25 years of telepathology research: a bibliometric analysis

Background: The first appearance of the word " telepathology" in a scientific paper can be tracked down to 1986, in a famous editorial of Ronald Weinstein. Since that paper, research in telepathology grew up developing different subfields, including static and dynamic telepathology and more recently virtual microscopy. The present work attempts an analysis of research in telepathology, starting from the tools provided by bibliometrics.Methods: A query has been developed to extract papers related to telepathology and virtual microscopy, and it has been then submitted to Pubmed by means of Entrez Utilities functions. Results obtained in XML have been processed through ad-hoc developed PHP scripts, in order to extract data on Authors, countries, and keywords.Results: On PubMed, 967 papers related to telepathology and virtual microscopy have been retrieved, which involved 2904 Authors; corresponding authors were from 37 countries. Of those authors, 2213 co-authored just one paper. Papers were published on 344 different journals, of which only 52 from the Pathology field. An analysis of papers per year has been also attempted, that demonstrates variable research output in time.Conclusions: From the proposed analysis, telepathology seems to have been consistently studied, in time, by about 400 researchers, with occasional participation of many other people. Telepathology research seems also to have varied in time, although some peaks in paper publishing are certainly related to the proceedings of the European congress on telepathology series, when they have been published on journals. However, some clear sign appears that suggests research in traditional telepathology, after a peak in 2000, showed some decline until virtual microscopy became mainstream, topic that currently pushes research again. The low number of clinical trials calls for more randomized studies in telepathology, to enable evidence-based application. \ua9 2011 Della Mea; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

An ontology-based exploration of the concepts and relationships in the activities and participation component of the international classification of functioning, disability and health

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) is a classification of health and health-related issues, aimed at describing and measuring health and disability at both individual and population levels. Here we discuss a preliminary qualitative and quantitative analysis of the relationships used in the Activities and Participation component of ICF, and a preliminary mapping to SUMO (Suggested Upper Merged Ontology) concepts. The aim of the analysis is to identify potential logical problems within this component of ICF, and to understand whether activities and participation might be defined more formally than in the current version of ICF.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In the relationship analysis, we used four predicates among those available in SUMO for processes (Patient, Instrument, Agent, and subProcess). While at the top level subsumption was used in most cases (90%), at the lower levels the percentage of other relationships rose to 41%. Chapters were heterogeneous in the relationships used and some of the leaves of the tree seemed to represent properties or parts of the parent concept rather than subclasses. Mapping of ICF to SUMO proved partially feasible, with the activity concepts being mapped mostly (but not totally) under the IntentionalProcess concept in SUMO. On the other hand, the participation concept has not been mapped to any upper level concept.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our analysis of the relationships within ICF revealed issues related to confusion between classes and their properties, incorrect classifications, and overemphasis on subsumption, confirming what already observed by other researchers. However, it also suggested some properties for Activities that could be included in a more formal model: number of agents involved, the instrument used to carry out the activity, the object of the activity, complexity of the task, and an enumeration of relevant subtasks.</p

A feasibility study on smartphone accelerometer-based recognition of household activities and influence of smartphone position

Obesity and physical inactivity are the most important risk factors for chronic diseases. The present study aimed at (i) developing and testing a method for classifying household activities based on a smartphone accelerometer; (ii) evaluating the influence of smartphone position; and (iii) evaluating the acceptability of wearing a smartphone for activity recognition

A survey on non specialized off-the-shelf JPEG2000 viewers for digital microscopy use

The present paper will present a survey on features of a number of non-specialized off-the-shelf JPEG2000 viewers, seen from the point of view of digital microscopy. Selected viewers were tested within a number of usage scenarios, including: i) open a conformance test JPEG2000 file; ii) open a large JPEG2000 file; iii) moving from one point to another; iv) changing resolution/magnification. For each scenario, data recorded included: successful or unsuccessful operation; time needed for conclusion; occasional problems

Web-Based Specialist Support for Spinal Cord Injury Person's Care: Lessons Learned

Persons with disability from spinal cord injury (SCI) are subject to high risk of pathological events and need a regular followup even after discharge from the rehabilitation hospital. To help in followup, we developed a web portal for providing online specialist as well as GP support to SCI persons. After a feasibility study with 13 subjects, the portal has been introduced in the regional healthcare network in order to make it compliant with current legal regulations on data protection, including smartcard authentication. Although a number of training courses have been made to introduce SCI persons to portal use (up to 50 users), the number of accesses remained very low. Reasons for that have been investigated by means of a questionnaire submitted to the initial feasibility study subjects and included the still easier use of telephone versus our web-based smartcard-authenticated portal, in particular, because online communications are still perceived as an unusual way of interacting with the doctor. To summarize, the overall project has been appreciated by the users, but when it is time to ask for help to, the specialist, it is still much easier to make a phone call

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A web-based system for tissue microarray data management

BACKGROUND: Tissue Microarray is a novel technique for analysing large amounts of immunohistochemically stained specimens. However, those large amounts make it difficult to design, prepare and analyze a tissue microarray, so that software support is almost inevitable. METHODS: We designed a tissue microarray data management system starting from specifications obtained by pathologists, and arranged for a preliminary validation in thyroid pathology. RESULTS: A web-based system has been developed, basing on open-source software and principles, that was well accepted by pathologists and allowed to carry out a study on 52 thyroid pathology cases. CONCLUSION: Though limited in functionalities, the developed system is effective and can be downloaded at the address

Piloting a Collaborative Web-Based System for Testing ICD-11

Background: The 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), for the first time in ICD history, deployed web-based collaboration of experts and ICT tools. To ensure that ICD-11 is working well, it needs to be systematically field tested in different settings, across the world. This will be done by means of a number of experiments. In order to support its implementation, a web-based system (ICDfit) has been designed and developed. The present paper illustrates the current prototype of the system and its technical testing. Methods: The system has been designed according to WHO requirements, and implemented using PHP and MySQL. Then, a preliminary technical test has been designed and run in January 2016, involving 8 users. They had to carry out double coding, that is, coding case summaries with both ICD-10 and ICD-11, and answering quick questions on the coding difficulty. Results: The 8 users coded 632 cases each, spending an average of 163 seconds per case. While we found an issue in the mechanism used to record coding times, no further issues were found. Conclusion: The proposed system seems to be technically adequate for supporting future ICD-11 testing. \ua9 2017 European Federation for Medical Informatics (EFMI) and IOS Press