scholarly journals Infrared Thermography for Measuring Elevated Body Temperature: Clinical Accuracy, Calibration, and Evaluation

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 215
Author(s):  
Quanzeng Wang ◽  
Yangling Zhou ◽  
Pejman Ghassemi ◽  
David McBride ◽  
Jon P. Casamento ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Accuracy Assessment ◽  
Imaging Study ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Preliminary Evaluation ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Calibration Methods ◽  
Clinical Accuracy ◽  
Sensitivity Specificity

Infrared thermographs (IRTs) implemented according to standardized best practices have shown strong potential for detecting elevated body temperatures (EBT), which may be useful in clinical settings and during infectious disease epidemics. However, optimal IRT calibration methods have not been established and the clinical performance of these devices relative to the more common non-contact infrared thermometers (NCITs) remains unclear. In addition to confirming the findings of our preliminary analysis of clinical study results, the primary intent of this study was to compare methods for IRT calibration and identify best practices for assessing the performance of IRTs intended to detect EBT. A key secondary aim was to compare IRT clinical accuracy to that of NCITs. We performed a clinical thermographic imaging study of more than 1000 subjects, acquiring temperature data from several facial locations that, along with reference oral temperatures, were used to calibrate two IRT systems based on seven different regression methods. Oral temperatures imputed from facial data were used to evaluate IRT clinical accuracy based on metrics such as clinical bias (Δcb), repeatability, root-mean-square difference, and sensitivity/specificity. We proposed several calibration approaches designed to account for the non-uniform data density across the temperature range and a constant offset approach tended to show better ability to detect EBT. As in our prior study, inner canthi or full-face maximum temperatures provided the highest clinical accuracy. With an optimal calibration approach, these methods achieved a Δcb between ±0.03 °C with standard deviation (σΔcb) less than 0.3 °C, and sensitivity/specificity between 84% and 94%. Results of forehead-center measurements with NCITs or IRTs indicated reduced performance. An analysis of the complete clinical data set confirms the essential findings of our preliminary evaluation, with minor differences. Our findings provide novel insights into methods and metrics for the clinical accuracy assessment of IRTs. Furthermore, our results indicate that calibration approaches providing the highest clinical accuracy in the 37–38.5 °C range may be most effective for measuring EBT. While device performance depends on many factors, IRTs can provide superior performance to NCITs.

Clinical accuracy of detecting recurrent prostate cancer lesions with F-18-Fluoroethylcholine or Ga-68-PSMA-HBED-CC PET/CT.

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (2_suppl) ◽  
pp. 218-218
Author(s):  
David J. K. P. Pfister ◽  
Daniel Porres ◽  
Axel Heidenreich ◽  
Florian Behrendt ◽  
Frederik Verburg
Keyword(s):  
Prostate Cancer ◽  
Predictive Value ◽  
Recurrent Prostate Cancer ◽  
Retroperitoneal Lymphadenectomy ◽  
Imaging Results ◽  
Psma Pet ◽  
Pet Ct ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Clinical Accuracy ◽  
Sensitivity Specificity

218 Background: Ga-68-PSMA-HBED-CC (PSMA) is a novel and promising tracer for highly sensitive PET/CT diagnosis in recurrent prostate cancer (PCA). The aim of the present work was to assess the sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value (PPV/NPV) per lesion as well as the positive predictive value per patient of PSMA PET/CT in patients with recurrent prostate cancer referred for surgery after a positive PET/CT and to compare this with a collective of patients scanned using the current de-facto PET/CT standard tracer F-18-Fluoroethylcholine (FEC). Methods: In this retrospective study results of PET/CTs and post-surgical histological analysis were compared. 38 patients had FEC and 27 patients had PSMA. We performed a pelvic and/or retroperitoneal lymphadenectomy, if necessary supplemented by resection of locally recurrent lesions in accordance with imaging results. Results: In 30/38 FEC and 22/27 PSMA patients at least one focus of PCA was identified in postsurgical histology, leading to a PPV of 78.9% for FEC and 81.5% for PSMA. In FEC and PSMA patients a total of 378 and 308 lymph nodes and local lesions were removed, respectively. For FEC and PSMA the respective sensitivity was 71.2% and 86.9%, specificity 86.9% and 93.1%, PPV 67.3% and 75.7% and NPV 88.8% and 96.6%. Conclusions: In the present series PSMA PET/CT shows a somewhat better performance than the current de-facto PET/CT standard tracer FEC. Due to the very high NPV of PSMA PET/CT a selective locoregional lymphadenectomy involving only the regions affected on imaging can be discussed.

PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCIES OF ARCHITECTURE GRADUATES: PERCEPTIONS FROM GRADUATES, ACADEMICS AND EMPLOYERS IN THE NIGERIAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Joy Joshua Maina
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Construction Industry ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Core Competencies ◽  
Descriptive Statistics ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Professional Competencies ◽  
Architecture Education ◽  
The Core ◽  
Study Results

The clamour for better quality graduates by architects in the Nigerian Construction Industry (NCI) necessitates a look into the core competencies and the adequacy of architecture education in preparing architecture graduates for professional practice. 116 self-report likertscale questionnaires from architecture graduates (2009-2015), academics and employers were analysed to establish core competencies developed by the graduates while in school. Descriptive statistics, t-tests as well as Mann-Whitney tests for differences in ratings were employed for the study. Results reveal the perceived adequacy of architecture education for the future career of graduates from the academic perspective. Graduates were most proficient at design related competencies while AutoCAD was still considered the most important CAD competency for architecture graduates in the NCI. The study recommends more frequent evaluations of competencies for employability in collaboration with industry as well as embracing BIM related software in line with global best practices. Keywords: Academics, Architecture, Employers, Graduates, Professional competencies, NCI

Reproducibility and efficiency in handling complex neurophysiological data

Neuroforum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Denker ◽  
Sonja Grün ◽  
Thomas Wachtler ◽  
Hansjörg Scherberger
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Data Management ◽  
Data Integrity ◽  
Behavioral Neuroscience ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Data Publication ◽  
Electrophysiological Data ◽  
Data Formats ◽  
Neurophysiological Data ◽  
Community Effort

Abstract Preparing a neurophysiological data set with the aim of sharing and publishing is hard. Many of the available tools and services to provide a smooth workflow for data publication are still in their maturing stages and not well integrated. Also, best practices and concrete examples of how to create a rigorous and complete package of an electrophysiology experiment are still lacking. Given the heterogeneity of the field, such unifying guidelines and processes can only be formulated together as a community effort. One of the goals of the NFDI-Neuro consortium initiative is to build such a community for systems and behavioral neuroscience. NFDI-Neuro aims to address the needs of the community to make data management easier and to tackle these challenges in collaboration with various international initiatives (e.g., INCF, EBRAINS). This will give scientists the opportunity to spend more time analyzing the wealth of electrophysiological data they leverage, rather than dealing with data formats and data integrity.

Properties and methods of estimation for a bivariate exponentiated Fréchet distribution

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (5) ◽  
pp. 1211-1230
Author(s):  
Abdus Saboor ◽  
Hassan S. Bakouch ◽  
Fernando A. Moala ◽  
Sheraz Hussain
Keyword(s):  
Maximum Likelihood ◽  
Probability Density Function ◽  
Probability Density ◽  
Density Function ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Estimation Methods ◽  
Conditional Probability Density ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Fréchet Distribution ◽  
Frechet Distribution

AbstractIn this paper, a bivariate extension of exponentiated Fréchet distribution is introduced, namely a bivariate exponentiated Fréchet (BvEF) distribution whose marginals are univariate exponentiated Fréchet distribution. Several properties of the proposed distribution are discussed, such as the joint survival function, joint probability density function, marginal probability density function, conditional probability density function, moments, marginal and bivariate moment generating functions. Moreover, the proposed distribution is obtained by the Marshall-Olkin survival copula. Estimation of the parameters is investigated by the maximum likelihood with the observed information matrix. In addition to the maximum likelihood estimation method, we consider the Bayesian inference and least square estimation and compare these three methodologies for the BvEF. A simulation study is carried out to compare the performance of the estimators by the presented estimation methods. The proposed bivariate distribution with other related bivariate distributions are fitted to a real-life paired data set. It is shown that, the BvEF distribution has a superior performance among the compared distributions using several tests of goodness–of–fit.

scholarly journals CADD-Splice—improving genome-wide variant effect prediction using deep learning-derived splice scores

