Showing papers in "Journal of Biomedical Science and Engineering in 2008"
TL;DR: Results are reported of developing a single trial online motor imagery feature extraction method for BCI using the wavelet coefficients and autoregressive parameter model and the linear discriminant analysis based on mahalanobis distance.
Abstract: Brain-computer interface (BCI) provides new communication and control channels that do not depend on the brain’s normal output of peripheral nerves and muscles. In this paper, we report on results of developing a single trial online motor imagery feature extraction method for BCI. The wavelet coefficients and autoregressive parameter model was used to extraction the features from the motor imagery EEG and the linear discriminant analysis based on mahalanobis distance was utilized to classify the pattern of left and right hand movement imagery. The performance was tested by the Graz dataset for BCI competition 2003 and satisfactory results are obtained with an error rate as low as 10.0%.
71 citations
TL;DR: Chou and Chen as discussed by the authors suggested conformational protein adaptation (CPA) might be influenced by low frequency phonons acting as "a possible information system" and proposed the universal force of electromagnetism initiates the phonon system they cited as it per-turbs paramagnetic/diamagnetic dampers within the protein matrix to produce a quantized low-frequency phonon signal series.
Abstract: Chou and Chen’s report in the 1970s suggested conformational protein adaptation (CPA) might be influenced by low frequency phonons acting as “a possible information system”. This report proposes the universal force of electromagnetism initiates the phonon system they cited as it per-turbs paramagnetic/diamagnetic dampers within the protein matrix to produce a quantized low frequency phonon signal series. (http://www.phy.ilstu.edu/~ren/phononsims/page3.html) The signal series is iteratively processed by the protein beta sub-unit, the system, to posi-tion the alpha sub-unit, the outcome, a classic non-linear resonance system resulting in con-formational protein adaptation (CPA). CPA “priming” enables a secondary ATP/redox driven power system to complete cell activity. The evolutionary appearance of these two systems reflects their hierarchy: 1) a low energy phonon driven information control circuit governed by principles of physics that, along with proteins, may have preceded planet earth, and 2), an ATP/redox power completion circuit directed by principles of chemistry that evolved in living systems 1 billion or more years after earth formed.
48 citations
TL;DR: Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) can be used to determine solid, liquid, colloi-dal, and biological samples as mentioned in this paper, which is a promising technique for analysis and characterization of the composition of a broad variety of objects.
Abstract: Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) can be used to determine solid, liquid, colloi-dal, and biological samples. It is a promising technique for analysis and characterization of the composition of a broad variety of objects. This review describes in brief the basic prin-ciples and technological aspects of LIBS, and the most recent progress of the various ap-plications of this technique in biomedicine fields will be reviewed in detail, including bio-aerosols detection and identification, tis-sue analysis, mineral analysis in human body, and detection of zinc in human skin. Finally new approaches and the prospects in bio-medicine fields of LIBS technique are de-scribed.
39 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, N,N-Dimethylacrylamide (DMA) was grafted copolymerization to cellulose by a metal-catalyzed atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) process.
Abstract: In homogeneous media, N,N-Dimethylacrylamide (DMA) was grafted copolymerization to cellulose by a metal-catalyzed atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) process. First, cellulose was dissolved in DMAc/LiCl system, and it reacted with 2-bromoisobutyloyl bromide (BiBBr) to produce macroinitiator (cell-BiB). Then DMA was polymerized to the cellulose backbone in a homogeneous DMSO solution in presence of the cell-BiB. Characterization with FT-IR, NMR, and GPC measurements showed that there obtained a graft copolymer with cellulose backbone and PDMA side chains (cell-PDMA) in well-defined structure. The proteins adsorption studies showed that the cellulose membranes modified by the as-prepared cell-PDMA copolymer owns good protein adsorption resistancet.
22 citations
TL;DR: Results show that the green form composite coating can be easily sintered with no cracks and de-composition at 850℃, and the bonding strength to the substrate is significantly improved com-pared with the single HAp coating.
