Lung nodules detection using semantic segmentation and classification with optimal features

Neural Computing and Applications - Lung cancer is a deadly disease if not diagnosed in its early stages. However, early detection of lung cancer is a challenging task due to the shape and size of...     

Autonomous mapping of HL7 RIM and relational database schema

Healthcare systems need to share information within and across the boundaries in order to provide better care to the patients. For this purpose, they take advantage of the full potential of current state of the art in healthcare standards providing interoperable solutions. HL7 V3 specification is an international message exchange and interoperability standard. HL7 V3 messages exchanged between healthcare applications are ultimately recorded into local healthcare databases, mostly in relational databases. In order to bring these relational databases in compliance with HL7, mappings between HL7 RIM (Reference Information Model) and relational database schema are required. Currently, RIM and database mapping is largely performed manually, therefore it is tedious, time consuming, error prone and expensive process. It is a challenging task to determine all correspondences between RIM and schema automatically because of extreme heterogeneity issues in healthcare databases. To reduce the amount of manual efforts as much as possible, autonomous mapping approaches are required. This paper proposes a technique that addresses the aforementioned mapping issue and aligns healthcare databases to HL7 V3 RIM specifications. Furthermore, the proposed technique has been implemented as a working application and tested on real world healthcare systems. The application loads the target healthcare schema and then identifies the most appropriate match for tables and the associated fields in the schema by using domain knowledge and the matching rules defined in the Mapping Knowledge Repository. These rules are designed to handle the complexity of semantics found in healthcare databases. The GUI allows users to view and edit/re-map the correspondences. Once all the mappings are defined, the application generates Mapping Specification, which contains all the mapping information i.e. database tables and fields with associated RIM classes and attributes. In order to enable the transactions, the application is facilitated with the autonomous code generation from the Mapping Specification. The Code Generator component focuses primarily on generating custom classes and hibernate mapping files against the runtime system to retrieve and parse the data from the data source—thus allows bi-directional HL7 to database communication, with minimum programming required. Our experimental results show 35–65% accuracy on real laboratory systems, thus demonstrating the promise of the approach. The proposed scheme is an effective step in bringing the clinical databases in compliance with RIM, providing ease and flexibility.     

Ricinoleic acid inPhyllanthus niruri seed oil

Seed oil ofPhyllanthus niruri (Euphorbiaceae) contains 1.2% ricinoleic (12-hydroxy-cis-9-octadecenoic) acid, previously unknown in the genusPhyllanthus. Identification is based on thin layer and gas liquid chromatography, infrared, nuclear magnetic resonance, and mass spectrometry analysis as well as chemical methods. Other major components of the oil are linoleic acid (21%) and linolenic acid (51.4%). Presented at the ISF/AOCS World Congress, April 1980, New York City.     

Overview of Fine-Scale Piezoelectric Ceramic/Polymer Composite Processing

In the past two decades, piezoelectric ceramic/polymer composites with different connectivities have been developed for transducer applications such as hydrophones, biomedical imaging, nondestructive testing, and air imaging. Recently, much attention has been given to fine-scale piezoelectric ceramic/polymer composites. These composites allow higher operating frequencies, and thus increased resolution, in medical imaging transducers. In this review, methods for processing fine-scale piezoelectric ceramic/polymer composites are discussed. The current capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses of each method are compared. The importance of spatial scale in composite performance is also reviewed. Several of the processing methods have demonstrated composites with fine-scale ceramic phases (<50 μm), and others have potential to form composites with a ceramic scale of under 20 μm.     

