Teodora Olariu

Bio: Teodora Olariu is an academic researcher from University of Western Ontario. The author has contributed to research in topics: Fuzzy logic & Cancer. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 16 publications receiving 211 citations.

Betulinic Acid in Complex with a Gamma-Cyclodextrin Derivative Decreases Proliferation and in Vivo Tumor Development of Non-Metastatic and Metastatic B164A5 Cells

Abstract: Betulinic acid, a very promising anti-melanoma agent, has very low water solubility that causes low bioavailability. To overcome this inconvenience, a highly water-soluble cyclodextrin was used (octakis-[6-deoxy-6-(2-sulfanyl ethanesulfonic acid)]-γ-cyclodextrin). The complex was physico-chemically analyzed using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) methods and then in vitro tested for its antiproliferative activity by the MTT assay and by cell cycle analysis. Finally, the complex was tested in vivo using an animal model of murine melanoma developed in C57BL/6J mice, where it caused a reduction in tumor volume and weight. The study revealed the beneficial influence of betulinic acid inclusion into the cyclodextrin in terms of antiproliferative activity and in vivo tumor development.

Classification of EEG-Based Brain–Computer Interfaces

Abstract: This chapter demonstrates the development of a brain computer interface (BCI) decision support system for controlling the movement of a wheelchair for neurologically disabled patients using their Electroencephalography (EEG). The subject was able to imagine his/her hand movements during EEG experiment which made EEG oscillations in the signal that could be classified by BCI. The BCI will translate the patient’s thoughts into simple wheelchair commands such as “go” and “stop”. EEG signals are recorded using 59 scalp electrodes. The acquired signals are artifacts contaminated. These artifacts were removed using blind source separation (BSS) by independent component analysis (ICA) to get artifact-free EEG signal from which certain features are extracted by applying discrete wavelet transformation (DWT). The extracted features were reduced in dimensionality using principal component analysis (PCA). The reduced features were fed to neural networks classifier yielding classification accuracy greater than 95 %.

Diagnosing tuberculosis with a novel support vector machine-based artificial immune recognition system.

Abstract: Background: Tuberculosis (TB) is a major global health problem, which has been ranked as the second leading cause of death from an infectious disease worldwide. Diagnosis based on cultured specimens is the reference standard, however results take weeks to process. Scientists are looking for early detection strategies, which remain the cornerstone of tuberculosis control. Consequently there is a need to develop an expert system that helps medical professionals to accurately and quickly diagnose the disease. Artificial Immune Recognition System (AIRS) has been used successfully for diagnosing various diseases. However, little effort has been undertaken to improve its classification accuracy. Objectives: In order to increase the classification accuracy of AIRS, this study introduces a new hybrid system that incorporates a support vector machine into AIRS for diagnosing tuberculosis. Patients and Methods: Patient epacris reports obtained from the Pasteur laboratory of Iran were used as the benchmark data set, with the sample size of 175 (114 positive samples for TB and 60 samples in the negative group). The strategy of this study was to ensure representativeness, thus it was important to have an adequate number of instances for both TB and non-TB cases. The classification performance was measured through 10-fold cross-validation, Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), sensitivity and specificity, Youden’s Index, and Area Under the Curve (AUC). Statistical analysis was done using the Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis (WEKA), a machine learning program for windows. Results: With an accuracy of 100%, sensitivity of 100%, specificity of 100%, Youden’s Index of 1, Area Under the Curve of 1, and RMSE of 0, the proposed method was able to successfully classify tuberculosis patients. Conclusions: There have been many researches that aimed at diagnosing tuberculosis faster and more accurately. Our results described a model for diagnosing tuberculosis with 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity. This model can be used as an additional tool for experts in medicine to diagnose TBC more accurately and quickly.

