 to improve national research activities on the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. To this end, 36 German Academic Medical Centers started to collaborate on 13 projects, with the largest being the National Pandemic Cohort Network (NAPKON). The NAPKON's goal is creating the most comprehensive Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) cohort in Germany. Within NAPKON, adult and pediatric patients are observed in three complementary cohort platforms (Cross-Sectoral, High-Resolution and Population-Based) from the initial infection until up to three years of follow-up. Study procedures comprise comprehensive clinical and imaging diagnostics, quality-of-life assessment, patient-reported outcomes and biosampling. The three cohort platforms build on four infrastructure core units (Interaction, Biosampling, Epidemiology, and Integration) and collaborations with NUM projects. Key components of the data capture, regulatory, and data privacy are based on the German Centre for Cardiovascular Research. By April 01, 2022, 34 university and 40 non-university hospitals have enrolled 5298 patients with local data quality reviews performed on 4727 (89%). 47% were female, the median age was 52 (IQR 36-62-) and 50 pediatric cases were included. 44% of patients were hospitalized, 15% admitted to an intensive care unit, and 12% of patients deceased while enrolled. 8845 visits with biosampling in 4349 patients were conducted by April 03, 2022. In this overview article, we summarize NAPKON's design, relevant milestones including first study population characteristics, and outline the potential of NAPKON for German and international research activities.Trial registration https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04768998 . https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04747366 . https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04679584. © 2022. The Author(s)
Investigation of single and multi bubble systems in acoustic resonators
Blasen in FlĂŒssigkeiten können unter dem Einfluss
eines akustischen Stehwellenfeldes sowohl Pulsations-
als auch Translationsbewegungen ausfĂŒhren. Dabei bilden
sich komplexe raumzeitliche Strukturen (akustische
Kavitationsfelder).In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden grundlegende
Untersuchungen an Einzelblasensystemen durchgefĂŒhrt.
Die RĂŒckkopplung der Blasen auf die
Resonanzeigenschaften des schallgebenden Systems wird
experimentell untersucht, wobei sich ein signifikanter
Einfluss der Blasen auf die Resonanzfrequenz des
Gesamtsystems zeigt.
Die Translationsbewegung im schwachen Schallfeld wird
fĂŒr den Grenzfall linearer Volumenschwingungen
analytisch berechnet, experimentell bestimmt und mit
einem numerischen Modell unter besonderer
BerĂŒcksichtigung der viskosen Reibungskraft verglichen.
Neben qualitativen Untersuchungen zur Anregung von
OberflÀchenschwingungen kann gezeigt werden, dass
Einzelblasensonolumineszenz auch in luftgesÀttigtem
Wasser erzeugt werden kann.In Mehrblasensystemen können die auftretenden
rÀumlichen Konfigurationen in wenige Klassen unterteilt
werden. Die charakteristischen Eigenschaften dieser
Strukturen werden beschrieben und verschiedene
experimentelle Untersuchungen durchgefĂŒhrt.
Insbesondere wird dabei der Einfluss von Blasenquellen,
d.h. Orten, an denen Blasen entstehen können, auf die
Strukturbildung untersucht.
Es werden Geschwindigkeitsverteilungen des Blasenfeldes
bei verschiedenen Anregungsamplituden bestimmt, sowie
der Zusammenhang zwischen akustischer Emission des
Kavitationsfeldes und der Strukturbildung untersucht.
Desweiteren werden
hochgeschwindigkeitskinematografische Aufnahmen von
Reinigungs- und Erosionsprozessen in akustischen
Kavitationsfeldern ausgewertet
New parallel and distributed tools and algorithms for life sciences
Computational methods are nowadays ubiquitous in the field of bioinformatics and biomedicine.Besides established fields like molecular dynamics, genomics or neuroimaging, new emerging methodsrely heavily on large scale computational resources. These new methods need to manage Tbytes orPbytes of data with large-scale structural and functional relationships, TFlops or PFlops of computingpower for simulating highly complex models, or many-task processes and workflows for processingand analyzing data. Today, many areas in Life Sciences are facing these challenges. This special issuecontains papers showing existing solutions and latest developments in Life Sciences and Computing Sciences to collaboratively explore new ideas and approaches to successfully apply distributed IT-systems in translational research, clinical intervention, and decision-making
The Women's Bachelor Programme âComputer Science and Business Administrationâ and its Consistent Orientation to Practical Training
FĂŒr das Spielen lernen wir â Konzept und Evaluation des internationalen Medizinstudierendenwettbewerbs "Benjamin Franklin Contest" [Learning for the game â concept and evaluation of the international medical student competition "Benjamin Franklin Contest"]
[english] Objective: In 1998 an international contest for medical students called âBenjamin Franklin Contestâ was initiated by the former university hospital of Freie UniversitĂ€t Berlin on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of its foundation in 1968. Since then, seven teams from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland have been competing against each other every year. Five medical students per team match up in paper cases, diagnosis of medical images, multiple choice tests, and practical skills.Methods: All participants of the 11th Benjamin Franklin Contest (2009) were asked about their motivation, preparation strategy, and experience with the contest. Results: In total 92% (32 of 35) participated in the evaluation study. We show that improvement of medical knowledge is one of the key motivating factors behind participation in the competition. The teams were trained by self-study, tutorials, and learning groups. Remarkably, students invested 54.2 hours (SD 32 hours) of their free time to prepare for the contest. Conclusions: The Benjamin Franklin Contest is an innovative approach to facilitate self-directed learning and develope medical competencies. <br>[german] Zielsetzung: Im Jahr 1998 wurde am damaligen UniversitĂ€tsklinikum Benjamin Franklin der Freien UniversitĂ€t (FU) in Berlin der internationale Medizinstudierendenwettbewerb âBenjamin Franklin Contestâ (BFC) initiiert. Anlass war damals der 30. Jahrestag der GrĂŒndung der UniversitĂ€tsmedizin an der FU. Seitdem findet jedes Jahr ein Wettbewerb zwischen sieben Teams von medizinischen FakultĂ€ten aus Deutschland, Ăsterreich und der Schweiz statt. Jeweils fĂŒnf Studierende messen sich in den Kategorien PapierfĂ€lle, Blickdiagnosen, Auswahlfragen und praktische FĂ€higkeiten.Methodik: Ziel dieser Arbeit ist die Beschreibung des Projektes BFC und eine erste Evaluation der Erfahrung von Teilnehmenden. Dazu wurden alle Teilnehmenden des 11. BFC (2009) mittels eines selbst entwickelten Fragebogens hinsichtlich ihrer Motivation, Art und Aufwand der eigenen Vorbereitung und der Erfahrung mit dem Wettbewerb befragt. Ergebnisse: Insgesamt beteiligten sich 92% (32/35) der Teilnehmenden im Jahr 2009 an der Evaluation des Wettbewerbs. Es zeigte sich, dass die Erweiterung medizinischen Wissens zu den Hauptmotiven fĂŒr eine Teilnahme am BFC gehört. Zur Vorbereitung auf den Wettbewerb wurden neben dem Selbststudium insbesondere Tutorien und Lerngruppen eingesetzt. Der Aufwand lag bei durchschnittlich 54,2 Stunden (Standardabweichung 32 Stunden). Schlussfolgerungen: Das Konzept des BFC kann als innovativer Ansatz selbstmotivierten Lernens verstanden werden. Die Teilnahme am BFC hat das Potential, neben medizinischen Kompetenzen auch die FĂ€higkeit zur Teamarbeit zu fördern