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Scientific Reports Aug 2023Comprehending the teacher's message when other students are chatting is challenging. Even though the sound environment is the same for a whole class, differences in...
Comprehending the teacher's message when other students are chatting is challenging. Even though the sound environment is the same for a whole class, differences in individual performance can be observed, which might depend on a variety of personal factors and their specific interaction with the listening condition. This study was designed to explore the role of individual characteristics (reading comprehension, inhibitory control, noise sensitivity) when primary school children perform a listening comprehension task in the presence of a two-talker masker. The results indicated that this type of noise impairs children's accuracy, effort, and motivation during the task. Its specific impact depended on the level and was modulated by the child's characteristics. In particular, reading comprehension was found to support task accuracy, whereas inhibitory control moderated the effect of listening condition on the two measures of listening effort included in the study (response time and self-ratings), even though with a different pattern of association. A moderation effect of noise sensitivity on perceived listening effort was also observed. Understanding the relationship between individual characteristics and classroom sound environment has practical implications for the acoustic design of spaces promoting students' well-being, and supporting their learning performance.
Topics: Child; Humans; Listening Effort; Auditory Perception; Sound; Auscultation; Acoustics
PubMed: 37652970
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-40660-1 -
Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Sep 2023Electronic auscultation is vital for doctors to detect symptoms and signs of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), significantly impacting human health. Although progress has...
Electronic auscultation is vital for doctors to detect symptoms and signs of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), significantly impacting human health. Although progress has been made in heart sound classification, most existing methods require precise segmentation and feature extraction of heart sound signals before classification. To address this, we introduce an innovative approach for heart sound classification. Our method, named Convolution and Transformer Encoder Neural Network (CTENN), simplifies preprocessing, automatically extracting features using a combination of a one-dimensional convolution (1D-Conv) module and a Transformer encoder. Experimental results showcase the superiority of our proposed method in both binary and multi-class tasks, achieving remarkable accuracies of 96.4%, 99.7%, and 95.7% across three distinct datasets compared with that of similar approaches. This advancement holds promise for enhancing CVD diagnosis and treatment.
Topics: Humans; Heart Sounds; Auscultation; Cardiovascular Diseases; Electric Power Supplies; Electronics
PubMed: 37836998
DOI: 10.3390/s23198168 -
European Review For Medical and... Aug 2023The increasing prevalence of obesity in children and adolescents has turned hypertension into an important public health issue. In the current literature, auscultatory...
OBJECTIVE
The increasing prevalence of obesity in children and adolescents has turned hypertension into an important public health issue. In the current literature, auscultatory blood pressure measurement is recommended for the diagnosis of hypertension. The number of studies comparing electronic blood pressure measurement and auscultatory blood pressure measurement is limited. This study aimed to compare auscultatory blood pressure measurement with electronic blood pressure measurement in the children population group aged 5-15 years.
PATIENTS AND METHODS
A total of 72 patients aged between 5-15 years without chronic disease were included in the study. Anthropometric measurements (height, weight, body mass index, wrist circumference, mid-upper arm circumference) were performed. Systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and mean arterial pressure (MAP) were first measured electronically from the wrist using an Omron Rs7 Intelli It HEM-6232T device, and then auscultatory measurements were performed. Each type of measurement was performed 3 times intermittently.
RESULTS
The mean wrist circumference was 14.43±0.22 cm and the mean mid-upper arm circumference was 21.43±0.55 cm. Mean SBP, DBP and MAP measured electronically on the wrist were 104.1±1.5, 65.6±1.3 and 78.1±1.3 mmHg, respectively, and mean SBP, DBP and MAP measured via auscultation were 99.3±1, 61.4±0.7 and 73.6±0.7 mmHg, respectively. Electronically-measured wrist MAP had significantly moderate correlations with mid-upper arm and wrist circumference (r:0.547, r:0.559, p<0.01).