Abstract: HAp/Al2O3 composite coating was fabricated onto micro-arc oxidized titanium substrate using a combination of electrophoretic depo-sition and reaction bonding process. SEM, EDS and XRD were employed to characterize the titanium substrate and as-prepared coat-ings. The interfacial bonding strength of the sintered composite coating was tested by shear strength testing experiment. Results show that the green form composite coating can be easily sintered with no cracks and de-composition at 850℃, the bonding strength to the substrate is significantly improved com-pared with the single HAp coating.
19 citations
TL;DR: A novel method for real value prediction that aims at minimizing the prediction error when compared with six existing methods is proposed, based on a two-stage Support Vector Regression (SVR) predictor.
Abstract: Predicted relative solvent accessibility (RSA) provides useful information for prediction of binding sites and reconstruction of the 3D-structure based on a protein sequence. Recent years observed development of several RSA prediction methods including those that generate real values and those that predict discrete states (buried vs. exposed). We propose a novel method for real value prediction that aims at minimizing the prediction error when compared with six existing methods. The proposed method is based on a two-stage Support Vector Regression (SVR) predictor. The improved prediction quality is a result of the developed composite sequence representation, which includes a custom-selected subset of features from the PSI-BLAST profile, secondary structure predicted with PSI-PRED, and binary code that indicates position of a given residue with respect to sequence termini. Cross validation tests on a benchmark dataset show that our method achieves 14.3 mean absolute error and 0.68 correlation. We also propose a confidence value that is associated with each predicted RSA values. The confidence is computed based on the difference in predictions from the two-stage SVR and a second two-stage Linear Regression (LR) predictor. The confidence values can be used to indicate the quality of the output RSA predictions.
14 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the Hilbert-Huang transform was applied for predicting the type of a given apoptosis protein with support vector machine and high success rates were obtained by the re-substitute test (98/98=100), jackknife test (91/98 = 92.9%), and the standard test (88/88 = 93.9%).
Abstract: Apoptosis proteins have a central role in the development and homeostasis of an organism. These proteins are very important for the understanding the mechanism of programmed cell death, and their function is related to their types. The apoptosis proteins are categorized into the following four types: (1) Cytoplasmic protein; (2) Plasma membrane-bound protein; (3) Mitochondrial inner and outer proteins; (4) Other proteins. A novel method, the Hilbert-Huang transform, is applied for predicting the type of a given apoptosis protein with support vector machine. High success rates were obtained by the re-substitute test (98/98=100%), jackknife test (91/98 = 92.9%).
14 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a noninvasive method for monitoring blood pressure, based on the principles established by Riva-Rocci and Korotkoff (K), is described; it furnishes, after a single compression-deflation cycle of the arm-encircling cuff, values of sys-tolic and diastolic blood pressures as well as the contours of the brachial arterial pulse and the corresponding volume pulse K-sounds are detected by a single microphone situated in the cubital fossa, and the time-varying cuff pressure P
Abstract: A noninvasive method for monitoring blood pressure, based on the principles established by Riva-Rocci and Korotkoff (K), is described; it furnishes, after a single compression-deflation cycle of the arm-encircling cuff, values of sys-tolic and diastolic blood pressures as well as the contours of the brachial arterial pulse and the corresponding volume pulse K-sounds are detected by a single microphone situated in the cubital fossa, and the time-varying cuff pressure P(t) is read by a piezoresistive pressure sensor The behavior of P(t) during deflation is resolved into two parts, P(t)=p(t)+b(t); p is a train of posi-tive going pulses (arising from arterial pulsa-tions), whereas b is a slowly changing baseline Noise pulses in the microphone output are re-jected by using the observation that the first few K-sounds are emitted when p is close to a maxi-mum, and the last few when dp/dt is close to a maximum The performance of the instrument is illustrated by showing how it copes with ambi-ent noise and involuntary manual perturbations of P, and by presenting contours of various pulses
10 citations
TL;DR: A compression model is developed and its application on MRI images achieved higher compression ratio 16:1, analogously minimum transmission time, using MAXSHIFT method proved diagnostically significant and effective both objectively and subjectively.
