McMaster University

About: McMaster University is a education organization based out in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 41361 authors who have published 101269 publications receiving 4251422 citations.

Painful data: The UNBC-McMaster shoulder pain expression archive database

Abstract: A major factor hindering the deployment of a fully functional automatic facial expression detection system is the lack of representative data. A solution to this is to narrow the context of the target application, so enough data is available to build robust models so high performance can be gained. Automatic pain detection from a patient's face represents one such application. To facilitate this work, researchers at McMaster University and University of Northern British Columbia captured video of participant's faces (who were suffering from shoulder pain) while they were performing a series of active and passive range-of-motion tests to their affected and unaffected limbs on two separate occasions. Each frame of this data was AU coded by certified FACS coders, and self-report and observer measures at the sequence level were taken as well. This database is called the UNBC-McMaster Shoulder Pain Expression Archive Database. To promote and facilitate research into pain and augment current datasets, we have publicly made available a portion of this database which includes: 1) 200 video sequences containing spontaneous facial expressions, 2) 48,398 FACS coded frames, 3) associated pain frame-by-frame scores and sequence-level self-report and observer measures, and 4) 66-point AAM landmarks. This paper documents this data distribution in addition to describing baseline results of our AAM/SVM system. This data will be available for distribution in March 2011.

Development and psychometric properties of the Early Development Instrument (EDI): A measure of children's school readiness.

Abstract: L'instrument de mesure du developpement a la petite enfance a ete concu afin de fournir un outil approprie, peu couteux et valide sur le plan psychometrique, permettant d'evaluer les capacites de l'enfant a entrer en premiere annee primaire. Les proprietes psychometriques de l'instrument ont ete evaluees au cours de deux etudes. Une analyse factorielle menee a partir des donnees recueillies aupres de 16 000 enfants de maternelle a permis de tester la presence de cinq facteurs theoriques: sante physique et bien-etre, competence sociale, maturite affective, langage et communication, developpement cognitif et connaissances generales. Les analyses factorielles ont pu confirmer la presence des trois premiers facteurs, mais ont degage la necessite de modifier les deux derniers. Ceci a permis de formuler la version finale de l'instrument de mesure du developpement a la petite enfance qui est composee des cinq facteurs suivants: sante physique et bien-etre, competence sociale, maturite affective, langage et developpement cognitif, habiletes a la communication et connaissances generales. Ces cinq domaines offrent de bons indices de consistance interne, comparable a d'autres instruments. Une seconde etude (N = 82) a demontre la presence d'une bonne concordance entre l'evaluation de parents et des enseignants, la fidelite entre les evaluateurs, la validite concomitante et la validite convergente. Ces resultats confirment que l'instrument de mesure du developpement a la petite enfance est un outil psychometrique adequat pour evaluer les aptitudes de l'enfant lors de l'entree a l'ecole primaire.

Microwave Imaging for Breast Cancer

Abstract: Microwaves and millimeter waves have been used extensively to image dielectric bodies. The application of microwaves in biomedical imaging and diagnostics, however, remains a field with many uncharted territories. This article is an overview on medical imaging using microwave imaging for breast cancer and its challenges, hopes, and outlook.