Thermoelectric properties of SbNCa3 and BiNCa3 for thermoelectric devices and alternative energy applications

Thermoelectric properties of two antiperovskites SbNCa₃ and BiNCa₃ are calculated using first principles calculations. High values of Seebeck coefficients are observed for these materials. Electrical and thermal conductivities are also calculated. Increase in thermal conductivity and decrease in electrical conductivity are found with increasing temperature. The maximum values of thermal conductivity are 92×10¹⁴  W/m K s and 88×10¹⁴  W/m K s for SbNCa₃ and BiNCa₃ respectively at a temperature of 900 K. The peak values of 5×10²⁰/Ω m s and 5.2×10²⁰/Ω m s are achieved for n-type SbNCa₃ and BiNCa₃ respectively at a temperature of 300 K. Figure of merit is achieved for these materials at room temperature which shows that these materials can be useful for thermoelectric devices and alternative energy sources.     

A polyamide-silica composite prepared by the sol-gel process

Summary A new kind of organic-inorganic hybrid composite was prepared by means of the sol-gel process. The polymer employed was a mixed-isomer aromatic polyamide having good solubility and thermal stability. The silica constituting the inorganic phase was produced by the hydrolysis and condensation of tetramethoxysilane. The bonding between the phases involved aminophenyl-trimethoxysilane, in which the amino group can react with the phthaloyl chloride end-capped polymer, and the methoxysilane groups undergo hydrolysis. The composition of these composites was varied by changing the linear polymer chain length and relative amount of tetramethoxysilane. The gelation time was found to range from a few minutes to several days. Thermogravimetric analyses showed that decomposition starts at approximately 450 °C. Thin films cast from materials having a relatively high silica content were opaque and rigid, but those with low silica content were flexible and transparent.     

Quantitative preparation of long chain thioethers from an oxo-trans-2-enoic ester and a 9,12-dioxo-trans-10-enoic acid

Branched-chain thioethers have been prepared from methyl 4-oxo-trans-2-hexadecenoate and 9,12-dioxo-trans-10-octadecenoic acid. The reagents involved in these preparations were mercaptoacetic and mercaptopropionic acids. The yields of these thioethers are almost quantitative.     

Structure and Biological Significance of Triacylglycerols Containing Cyclopropene Acyl Moieties

Cyclopropene fatty acids are constituents of seed lipids of various plants, including sources of edible fats, such as cottonseed and kapok. Physiological and toxicological properties of lipids containing cyclopropene acyl moieties are reviewed and the difficulties encountered in the elucidation of the structures of triacylglycerols containing cyclopropene acyl moieties are discussed. A novel method for the analysis of such triacylglycerols is presented.     

Shape optimization of a micromixer with staggered herringbone groove

Shape optimization of a staggered herringbone groove micromixer using three-dimensional Navier-Stokes analysis has been carried out. The analysis of the degree of mixing is performed by the calculation of spatial data statistics. The calculation of the variance of the mass fraction at various nodes on a plane in the channel is used to quantify mixing. A numerical optimization technique is applied to optimize the shape of the grooves on a single wall of the channel. Two design variables, namely, the ratio of the groove depth to channel height ratio and the angle of the groove, are selected for optimization. A mixing index is used as the objective function. The results of the optimization show that the mixing is very sensitive to the shape of the groove which can be used in controlling the mixing in microdevices. The mixing is affected by the depth of the groove much more than the angle of the groove.     

Multimedia framework to support eHealth applications

Limited bandwidth resources lead to a number of challenges especially for eHealth applications, which are communicated over IP and wireless networks. These multimedia services include high-resolution videos and have very large file sizes that require a high level of compression to overcome this limitation. Therefore, there is an acute demand for the research community to provide an efficient multimedia framework to encode medical videos with high quality specifically under the conditions of an error-prone environment. Both an affordable delivery framework and effective coding techniques are extremely desirable for the delivery of high-quality eHealth video applications for transmission over heterogeneous networks and devices. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a multimedia framework to support eHealth applications, which has an improved coding scheme that uses an SVC-scalable extension of MPEC-4 AVC/H.264. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves a significant improvement in terms of the PSNR-Y gain and reduces the picture quality degradation caused by artifacts and distortions, compared to the existing scheme.