CONCLUSIONS
Since the differences were less than 4 mmHg in both systolic and diastolic pressures between electronic wrist blood pressure (EWBP) measurement and auscultatory measurement, it appears that electronic measurement may be important in first line of blood pressure screening. Since it is easy and practical to use in the early period, it may be an alternative approach to auscultatory measurement among non-critical pediatric patients.
Topics: Adolescent; Humans; Child; Child, Preschool; Wrist; Blood Pressure; Pediatric Obesity; Auscultation; Hypertension; Electronics; Protein Kinase Inhibitors
PubMed: 37667947
DOI: 10.26355/eurrev_202308_33423 -
Computer Methods and Programs in... Oct 2023Respiratory diseases are among the most significant causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, causing substantial strain on society and health systems. Over the last...
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
Respiratory diseases are among the most significant causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide, causing substantial strain on society and health systems. Over the last few decades, there has been increasing interest in the automatic analysis of respiratory sounds and electrical impedance tomography (EIT). Nevertheless, no publicly available databases with both respiratory sound and EIT data are available.
METHODS
In this work, we have assembled the first open-access bimodal database focusing on the differential diagnosis of respiratory diseases (BRACETS: Bimodal Repository of Auscultation Coupled with Electrical Impedance Thoracic Signals). It includes simultaneous recordings of single and multi-channel respiratory sounds and EIT. Furthermore, we have proposed several machine learning-based baseline systems for automatically classifying respiratory diseases in six distinct evaluation tasks using respiratory sound and EIT (A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3). These tasks included classifying respiratory diseases at sample and subject levels. The performance of the classification models was evaluated using a 5-fold cross-validation scheme (with subject isolation between folds).
RESULTS
The resulting database consists of 1097 respiratory sounds and 795 EIT recordings acquired from 78 adult subjects in two countries (Portugal and Greece). In the task of automatically classifying respiratory diseases, the baseline classification models have achieved the following average balanced accuracy: Task A1 - 77.9±13.1%; Task A2 - 51.6±9.7%; Task A3 - 38.6±13.1%; Task B1 - 90.0±22.4%; Task B2 - 61.4±11.8%; Task B3 - 50.8±10.6%.
CONCLUSION
The creation of this database and its public release will aid the research community in developing automated methodologies to assess and monitor respiratory function, and it might serve as a benchmark in the field of digital medicine for managing respiratory diseases. Moreover, it could pave the way for creating multi-modal robust approaches for that same purpose.
Topics: Auscultation; Thorax; Electric Impedance; Respiration; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Aged; Adult; Respiratory Tract Diseases
PubMed: 37544061
DOI: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2023.107720 -
Medicine International 2024The safe care of both mothers and fetuses during labor is a primary goal of all health professionals. The assessment of fetal oxygenation and well-being is a key aspect... (Review)
Review
The safe care of both mothers and fetuses during labor is a primary goal of all health professionals. The assessment of fetal oxygenation and well-being is a key aspect of perinatal care provided. Fetal heart rate (FHR) auscultation became part of daily obstetric practice in a number of countries during the 20th century and remains a key method of fetal monitoring, particularly in low-risk pregnancies. Cardiotocography (CTG) is the continuous monitoring and recording of the FHR and uterine myometrial activity, making it possible to assess the fetal condition. It therefore plays a critical role in the detection of fetal hypoxia during labor, a condition directly related to short- and long-term complications in the newborn. Herein, particular reference is made to the management of CTG category II and III standards, as well as to the handling of childbirth. In addition, specific FHR patterns are associated with immediate neonatal outcomes based on updated studies conducted worldwide. Finally, the prognostic significance of CTG and its potential as a prospective avenue for further investigation are also highlighted herein. Given that the misinterpretation of CTG findings is the most common cause of medical-legal responsibility, this knowledge field requires more emphasis and attention. The aim of the present review was to further deepen the knowledge on issues that mainly concern the safety and monitoring of pregnant women and fetuses during childbirth.
PubMed: 38628383
DOI: 10.3892/mi.2024.151 -
Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) Oct 2023The healthcare industry has made significant progress in the diagnosis of heart conditions due to the use of intelligent detection systems such as electrocardiograms,...