Linguistic Hedges Fuzzy Feature Selection for Differential Diagnosis of Erythemato-Squamous Diseases

Abstract: The differential diagnosis of erythemato-squamous diseases is a real challenge in dermatology. In diagnosing of these diseases, a biopsy is vital. However, unfortunately these diseases share many histopathological features, as well. Another difficulty for the differential diagnosis is that one disease may show the features of another disease at the beginning stage and may have the characteristic features at the following stages. In this paper, a new Feature Selection based on Linguistic Hedges Neural-Fuzzy classifier is presented for the diagnosis of erythemato-squamous diseases. The performance evaluation of this system is estimated by using four training-test partition models: 50–50%, 60–40%, 70–30% and 80–20%. The highest classification accuracy of 95.7746% was achieved for 80–20% training-test partition using 3 clusters and 18 fuzzy rules, 93.820% for 50–50% training-test partition using 3 clusters and 18 fuzzy rules, 92.5234% for 70–30% training-test partition using 5 clusters and 30 fuzzy rules, and 91.6084% for 60–40% training-test partition using 6 clusters and 36 fuzzy rules. Therefore, 80–20% training-test partition using 3 clusters and 18 fuzzy rules are the best classification accuracy with RMSE of 6.5139e-013. This research demonstrated that the proposed method can be used for reducing the dimension of feature space and can be used to obtain fast automatic diagnostic systems for other diseases.

Linguistic Hedges Fuzzy Feature Selection for Differential Diagnosis of Erythemato-Squamous Diseases.

Abstract: The differential diagnosis of erythemato-squamous diseases is a real challenge in dermatology. In diagnosing of these diseases, a biopsy is vital. However, unfortunately these diseases share many histopathological features, as well. Another difficulty for the differential diagnosis is that one disease may show the features of another disease at the beginning stage and may have the characteristic features at the following stages. In this paper, a new Feature Selection based on Linguistic Hedges Neural-Fuzzy classifier is presented for the diagnosis of erythemato-squamous diseases. The performance evaluation of this system is estimated by using four training-test partition models: 50–50%, 60–40%, 70–30% and 80–20%. The highest classification accuracy of 95.7746% was achieved for 80–20% training-test partition using 3 clusters and 18 fuzzy rules, 93.820% for 50–50% training-test partition using 3 clusters and 18 fuzzy rules, 92.5234% for 70–30% training-test partition using 5 clusters and 30 fuzzy rules, and 91.6084% for 60–40% training-test partition using 6 clusters and 36 fuzzy rules. Therefore, 80–20% training-test partition using 3 clusters and 18 fuzzy rules are the best classification accuracy with RMSE of 6.5139e-013. This research demonstrated that the proposed method can be used for reducing the dimension of feature space and can be used to obtain fast automatic diagnostic systems for other diseases.

Particle swarm optimization trained neural network for structural failure prediction of multistoried RC buildings

Abstract: Faulty structural design may cause multistory reinforced concrete (RC) buildings to collapse suddenly. All attempts are directed to avoid structural failure as it leads to human life danger as well as wasting time and property. Using traditional methods for predicting structural failure of the RC buildings will be time-consuming and complex. Recent research proved the artificial neural network (ANN) potentiality in solving various real-life problems. The traditional learning algorithms suffer from being trapped into local optima with a premature convergence. Thus, it is a challenging task to achieve expected accuracy while using traditional learning algorithms to train ANN. To solve this problem, the present work proposed a particle swarm optimization-based approach to train the NN (NN-PSO). The PSO is employed to find a weight vector with minimum root-mean-square error (RMSE) for the NN. The proposed (NN-PSO) classifier is capable to tackle the problem of predicting structural failure of multistoried reinforced concrete buildings via detecting the failure possibility of the multistoried RC building structure in the future. A database of 150 multistoried buildings’ RC structures was employed in the experimental results. The PSO algorithm was involved to select the optimal weights for the NN classifier. Fifteen features have been extracted from the structural design, while nine features have been opted to perform the classification process. Moreover, the NN-PSO model was compared with NN and MLP-FFN (multilayer perceptron feed-forward network) classifier to find its ingenuity. The experimental results established the superiority of the proposed NN-PSO compared to the NN and MLP-FFN classifiers. The NN-PSO achieved 90 % accuracy with 90 % precision, 94.74 % recall and 92.31 % F-Measure.

