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The Indian Journal of Radiology &... Jul 2024Macrodystrophia lipomatosa (MDL) is a rare congenital, nonhereditary anomaly characterized by overgrowth of all the mesenchymal elements, predominantly the fibroadipose...
Macrodystrophia lipomatosa (MDL) is a rare congenital, nonhereditary anomaly characterized by overgrowth of all the mesenchymal elements, predominantly the fibroadipose tissue in a sclerotomal distribution commonly involving the median nerve territory in the upper extremity and plantar nerve territory in the lower extremity. It can be either static or progressive, with the former being the more common. MDL is usually present since birth and the affected digit/region increases in length and girth, and growth ceases after puberty. We discuss a rare case of ulnar nerve territory involvement that progressed to grow even after puberty.
PubMed: 38912255
DOI: 10.1055/s-0043-1777745 -
Scientific Reports Jun 2024Vehicle identification systems are vital components that enable many aspects of contemporary life, such as safety, trade, transit, and law enforcement. They improve...
Vehicle identification systems are vital components that enable many aspects of contemporary life, such as safety, trade, transit, and law enforcement. They improve community and individual well-being by increasing vehicle management, security, and transparency. These tasks entail locating and extracting license plates from images or video frames using computer vision and machine learning techniques, followed by recognizing the letters or digits on the plates. This paper proposes a new license plate detection and recognition method based on the deep learning YOLO v8 method, image processing techniques, and the OCR technique for text recognition. For this, the first step was the dataset creation, when gathering 270 images from the internet. Afterward, CVAT (Computer Vision Annotation Tool) was used to annotate the dataset, which is an open-source software platform made to make computer vision tasks easier to annotate and label images and videos. Subsequently, the newly released Yolo version, the Yolo v8, has been employed to detect the number plate area in the input image. Subsequently, after extracting the plate the k-means clustering algorithm, the thresholding techniques, and the opening morphological operation were used to enhance the image and make the characters in the license plate clearer before using OCR. The next step in this process is using the OCR technique to extract the characters. Eventually, a text file containing only the character reflecting the vehicle's country is generated. To ameliorate the efficiency of the proposed approach, several metrics were employed, namely precision, recall, F1-Score, and CLA. In addition, a comparison of the proposed method with existing techniques in the literature has been given. The suggested method obtained convincing results in both detection as well as recognition by obtaining an accuracy of 99% in detection and 98% in character recognition.
PubMed: 38909147
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-65272-1 -
NPJ Digital Medicine Jun 2024
PubMed: 38909083
DOI: 10.1038/s41746-024-01168-8 -
Journal of Dairy Science Jun 2024Poor limb conformation in cattle is believed to be closely associated with claw and limb disorders. Limb conformation is part of genetic evaluation and is assessed...
Poor limb conformation in cattle is believed to be closely associated with claw and limb disorders. Limb conformation is part of genetic evaluation and is assessed visually. In this descriptive study, the assessment of conformation in calves was evaluated objectively using joint angle measurements. A total of 100, 30- to 90-d-old, heifer calves of the Brown Swiss (n = 50) and Holstein (n = 50) breeds were photographed from both sides and the front and rear. Carpal, tarsal, autopodium and fetlock joint angles of the fore- or hind limbs were measured on the images using anatomic reference points and the ImageJ/Fiji® program. Each angle was measured 3 times, and the mean was used for analysis. Values from both sides were pooled. Deviations from defined standard angles were classified as slight or moderate. The positions of the front and hind feet were measured and scored. On average, the calves had moderate "knock-kneed" carpal conformation, and the autopodium of the front limb had a slight lateral deviation. In the rear view, the calves had slight, but close to moderate, "cow-hocked" tarsal conformation, and the autopodium of the hind limbs was parallel, but close to slightly deviated. Holstein calves were moderately, and Brown Swiss calves were slightly "cow-hocked". A moderate lateral deviation occurred in the metacarpal-digit angle in the front view and a slight lateral deviation occurred in the metatarsal-digit angle in the rear view. The front feet position score was >17° in 69% of the calves, and the hind feet position score was <17° in 90% of the calves. In the side views, the calves were slightly "over at the carpus" and slightly "straight-hocked" and had average fetlock conformation. In the mean values, most measured joint angles did not correspond to the straight or parallel classifications in our calves; moderate "knock-kneed" and slight "cow-hocked", and "toed-out" classifications were most common. The limb angles measured were based on anatomical features and therefore are unlikely to change substantially with increasing age. These aspects should be considered when assessing linear traits and investigating the relationship between limb conformation and claw diseases.
PubMed: 38908704
DOI: 10.3168/jds.2024-24765 -
NPJ Digital Medicine Jun 2024Tremor is one of the most common neurological symptoms. Its clinical and neurobiological complexity necessitates novel approaches for granular phenotyping. Instrumented...
