Search results for "fusion"
showing 10 items of 4513 documents
A Context-Aware System for Ambient Assisted Living
2017
In the near future, the world's population will be characterized by an increasing average age, and consequently, the number of people requiring for a special household assistance will dramatically rise. In this scenario, smart homes will significantly help users to increase their quality of life, while maintaining a great level of autonomy. This paper presents a system for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) capable of understanding context and user's behavior by exploiting data gathered by a pervasive sensor network. The knowledge inferred by adopting a Bayesian knowledge extraction approach is exploited to disambiguate the collected observations, making the AAL system able to detect and predict…
An Ambient Intelligence System for Assisted Living
2017
Nowadays, the population's average age is constantly increasing, and thus the need for specialized home assistance is on the rise. Smart homes especially tailored to meet elderly and disabled people's needs can help them maintaining their autonomy, whilst ensuring their safety and well-being. This paper proposes a complete context-aware system for Ambient Assisted Living (AAL), which infers user's actions and context, analyzing its past and current behavior to detect anomalies and prevent possible emergencies. The proposed system exploits Dynamic Bayesian Networks to merge raw data coming from heterogeneous sensors and infer user's behavior and health conditions. A rule-based reasoner is ab…
Quality assurance in RT-PCR-based BCR/ABL diagnostics--results of an interlaboratory test and a standardization approach.
2000
Here we describe the results of an interlaboratory test for RT-PCR-based BCR/ABL analysis. The test was organized in two parts. The number of participating laboratories in the first and second part was 27 and 20, respectively. In the first part samples containing various concentrations of plasmids with the ela2, b2a2 or b3a2 BCR/ABL transcripts were analyzed by PCR. In the second part of the test, cell samples containing various concentrations of BCR/ABL-positive cells were analyzed by RT-PCR. Overall PCR sensitivity was sufficient in approximately 90% of the tests, but a significant number of false positive results were obtained. There were significant differences in sensitivity in the cel…
ATR-FTIR spectroscopy as a quality control system for monitoring the storage of blood products
2021
Blood screening is a fundamental part of disease diagnosis and monitoring health. Attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy offers an innovative solution to streamlining the process, especially for multianalyte detection in aqueous samples. However, samples always undergo a storage phase before they are processed for testing and blood transfusion. In this study, we investigated the effect of standard storage procedures on the macromolecular composition of whole blood, and plasma collected in blood tubes for diagnostic purposes and initial screening of blood products. Periphery blood samples were collected from 10 volunteers and then stored for 14 days a…
SPET/CT image co-registration in the abdomen with a simple and cost-effective tool
2002
Fusion of morphology and function has been shown to improve diagnostic accuracy in many clinical circumstances. Taking this into account, a number of instruments combining computed tomography (CT) with positron emission tomography (PET) or single-photon emission tomography (SPET) are appearing on the market. The aim of this study was to evaluate a simple and cost-effective approach to generate fusion images of similar quality. For the evaluation of the proposed approach, patients with neuroendocrine abdominal tumours with liver metastases were chosen, since the exact superimposition in the abdomen is more difficult than in other regions. Five hours following the injection of 110 MBq (111)In…
Randomized controlled trial of postoperative exercise rehabilitation program after lumbar spine fusion: study protocol
2012
Abstract Background Lumbar spine fusion (LSF) effectively decreases pain and disability in specific spinal disorders; however, the disability rate following surgery remains high. This, combined with the fact that in Western countries the number of LSF surgeries is increasing rapidly it is important to develop rehabilitation interventions that improve outcomes. Methods/design In the present RCT-study we aim to assess the effectiveness of a combined back-specific and aerobic exercise intervention for patients after LSF surgery. One hundred patients will be randomly allocated to a 12-month exercise intervention arm or a usual care arm. The exercise intervention will start three months after su…
Incoherent elastic and quasi-elastic neutron scattering investigation of hemoglobin dynamics.
2005
In this work we investigate the dynamic properties of hemoglobin in glycerolD(8)/D(2)O solution using incoherent elastic (ENS) and quasi-elastic (QENS) neutron scattering. Taking advantage of complementary energy resolutions of backscattering spectrometers at ILL (Grenoble), we explore motions in a large space-time window, up to 1 ns and 14 A; moreover, in order to cover the harmonic and anharmonic protein dynamics regimes, the elastic experiments have been performed over the wide temperature interval of 20-300 K. To study the dependence of the measured dynamics upon the protein quaternary structure, both deoxyhemoglobin (in T quaternary conformation) and carbonmonoxyhemoglobin (in R quater…
Statics and dynamics of dense polymer systems studied by monte carlo simulation
1995
Monte Carlo simulations of coarse–grained models of macromolecules offer a unique tool to study the interplay between coil conformations, thermodynamic properties, and chain configurational relaxation and diffusion. Two examples are discussed where the chain conformation strongly differs from a gaussian coil: (i) collapsed chains in a bad solvent, where anomalous diffusion occurs in the Rouse limit and the relaxation time increases at least with the third power of chain length. (ii) Expulsion of a chain from a semidilute polymer brush. The initially stretched chain contracts to a gaussian coil and the center of mass moves outward with constant velocity until it reaches the region of the “la…
Monte Carlo simulations of polymer dynamics: Recent advances
1997
A brief review is given of applications of Monte Carlo simulations to study the dynamical properties of coarse-grained models of polymer melts, emphasizing the crossover from the Rouse model toward reptation, and the glass transition. The extent to which Monte Carlo algorithms can mimic the actual chain dynamics is critically examined, and the need for the use of coarse-grained rather than fully atomistic models for such simulations is explained. It is shown that various lattice and continuum models yield qualitatively similar results, and the behavior agrees with the findings of corresponding molecular dynamics simulations and experiments, where available. It is argued that these simulatio…
Molecular-dynamics simulation of a glassy polymer melt: Rouse model and cage effect
1999
We report results of molecular-dynamics simulations for a glassy polymer melt consisting of short, linear bead-spring chains. It was shown in previous work that this onset of the glassy slowing down is compatible with the predictions of the mode coupling theory. The physical process of `caging' of a monomer by its spatial neighbors leads to a distinct two step behavior in the particle mean square displacements. In this work we analyze the effects of this caging process on the Rouse description of the melt's dynamics. We show that the Rouse theory is applicable for length and time scales above the typical scales for the caging process. Futhermore, the monomer displacement is compared with si…