Abstract: Within the expanding paradigm of medical imaging in Teleradiology-Telemedicine there is increasing demand for transmitting diagnostic medical imagery. These are usually rich in radiological contents and the associated file sizes are large which must be compressed with minimal file size to minimize transmission time and robustly coded to withstand required network medium. It has been reinforced through extensive research that the diagnostically important regions of medical images, the Region of Interest (ROI), must be compressed by lossless or near lossless algorithm while on the other hand, the background region be compressed with some loss of information but still recognizable using JPEG 2000 standard. We develop a compression model and present its application on MRI images. Applying on MRI images achieved higher compression ratio 16:1, analogously minimum transmission time, using MAXSHIFT method proved diagnostically significant and effective both objectively and subjectively.
9 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors used the finite element method (FEM) to model the internal and external-hex connections of the Neoss and 3i implant systems, respectively, and examined the von Mises stress distributions in the crown.
Abstract: The abutment connection with the crown is fundamental to the structural stability of the implant system and to the prevention of mechanical exertion that can compromise the success of the implant treatment. The aim of this study is to clarify the difference in the stress distribution patterns between implants with internal and external-hex connections with the crown using the Finite Element Method (FEM). Material and Methods: The internal and external-hex connections of the Neoss and 3i implant systems respectively, are considered. The geometrical properties of the implant systems are modeled using three-dimensional (3D) brick elements. Loading conditions include a masticatory force of 200, 500 and 1000N applied to the occlusal surface of the crown along with an abutment screw torque of 110, 320 and 550Nmm. The von Mises stress distributions in the crown are examined for all loading conditions. Assumptions made in the modeling include: 1. half of the implant system is modeled and symmetrical boundary conditions applied; 2. temperature sensitive elements are used to replicate the torque within the abutment screw. Results: The connection type strongly influences the resulting stress characteristics within the crown. The magnitude of stress produced by the internal-hex implant system is generally lower than that of the external-hex system. The internal-hex system held an advantage by including the use of an abutment between the abutment screw and the crown. Conclusions: The geometrical design of the external-hex system tends to induce stress concentrations in the crown at a distance of 2.89mm from the apex. At this location the torque applied to the abutment screw also affects the stresses, so that the compressive stresses on the right hand side of the crown are increased. The internal-hex system has reduced stress concentrations in the crown. However, because the torque is transferred through the abutment screw to the abutment contact, changing the torque has greater effect on this hex system than the masticatory force. Overall the masticatory force is more influential on the stress within the crown for the external-hex system and the torque is more influential on the internal-hex system.
9 citations
TL;DR: The temperature and magnetic moment depend-ence for assessing localized heating utilizing a new class of Manganese-Zinc-Gadolinium mag-netic nanoparticles was studied and they may have high promise for self con-trolled magnetic hyperthermia application and its monitoring.
Abstract: The temperature and magnetic moment depend-ence for assessing localized heating utilizing a new class of Manganese-Zinc-Gadolinium mag-netic nanoparticles was studied. These particles showed heating effect when subjected to alter-nating filed. Alternatively, a new approach was used to get disperse heating without spot heating by using the synthesis of particles at controlled Curie temperature of less than 44oC. The study reports a simple synthesis of Mn0.5Zn0.5GdxFe(2-x)O4 nanoparticles using chemical co- precipita-tion technique. The particles exhibited Curie temperature of 42篊 and high magnitude of mag-netic moments. The particles showed sigmoid behavior of dependence between temperature and magnetic moments. The Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy showed T1 depend-ence on temperature in the range of 10-45篊. The particles may have high promise for self con-trolled magnetic hyperthermia application and its monitoring.