The healthcare industry has made significant progress in the diagnosis of heart conditions due to the use of intelligent detection systems such as electrocardiograms, cardiac ultrasounds, and abnormal sound diagnostics that use artificial intelligence (AI) technology, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs). Over the past few decades, methods for automated segmentation and classification of heart sounds have been widely studied. In many cases, both experimental and clinical data require electrocardiography (ECG)-labeled phonocardiograms (PCGs) or several feature extraction techniques from the mel-scale frequency cepstral coefficient (MFCC) spectrum of heart sounds to achieve better identification results with AI methods. Without good feature extraction techniques, the CNN may face challenges in classifying the MFCC spectrum of heart sounds. To overcome these limitations, we propose a capsule neural network (CapsNet), which can utilize iterative dynamic routing methods to obtain good combinations for layers in the translational equivariance of MFCC spectrum features, thereby improving the prediction accuracy of heart murmur classification. The 2016 PhysioNet heart sound database was used for training and validating the prediction performance of CapsNet and other CNNs. Then, we collected our own dataset of clinical auscultation scenarios for fine-tuning hyperparameters and testing results. CapsNet demonstrated its feasibility by achieving validation accuracies of 90.29% and 91.67% on the test dataset.
PubMed: 38002361
DOI: 10.3390/bioengineering10111237 -
Journal of Anaesthesiology, Clinical... 2023Auscultation to verify Ryle's tube position is difficult in obese patients. We compared the usefulness of ultrasonography (USG) versus auscultation in confirming the...
Usefulness of ultrasound in confirming the correct placement of Ryle's tube compared to the traditional method of auscultation in normal versus overweight and obese patients.
BACKGROUND AND AIMS
Auscultation to verify Ryle's tube position is difficult in obese patients. We compared the usefulness of ultrasonography (USG) versus auscultation in confirming the correct Ryle's tube placement in normal versus overweight or obese patients, time taken for confirmation, and incidence of reinsertion.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
A prospective, observational study was carried out on 80 patients. Patients with a body mass index (BMI)>25 kg/m formed group O and those with BMI <25 kg/m constituted group N. After Ryle's tube insertion correct placement was first confirmed by auscultation. The presence of a gurgling sound over the epigastrium was graded (definite/doubtful/absent). During USG evaluation, if Ryle's tube was not visualized at the subxiphoid region, 20mL of air was injected, looking for dynamic fogging in the stomach. If auscultation yielded doubtful or absent results and USG also failed to confirm, Ryle's tube was repositioned and confirmed.
RESULTS
Group O had a significantly higher BMI. Auscultation time and the time taken for USG confirmation were significantly longer in group O. The percentage of patients with definite auscultatory signs was significantly higher in group N. Significantly higher number of patients in group O had doubtful/absent auscultatory signs. Ryle's tube and fogging visualization with USG and the requirement of reinsertion were comparable in both groups. The percentage of patients with definite auscultatory confirmation and definite USG confirmation were comparable in group N. However, in group O, significantly lesser patients had definite auscultatory confirmation compared to definite USG signs.
CONCLUSION
Confirmation of the correct placement of Ryle's tube using ultrasound is easier than auscultation in overweight and obese patients. In normal patients, both techniques are equally useful.
PubMed: 38269188
DOI: 10.4103/joacp.joacp_237_22 -
Journal of Equine Veterinary Science Apr 2024A 25-year-old female mule weighing 336 kg was referred with a history of lethargy, abdominal discomfort, anorexia, and constipation in the previous 24 hours. On...
A 25-year-old female mule weighing 336 kg was referred with a history of lethargy, abdominal discomfort, anorexia, and constipation in the previous 24 hours. On admission, decreased intestinal borborygmi and distended small intestinal loops were detected by auscultation and rectal palpation, respectively. On rectal examination a firm, irregular surface, and pedunculated mass were detected in the middle-caudal region of the abdomen. Transrectal ultrasonography revealed the mass was highly vascularized with heterogeneous tissue density. On exploratory celiotomy two neoplastic masses were observed, one in the jejunoileal junction obstructing the intestinal flow and the second in the dorsal part of the jejunal mesentery, unable to be exposed and resected. An enterectomy was conducted, and the intestinal mass was removed. The mass was pale with hemorrhagic areas and 12 cm in diameter. Histopathology and immunohistochemistry confirmed a diagnosis of enteric associated T cell lymphoma subtype 2. The mule died suddenly 43 days later.