Tremor is one of the most common neurological symptoms. Its clinical and neurobiological complexity necessitates novel approaches for granular phenotyping. Instrumented neurophysiological analyses have proven useful, but are highly resource-intensive and lack broad accessibility. In contrast, bedside scores are simple to administer, but lack the granularity to capture subtle but relevant tremor features. We utilise the open-source computer vision pose tracking algorithm Mediapipe to track hands in clinical video recordings and use the resulting time series to compute canonical tremor features. This approach is compared to marker-based 3D motion capture, wrist-worn accelerometry, clinical scoring and a second, specifically trained tremor-specific algorithm in two independent clinical cohorts. These cohorts consisted of 66 patients diagnosed with essential tremor, assessed in different task conditions and states of deep brain stimulation therapy. We find that Mediapipe-derived tremor metrics exhibit high convergent clinical validity to scores (Spearman's ρ = 0.55-0.86, p≤ .01) as well as an accuracy of up to 2.60 mm (95% CI [-3.13, 8.23]) and ≤0.21 Hz (95% CI [-0.05, 0.46]) for tremor amplitude and frequency measurements, matching gold-standard equipment. Mediapipe, but not the disease-specific algorithm, was capable of analysing videos involving complex configurational changes of the hands. Moreover, it enabled the extraction of tremor features with diagnostic and prognostic relevance, a dimension which conventional tremor scores were unable to provide. Collectively, this demonstrates that current computer vision algorithms can be transformed into an accurate and highly accessible tool for video-based tremor analysis, yielding comparable results to gold standard tremor recordings.
PubMed: 38906946
DOI: 10.1038/s41746-024-01153-1 -
Cognition Jun 2024It is often claimed that probabilistic expectations affect visual perception directly, without mediation by selective attention. However, these claims have been...
It is often claimed that probabilistic expectations affect visual perception directly, without mediation by selective attention. However, these claims have been disputed, as effects of expectation and attention are notoriously hard to dissociate experimentally. In this study, we used a new approach to separate expectations from attention. In four experiments (N = 60), participants searched for a target in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream and had to identify a digit or a letter defined by a low-level cue (colour or shape). Expectations about the target's alphanumeric category were probabilistically manipulated. Since category membership is a high-level feature and since the target was embedded among many distractors that shared its category, targets from the expected category should not attract attention more than targets from the unexpected category. In the first experiment, these targets were more likely to be identified relative to targets from the unexpected category. Importantly, in the following experiments, we also included behavioural and electrophysiological indices of attentional guidance and engagement. This allowed us to examine whether expectations also modulated these or earlier attentional processes. Results showed that category-based expectations had no modulatory effects on attention, and only affected processing at later encoding-related stages. Alternative interpretation of expectation effects in terms of repetition priming or response bias were also ruled out. These observations provide new evidence for direct attention-independent expectation effects on perception. We suggest that expectations can adjust the threshold required for encoding expectations-congruent information, thereby affecting the speed with which target objects are encoded in working memory.
PubMed: 38906015
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105864 -
PLOS Digital Health Jun 2024Models for digital triage of sick children at emergency departments of hospitals in resource poor settings have been developed. However, prior to their adoption,...
Models for digital triage of sick children at emergency departments of hospitals in resource poor settings have been developed. However, prior to their adoption, external validation should be performed to ensure their generalizability. We externally validated a previously published nine-predictor paediatric triage model (Smart Triage) developed in Uganda using data from two hospitals in Kenya. Both discrimination and calibration were assessed, and recalibration was performed by optimizing the intercept for classifying patients into emergency, priority, or non-urgent categories based on low-risk and high-risk thresholds. A total of 2539 patients were eligible at Hospital 1 and 2464 at Hospital 2, and 5003 for both hospitals combined; admission rates were 8.9%, 4.5%, and 6.8%, respectively. The model showed good discrimination, with area under the receiver-operator curve (AUC) of 0.826, 0.784 and 0.821, respectively. The pre-calibrated model at a low-risk threshold of 8% achieved a sensitivity of 93% (95% confidence interval, (CI):89%-96%), 81% (CI:74%-88%), and 89% (CI:85%-92%), respectively, and at a high-risk threshold of 40%, the model achieved a specificity of 86% (CI:84%-87%), 96% (CI:95%-97%), and 91% (CI:90%-92%), respectively. Recalibration improved the graphical fit, but new risk thresholds were required to optimize sensitivity and specificity.The Smart Triage model showed good discrimination on external validation but required recalibration to improve the graphical fit of the calibration plot. There was no change in the order of prioritization of patients following recalibration in the respective triage categories. Recalibration required new site-specific risk thresholds that may not be needed if prioritization based on rank is all that is required. The Smart Triage model shows promise for wider application for use in triage for sick children in different settings.