TL;DR: It is shown that chondrocytes from different origin can be labeled effectively with both PKH 26 ® ®labeling agent and established CMFDA as standard, and maintained fluorescence longer thanCMFDA in vitro and in vivo.
Abstract: Tissue engineering techniques for cartilage repair to heal defects in joint surfaces is a clinical practice Harvested autologous chondrocytes are expanded in culture and delivered in a suitable carrier medium back into the patient’s joint defect The defect is then subsequently filled by new cartilage Whether the cells in the repair tissue originate from the engineered tissue of the host or are derived from the surrounding original cartilage remains a relevant question for the applied therapy To answer this several methods exist to track cells, such as transfection of cells with LacZ carrying viruses, radio labeling with 111 IN or 51 Cr or fluorescent labeling with FDA However, these techniques have drawbacks such as they may influence cellular properties, are radioactive or quickly lose their tracking ability New fluorescent probes are easier to handle and do not to interfere with cells PKH 26 ® is a relatively new cell-labeling agent, but few data exist on the application of this dye in chondrocytes in vitro and in vivo 5-chloromethylfluorescein diacetate - CMFDA (“cell tracker green”) is an established fluorescent probe for imaging the dynamic processes of cell proliferation in vitro and in vivo Likewise, several studies exist on different cell types However, little data are available for chondrocytes The first aim of this study was to evaluate qualitative differences in fluorescence pattern after labeling of articular, auricular and costal chondrocytes Secondly, we evaluated the influence of labeling with CMFDA on cellular adhesion properties The third aim was to compare the duration of cell labeling of chondrocytes of different origin with established CMFDA as standard and PKH 26 ® for 3 cell generations in vitro and 12 weeks in vivo We show that chondrocytes from different origin can be labeled effectively with both PKH 26 ® ® labeled articular chondrocytes maintained fluorescence longer than CMFDA in vitro and in vivo A higher percentage of articular chondrocytes remained stained at 63 days than auricular or costal chondrocytes
TL;DR: A new and efficient method, Searching Quasi-Bicliques (SQB) algorithm, to detect maximum quasi-biclique from protein-protein interaction network is proposed and successfully applied on the Saccharomyces cerevisiae dataset.
Abstract: Searching the maximum bicliques or bipartite subgraphs in a graph is a tough question. We proposed a new and efficient method, Searching Quasi-Bicliques (SQB) algorithm, to detect maximum quasi-bicliques from protein-protein interaction network. As a Divide-and-Conquer method, SQB consists of three steps: first, it divides the protein-protein interaction network into a number of Distance-2-Subgraphs; second, by combining top-down and branch-and-bound methods, SQB seeks quasi-bicliques from every Distance-2-Subgraph; third, all the redundant results are removed. We successfully applied our method on the Saccharomyces cerevisiae dataset and obtained 2754 distinct quasi-bicliques.
TL;DR: In this paper, a method using video codec technology to compress ECG signals was presented, which exploits both intra-beat and inter-beat correlations of the ECG signal to achieve high compression ratios and a low percent root mean square difference (PRD).
Abstract: In this paper, we present a method using video codec technology to compress ECG signals. This method exploits both intra-beat and inter-beat correlations of the ECG signals to achieve high compression ratios (CR) and a low percent root mean square difference (PRD). Since ECG signals have both intra-beat and inter-beat redundancies like video signals, which have both intra-frame and inter-frame correlation, video codec technology can be used for ECG compression. In order to do this, some pre-process will be needed. The ECG signals should firstly be segmented and normalized to a sequence of beat cycles with the same length, and then these beat cycles can be treated as picture frames and compressed with video codec technology. We have used records from MIT-BIH arrhythmia database to evaluate our algorithm. Results show that, besides compression efficiently, this algorithm has the advantages of resolution adjustable, random access and flexibility for irregular period and QRS false detection.
TL;DR: A system is created to allow individuals with motor disabili-ties to control the motion of the bed on which they are bedridden via BCI for drug delivery and other activities, with the help of eye motion and changes in the absolute power in alpha rhythms of an EEG signal of the patient.