Cyclodextrin–Drug Inclusion Complexes: In Vivo and In Vitro Approaches

Abstract: This review aims to provide a critical review of the biological performance of natural and synthetic substances complexed with cyclodextrins, highlighting: (i) inclusion complexes with cyclodextrins and their biological studies in vitro and in vivo; (ii) Evaluation and comparison of the bioactive efficacy of complexed and non-complexed substances; (iii) Chemical and biological performance tests of inclusion complexes, aimed at the development of new pharmaceutical products. Based on the evidence presented in the review, it is clear that cyclodextrins play a vital role in the development of inclusion complexes which promote improvements in the chemical and biological properties of the complexed active principles, as well as providing improved solubility and aqueous stability. Although the literature shows the importance of their ability to help produce innovative biotechnological substances, we still need more studies to develop and expand their therapeutic properties. It is, therefore, very important to gather together evidence of the effectiveness of inclusion complexes with cyclodextrins in order to facilitate a better understanding of research on this topic and encourage further studies.

Machine learning for clinical decision support in infectious diseases: a narrative review of current applications.

Abstract: Background Machine learning (ML) is a growing field in medicine. This narrative review describes the current body of literature on ML for clinical decision support in infectious diseases (ID). Objectives We aim to inform clinicians about the use of ML for diagnosis, classification, outcome prediction and antimicrobial management in ID. Sources References for this review were identified through searches of MEDLINE/PubMed, EMBASE, Google Scholar, biorXiv, ACM Digital Library, arXiV and IEEE Xplore Digital Library up to July 2019. Content We found 60 unique ML-clinical decision support systems (ML-CDSS) aiming to assist ID clinicians. Overall, 37 (62%) focused on bacterial infections, 10 (17%) on viral infections, nine (15%) on tuberculosis and four (7%) on any kind of infection. Among them, 20 (33%) addressed the diagnosis of infection, 18 (30%) the prediction, early detection or stratification of sepsis, 13 (22%) the prediction of treatment response, four (7%) the prediction of antibiotic resistance, three (5%) the choice of antibiotic regimen and two (3%) the choice of a combination antiretroviral therapy. The ML-CDSS were developed for intensive care units (n = 24, 40%), ID consultation (n = 15, 25%), medical or surgical wards (n = 13, 20%), emergency department (n = 4, 7%), primary care (n = 3, 5%) and antimicrobial stewardship (n = 1, 2%). Fifty-three ML-CDSS (88%) were developed using data from high-income countries and seven (12%) with data from low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). The evaluation of ML-CDSS was limited to measures of performance (e.g. sensitivity, specificity) for 57 ML-CDSS (95%) and included data in clinical practice for three (5%). Implications Considering comprehensive patient data from socioeconomically diverse healthcare settings, including primary care and LMICs, may improve the ability of ML-CDSS to suggest decisions adapted to various clinical contexts. Currents gaps identified in the evaluation of ML-CDSS must also be addressed in order to know the potential impact of such tools for clinicians and patients.

Dimensionality reduction of medical big data using neural-fuzzy classifier

Abstract: Massive and complex data are generated every day in many fields. Complex data refer to data sets that are so large that conventional database management and data analysis tools are insufficient to deal with them. Managing and analysis of medical big data involve many different issues regarding their structure, storage and analysis. In this paper, linguistic hedges neuro-fuzzy classifier with selected features (LHNFCSF) is presented for dimensionality reduction, feature selection and classification. Four real-world data sets are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed neuro-fuzzy classifier. The new classifier is compared with the other classifiers for different classification problems. The results indicated that applying LHNFCSF not only reduces the dimensions of the problem, but also improves classification performance by discarding redundant, noise-corrupted, or unimportant features. The results strongly suggest that the proposed method not only help reducing the dimensionality of large data sets but also can speed up the computation time of a learning algorithm and simplify the classification tasks.