PubMed: 38905166
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pdig.0000293 -
PCN Reports : Psychiatry and Clinical... Jun 2024We investigated the effectiveness of an ultra-brief intervention (Ultra-BI) for patients with hazardous drinking behaviors admitted to a general hospital.
OBJECTIVE
We investigated the effectiveness of an ultra-brief intervention (Ultra-BI) for patients with hazardous drinking behaviors admitted to a general hospital.
METHOD
In a quasi-randomized controlled trial at a general hospital in Japan, we assigned participants to intervention or control groups based on the last digit of their patient ID (odd for intervention, even for control). The study included inpatients with Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test-Consumption (AUDIT-C) scores of ≥5 for men and ≥4 for women. The intervention involved providing advice and feedback within 1 min, accompanied by a leaflet on alcohol-related issues (Ultra-BI). The control group did not receive any intervention. The primary outcome was average weekly alcohol consumption at 3 months postintervention.
RESULTS
The study included 68 participants. The intervention group showed a reduction in average weekly alcohol consumption by -69.7 g/week compared to the control group (95% confidence interval [CI] -145.7 to 6.3 g/week, = 0.07). Post-hoc analysis, adjusting for baseline values, indicated a between-group difference of -78.7 g/week (95% CI -135.2 to -22.2 g/week, = 0.007).
CONCLUSION
This pilot trial suggests the potential effectiveness of the Ultra-BI in general hospital wards. Further large-scale studies are required to confirm these findings.
PubMed: 38904063
DOI: 10.1002/pcn5.216 -
Frontiers in Digital Health 2024With advancements in communication technologies and internet connectivity, avatar robots for children who cannot attend school in person due to illness or disabilities...
INTRODUCTION
With advancements in communication technologies and internet connectivity, avatar robots for children who cannot attend school in person due to illness or disabilities have become more widespread. Introducing these technologies to the classroom aims to offer possibilities of social and educational inclusion. While implementation is still at an experimental level, several of these avatars have already been introduced as a marketable service. However, various obstacles impede widespread acceptance.
METHODS
In our explorative qualitative case study we conducted semi-structured interviews with eight individuals involved in the implementation of the avatar robots AV1 in Germany and eleven participants involved with implementing OriHime in Japan. We analyzed and compared implementation processes, application areas, access and eligibility, and the potential and limitations of avatars at schools.
RESULTS
We identified structural similarities and differences in both countries. In the German cases the target is defined as temporary use for children who cannot attend school in person because of childhood illness, with the clear goal of returning to school. Whereas in Japan OriHime is also implemented for children with physical or developmental disabilities, or who cannot attend school in person for other reasons.
DISCUSSION
Our study suggests that avatar technologies bear high potential for children to stay socially and educationally connected. Yet, structures need establishing that grant equal access to avatar technologies. These include educational board regulations, budgets for funding avatar technologies and making them accessible to the public, and privacy protection standards that are adequate, yet do not create implementation hurdles that are too high. Furthermore, guidelines or training sessions on technical, educational and psychosocial aspects of including avatar technologies in the classroom for teachers are important for successful implementation. Since our Japanese cases suggest that expanding the area of application beyond childhood illness is promising, further research on the benefits for different groups is needed.
PubMed: 38904032
DOI: 10.3389/fdgth.2024.1273415 -
Journal of Hand Surgery Global Online Mar 2024The objective of this study was to determine the risk factors and the rate of reoperation after closed reduction percutaneous pinning (CRPP) of isolated closed...
PURPOSE
The objective of this study was to determine the risk factors and the rate of reoperation after closed reduction percutaneous pinning (CRPP) of isolated closed single-digit proximal phalanx fractures.
METHODS
A retrospective cohort study was conducted for patients who underwent CRPP of non-thumb closed proximal phalanx fractures between 2010 and 2020 at two level-I trauma centers and two community teaching hospitals. Demographics, fracture, and treatment characteristics were collected. The primary outcome measure was reoperation. Secondary outcome measures were complication and reoperation specifically for digital stiffness.
RESULTS
Of the 115 patients who underwent surgical treatment, 46 patients (40.0%) had a complication and 13 patients (11.3%) underwent reoperation at a mean of 6.7 months-most of which (84.6%) were for digital stiffness.
CONCLUSIONS
Surgeons and patients may be aware that CRPP of closed extra-articular proximal phalanx fractures carries considerable rates of complication and reoperation.
TYPE OF STUDY/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE
Therapeutic III.
PubMed: 38903843
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhsg.2023.11.004