Abstract: Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI) are developed to help locked-in patients, who lose control of their bodies and are unable to perform simple tasks such as speech, locomotion, and can’t even effectively interact, with their environment. BCI shows promise in allowing these individuals to interact with a computer using EEG. A Brain Computer Interface is a communication system in which messages or commands that an indi-vidual sends to the external world do not pass through the brain’s normal output pathways of peripheral nerves and muscles. A system is created to allow individuals with motor disabili-ties to control the motion of the bed on which they are bedridden via BCI for drug delivery and other activities, with the help of eye motion and changes in the absolute power in alpha rhythms of an EEG signal of the patient.
TL;DR: A combinatorial method is used to analyze the genetic data for Crohn's disease and search disease-associated factors for given case/control samples and achieves a promising result.
Abstract: The Both environmental and genetic factors have roles in the development of some diseases. Complex diseases, such as Crohn's disease or Type II diabetes, are caused by a combination of environmental factors and mutations in multiple genes. Patients who have been diagnosed with such diseases cannot easily be treated. However, many diseases can be avoided if people at high risk change their living style, one example being their diet. But how can we tell their susceptibility to diseases before symptoms are found and help them make informed decisions about their health? With the development of DNA microarray technique, it is possible to access the human genetic information related to specific diseases. This paper uses a combinatorial method to analyze the genetic data for Crohn's disease and search disease-associated factors for given case/control samples. An optimum random forest based method has been applied to publicly available genotype data on Crohn's disease for association study and achieved a promising result.
TL;DR: In this paper, the design of a modular hydraulic/pneumatic actuated tele-robotic system and a new infrastructure for MRI-guided intervention for closed-bore MR-guided neurosurgery are presented.
Abstract: In this paper the design of a novel modular hydraulic/pneumatic actuated tele-robotic system and a new infrastructure for MRI-guided intervention for closed-bore MRI-guided neurosurgery are presented. Candidate neurosurgical procedures enabled by this system would include thermal ablation, radiofrequency ablation, deep brain stimulators, and targeted drug delivery. The major focus is the application of the designed MR-compatible robotic system to MRI-guided brain biopsy. Navigation and operating modules were designed to undertake the alignment and advancement of the surgical needle respectively. The mechanical design and control paradigm are reported.
TL;DR: The modified superposition model is suggested to describe periodontal ligament data, because it can suitably demon-strate both elastic nonlinearity and strain-dependent stress relaxation behavior of PDL.
Abstract: The periodontal ligament (PDL) is a soft bio-logical tissue which shows a strongly nonlinear and time dependent mechanical behavior. Re-cent experiments on rabbit PDL revealed that the rate of stress relaxation is strain dependent. This nonlinear behavior of PDL cannot be de-scribed well by the separable quasi linear vis-coelasticity theory which is usually used in tis-sue biomechanics. Therefore, PDL requires a more general description which considers this nonlinearity and time dependency. The purpose of this study was to model strain dependent stress relaxation behavior of PDL using modi-fied superposition method. It is shown herein that modified superposition method describes viscoelastic nonlinearties well and shows a good compatibility with available experimental PDL data. Hence, the modified superposition model is suggested to describe periodontal ligament data, because it can suitably demon-strate both elastic nonlinearity and strain-dependent stress relaxation behavior of PDL.
TL;DR: In this paper, a simplified multivariate Markov model for approximating a Probabilistic Boolean Network (PBN) is proposed, which can preserve the strength of PBNs, the ability to capture the inter-dependence of the genes in the network, and at the same time reduce the complexity of the network and therefore the computational cost.
Abstract: In the post-genomic era, the construction and control of genetic regulatory networks using gene expression data is a hot research topic. Boolean networks (BNs) and its extension Probabilistic Boolean Networks (PBNs) have been served as an effective tool for this purpose. However, PBNs are difficult to be used in practice when the number of genes is large because of the huge computational cost.