Topics: Female; Animals; Equidae; Lymphoma, T-Cell; Ultrasonography
PubMed: 38527562
DOI: 10.1016/j.jevs.2024.105050 -
Anatomical Record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) Dec 2023Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a systematic medical method that has existed for more than 3,000 years. Unlike Western medicine, the disease diagnosis in TCM is...
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a systematic medical method that has existed for more than 3,000 years. Unlike Western medicine, the disease diagnosis in TCM is carried out by inspection, auscultation, olfaction, interrogation, and palpation. The patient is then treated according to the disease and corresponding TCM syndrome. However, the development of Chinese medicine is stagnated, partially because it can be influenced by subjective factors, such as the experience and knowledge of TCM practitioners, and there is a lack of relevant biological research on TCM syndromes. Yin-deficiency-heat (YDH) syndrome in TCM is characterized by a series of pathological changes caused by the insufficiency of Yin-fluid, inability to moisturize, and the failure to suppress Yang. In recent years, systems biology research on TCM syndromes has gradually become the focus of TCM research, including syndrome differentiation and functional research using systems biology methodologies such as proteomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics. This journal aims to publish a series of issues on the systems biology research of TCM syndromes that can provide biological indicators for the syndrome differentiation of YDH syndrome and can provide perspectives on the biological research of YDH syndrome.
Topics: Humans; Medicine, Chinese Traditional; Hot Temperature; Systems Biology; Yang Deficiency; Yin Deficiency; Syndrome
PubMed: 31909899
DOI: 10.1002/ar.24354 -
IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health... Aug 2023Murmurs are abnormal heart sounds, identified by experts through cardiac auscultation. The murmur grade, a quantitative measure of the murmur intensity, is strongly...
OBJECTIVE
Murmurs are abnormal heart sounds, identified by experts through cardiac auscultation. The murmur grade, a quantitative measure of the murmur intensity, is strongly correlated with the patient's clinical condition. This work aims to estimate each patient's murmur grade (i.e., absent, soft, loud) from multiple auscultation location phonocardiograms (PCGs) of a large population of pediatric patients from a low-resource rural area.
METHODS
The Mel spectrogram representation of each PCG recording is given to an ensemble of 15 convolutional residual neural networks with channel-wise attention mechanisms to classify each PCG recording. The final murmur grade for each patient is derived based on the proposed decision rule and considering all estimated labels for available recordings. The proposed method is cross-validated on a dataset consisting of 3456 PCG recordings from 1007 patients using a stratified ten-fold cross-validation. Additionally, the method was tested on a hidden test set comprised of 1538 PCG recordings from 442 patients.
RESULTS
The overall cross-validation performances for patient-level murmur gradings are 86.3% and 81.6% in terms of the unweighted average of sensitivities and F1-scores, respectively. The sensitivities (and F1-scores) for absent, soft, and loud murmurs are 90.7% (93.6%), 75.8% (66.8%), and 92.3% (84.2%), respectively. On the test set, the algorithm achieves an unweighted average of sensitivities of 80.4% and an F1-score of 75.8%.
CONCLUSIONS
This study provides a potential approach for algorithmic pre-screening in low-resource settings with relatively high expert screening costs.
SIGNIFICANCE
The proposed method represents a significant step beyond detection of murmurs, providing characterization of intensity, which may provide an enhanced classification of clinical outcomes.
Topics: Humans; Child; Phonocardiography; Heart Murmurs; Heart Auscultation; Algorithms; Auscultation; Heart Sounds
PubMed: 37163396
DOI: 10.1109/JBHI.2023.3275039