In this paper, we propose a simplified multivariate Markov model for approximating a PBN The new model can preserve the strength of PBNs, the ability to capture the inter-dependence of the genes in the network, qnd at the same time reduce the complexity of the network and therefore the computational cost. We then present an optimal control model with hard constraints for the purpose of control/intervention of a genetic regulatory network. Numerical experimental examples based on the yeast data are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed model and control policy.
TL;DR: The in silico model of S. cerevisiae_iND750 has been tested by many ex-periments, thus is credible, and it can be concluded that the result obtained has biological sig-nificance.
Abstract: Based on the gene-protein-reaction (GPR) model of S. cerevisiae_iND750 and the method of constraint-based analysis, we first calculated the metabolic flux distribution of S. cere-visiae_iND750. Then we calculated the deletion impact of 438 calculable genes, one by one, on the metabolic flux redistribution of S. cere-visiae_iND750. Next we analyzed the correlation between v (describing deletion impact of one gene) and d (connection degree of one gene) and the correlation between v and Vgene (flux sum controlled by one gene), and found that both of them were not of linear relation. Furthermore, we sought out 38 important genes that most greatly affected the metabolic flux distribution, and determined their functional subsystems. We also found that many of these key genes were related to many but not several subsystems. Because the in silico model of S. cere-visiae_iND750 has been tested by many ex-periments, thus is credible, we can conclude that the result we obtained has biological sig-nificance.
TL;DR: The proposed HPC2S (Hospital Patient Care Call System) services based on VoWLAN (VoIP over WLAN) will achieve the needs of timely and efficient communication among care professionals.
Abstract: Since the rapid exchange of information and collaboration with colleagues are indispensable for the quality of care. Effective communication between care givers has been recognized as a critical factor on the high quality of patient care. Communication in medical environment is often intense and time critical, including laboratory result, complex consultation and advice, which require high degree coordination among care professionals. Nevertheless, there are some deficiencies existed in the actual state of the communication system in hospitals, such as waiting time for call back and inducing interruptions. Current technological solutions should allow developing a novel intelligent communication system. In this paper, the proposed HPC2S (Hospital Patient Care Call System) services based on VoWLAN (VoIP over WLAN) will achieve the needs of timely and efficient communication among care professionals.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that if p(t), the pulsatile part of the cuff pressure, is defined to be a train of positive-going pulses, O(t) turns out to be rather close but not identical to dp/dt.
Abstract: In the most common version of an oscillometric blood pressure monitor, the output from the pressure transducer, Y(t), is split into two parts, and used for separate determinations of the pressure inside the pneumatic cuff and its fluc-tuating part; the latter is derived by sending Y(t) to a high-pass filter (HPF) and amplifying the fil-tered part to obtain the oscillometric signal O(t). Using a typical HPF-amplifier combination, we show that if p(t), the pulsatile part of the cuff pressure, is defined to be a train of positive-going pulses, O(t) turns out to be rather close but not identical to dp/dt, and to demonstrate that one can easily retrieve p(t) from a record of O(t). This means that, with a small modification, the instrument can provide both p(t) and dp/dt; the practical advantages of this demonstration are pointed out.
TL;DR: Numerical results show that the RIFS model can simulate very well the CGRs and their induced measures of whole genome DNA sequences, linked coding DNA sequences and linked protein sequences.
Abstract: Chaos game representation (CGR) of DNA sequences and linked protein sequences from genomes was proposed by Jeffrey (1990) and Yu et al. (2004), respectively. In this paper, we consider the CGR of three kinds of sequences from complete genomes: whole genome DNA sequences, linked coding DNA sequences and linked protein sequences. Some fractal patterns are found in these CGRs. A recurrent iterated function systems (RIFS) model is proposed to simulate the CGRs of these sequences from genomes and their induced measures. Numerical results on 50 genomes show that the RIFS model can simulate very well the CGRs and their induced measures. The parameters estimated in the RIFS model reflect information on species classification.
TL;DR: Compared with a model-based method, PICA’s ability to capture the neural networks whose temporal activity may deviate from the task timing suggests that PICA may be more appropriate for analyzing language fMRI data with complex event-related paradigms, and may be particularly helpful for patient studies.
Abstract: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to lateralize and localize lan-guage areas for pre-operative planning pur-poses. To identify the essential language areas from this kind of observation method, we pro-pose an analysis strategy to combine fMRI data from two different tasks using probabilistic in-dependent component analysis (PICA). The assumption is that the independent compo-nents separated by PICA identify the networks activated by both tasks. The results from a study of twelve normal subjects showed that a language-specific component was consistently identified, with the participating networks sepa-rated into different components. Compared with a model-based method, PICA’s ability to capture the neural networks whose temporal activity may deviate from the task timing suggests that PICA may be more appropriate for analyzing language fMRI data with complex event-related paradigms, and may be particularly helpful for patient studies. This proposed strategy has the potential to improve the correlation between fMRI and invasive techniques which can dem-onstrate essential areas and which remain the clinical gold standard.
TL;DR: This work tries to explore the relationship be-tween the objective Western medicine standard such as child-pugh grade, decompensation or compensation stage, active or inactive period and the signs and symptoms of TCM by using the data mining method.
Abstract: Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is one of the safe and effective methods to treat liver cir-rhosis. The practitioners of TCM assess hepatic function in term of syndrome. But the course of syndrome differentiation is subjectivity. At pre-sent most of all the researches are focused on the relationship between the syndrome and the Western medicine objective indicators such as child-pugh grade. In fact syndrome is the syn-thesis of signs and symptoms and collecting signs, symptoms is easy than syndrome differ-entiation. We try to explore the relationship be-tween the objective Western medicine standard such as child-pugh grade, decompensation or compensation stage, active or inactive period and the signs and symptoms of TCM by using the data mining method. We use the information gain method to assess the attributes and use five typical classifiers such as logistic, Bayes-Net, NaiveBayes, RBF and C4.5 to obtain the classification accuracy. After attribute selection, we obtain the main symptoms and signs of TCM relating to the stage, period and child-pugh grade about liver cirrhosis. The experiment re-sults show the classification accuracy is im-proved after filtering some symptoms and signs.
TL;DR: The objective of this study is to propose an image analysis method for the quantification of the hepatic perfusion based on contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging (CEUI), which can obtain the perfusion information of the whole liver which is rarely ob-tained by traditional image analysis technology.
Abstract: Information about hepatic perfusion is used in clinical liver disease diagnosis. An image analy-sis system can help physicians make efficient and accurate diagnosis. The objective of this study is to propose an image analysis method for the quantification of the hepatic perfusion based on contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging (CEUI). The proposed method contains frame selection, image registration, digital subtraction and grey-scale calculation. Then, by processing an image sequence, a time-intensity curve (TIC) for hepatic perfusion is derived. The kernel of this image analysis technology is digital subtrac-tion and its accuracy is improved by frame selec-tion and image registration. The advantage of this method is that it can obtain the perfusion information of the whole liver which is rarely ob-tained by traditional image analysis technology; therefore, it is a supplement of the traditional image analysis method. This method is applied on the quantification of a rabbit’s hepatic perfu-sion and the result shows the efficiency of it.
TL;DR: Experiments conducted on a subset of the Structural Classification Of Pro-tein database confirmed the effective-ness of TKE in preserving the original relation-ships among protein structures in the lower di-mensional embedding according to their simi-larities.
Abstract: In this paper, a recently proposed dimensional-ity reduction method called Twin Kernel Em-bedding (TKE) [10] is applied in 2-dimensional visualization of protein structure relationships. By matching the similarity measures of the input and the embedding spaces expressed by their respective kernels, TKE ensures that both local and global proximity information are preserved simultaneously. Experiments conducted on a subset of the Structural Classification Of Pro-tein (SCOP) database confirmed the effective-ness of TKE in preserving the original relation-ships among protein structures in the lower di-mensional embedding according to their simi-larities. This result is expected to benefit sub-sequent analyses of protein structures and their functions.
TL;DR: Different from existing methods for predicting miRNA hairpins, the one-class SVM classifier is trained only on the information of the miRNA class, which overcomes the above disad- vantages of existing two-class methods.
Abstract: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small molecular non-coding RNAs that have important roles in the post-transcriptional mechanism of animals and plants. They are commonly 21-25 nucleo- tides (nt) long and derived from 60-90 nt RNA hairpin structures, called miRNA hairpins. A lar- ger number of sequence segments in the human genome have been computationally identified with such 60-90 nt hairpins, however the major- ity of them are not miRNA hairpins. Most exist- ing computational methods for predicting miRNA hairpins are based on a two-class classi- fier to distinguish between miRNA hairpins and other sequence segments with hairpin struc- tures. The difficulty of these methods is how to select hairpins as negative examples of miRNA hairpins in the training dataset, since only a few miRNA hairpins are available. Therefore, these classifiers may be mis-trained due to some false negative examples of the training dataset. In this paper, we introduce a one-class support vector machine (SVM) method to predict miRNA hair- pins among the hairpin structures. Different from existing methods for predicting miRNA hairpins, the one-class SVM classifier is trained only on the information of the miRNA class. We also il- lustrate some examples of predicting miRNA hairpins in human chromosomes 10, 15, and 21, where our method overcomes the above disad- vantages of existing two-class methods.
TL;DR: A new algorithm based on minimum dispersion criterion and fractional lower order statistics is proposed for evoked potentials analysis that is more robust than the conventional algorithm.
Abstract: Evoked potentials (EPs) have been widely used to quantify neurological system properties. Tra-ditional EP analysis methods are developed under the condition that the background noises in EP are Gaussian distributed. Alpha stable distribution, a generalization of Gaussian, is better for modeling impulsive noises than Gaussian distribution in biomedical signal proc-essing. Conventional blind separation and es-timation method of evoked potentials is based on second order statistics or high order Statis-tics. Conventional blind separation and estima-tion method of evoked potentials is based on second order statistics (SOS). In this paper, we propose a new algorithm based on minimum dispersion criterion and fractional lower order statistics. The simulation experiments show that the proposed new algorithm is more robust than the conventional algorithm.
TL;DR: This study opens the possibility of reduced AChE levels causing high choline and reduced N-acetyl ace-tate (NAA) neurotransmitter by MRS after initial apoptosis and/or inflammation to make amyloid plaques in the cerebral tissue of Alzheimer’s disease patients.
Abstract: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is considered a slow neuronal dysfunction process through hypoxia, ischemia and leads to apoptosis mediated senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs). Due to non-invasive approach of plaque characterization, computational techniques based on Brownian dynamics simulation are unique to speculate the electrostatic and kinetic properties of Acetylcho-linesterase (AChE). Typically the MRI spectros-copy high choline peak and enzyme specific to Alzheimer’s Disease (specificity constant (kcat/Km) of AChE) appeared associated with apoptosis and hypoxia. A simple display between synergy of cytokines, apoptosis, elevated AChE and choline is postulated as initial events. The events may be distributed heterogeneously within the senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). The role of decreased brain AChE and synergy was associated with specific Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic (MRS) pattern profiles in AD. These findings suggest that that the altered AChE and early apoptosis events in AD may be associated with specific MR spectral peak patterns. This study opens the possibility of reduced AChE levels causing high choline and reduced N-acetyl ace-tate (NAA) neurotransmitter by MRS after initial apoptosis and/or inflammation to make amyloid plaques in the cerebral tissue of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients. These results can be useful in clinical trials on AD lesions.