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Rentzsch ◽  
Max Schubach ◽  
Jay Shendure ◽  
Martin Kircher
Keyword(s):  
Prediction Models ◽  
Splice Variants ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Pathogenic Variants ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Donor And Acceptor ◽  
Human Proteins ◽  
Variant Effect ◽  
Variant Effect Prediction

Abstract Background Splicing of genomic exons into mRNAs is a critical prerequisite for the accurate synthesis of human proteins. Genetic variants impacting splicing underlie a substantial proportion of genetic disease, but are challenging to identify beyond those occurring at donor and acceptor dinucleotides. To address this, various methods aim to predict variant effects on splicing. Recently, deep neural networks (DNNs) have been shown to achieve better results in predicting splice variants than other strategies. Methods It has been unclear how best to integrate such process-specific scores into genome-wide variant effect predictors. Here, we use a recently published experimental data set to compare several machine learning methods that score variant effects on splicing. We integrate the best of those approaches into general variant effect prediction models and observe the effect on classification of known pathogenic variants. Results We integrate two specialized splicing scores into CADD (Combined Annotation Dependent Depletion; cadd.gs.washington.edu), a widely used tool for genome-wide variant effect prediction that we previously developed to weight and integrate diverse collections of genomic annotations. With this new model, CADD-Splice, we show that inclusion of splicing DNN effect scores substantially improves predictions across multiple variant categories, without compromising overall performance. Conclusions While splice effect scores show superior performance on splice variants, specialized predictors cannot compete with other variant scores in general variant interpretation, as the latter account for nonsense and missense effects that do not alter splicing. Although only shown here for splice scores, we believe that the applied approach will generalize to other specific molecular processes, providing a path for the further improvement of genome-wide variant effect prediction.

Estimating Heterogeneous Treatment Effects and the Effects of Heterogeneous Treatments with Ensemble Methods

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Grimmer ◽  
Solomon Messing ◽  
Sean J. Westwood
Keyword(s):  
Treatment Effects ◽  
Ensemble Methods ◽  
Ensemble Method ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Accurate Estimation ◽  
Randomized Experiments ◽  
Heterogeneous Treatment Effects ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Heterogeneous Effects ◽  
The Ensemble Method

Randomized experiments are increasingly used to study political phenomena because they can credibly estimate the average effect of a treatment on a population of interest. But political scientists are often interested in how effects vary across subpopulations—heterogeneous treatment effects—and how differences in the content of the treatment affects responses—the response to heterogeneous treatments. Several new methods have been introduced to estimate heterogeneous effects, but it is difficult to know if a method will perform well for a particular data set. Rather than using only one method, we show how an ensemble of methods—weighted averages of estimates from individual models increasingly used in machine learning—accurately measure heterogeneous effects. Building on a large literature on ensemble methods, we show how the weighting of methods can contribute to accurate estimation of heterogeneous treatment effects and demonstrate how pooling models lead to superior performance to individual methods across diverse problems. We apply the ensemble method to two experiments, illuminating how the ensemble method for heterogeneous treatment effects facilitates exploratory analysis of treatment effects.

Do intraday week effect in currencies hourly trading reflect leverage and asymmetric anomalies? Policy implications for traders

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wajid Shakeel Ahmed ◽  
Muhammad Sohaib ◽  
Jamal Maqsood ◽  
Ateeb Siddiqui
Keyword(s):  
Emerging Economies ◽  
Garch Model ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Asymmetric Effect ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Rational Choices ◽  
Trading Pattern

Purpose The purpose of this study is to determine if intraday week (IDW) effect of the currencies reflect leverage and asymmetric impact in currencies market. The study data set comprises of intraday patterns of 15 currencies from developed and emerging economies. Design methodology approach The study applies the exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (E-GARCH) model technique to observe the IDW leverage and asymmetric effect after introducing hourly dummies variables, namely, IDWmon, IDWwed, IDWfrid and IDWfrid-mon. Findings The study results favor the propositions and confirm that IDW effect do exist in the international forex markets in relation to hourly trading pattern for respective currencies. Mostly, currencies do depreciate on Monday and Wednesday compared to the rest of the days. However, on the last trading day, i.e. Friday currencies observe an appreciation pattern which is for both economies. The results have an evidence of leverage and asymmetric effect confirmed by the E-GARCH model as a result of press releases and influence by micro-factors in the currency markets. Practical implications The study believes to have theoretical connection related to the better understanding of currencies trend for developed and emerging economies, as the IDW effect exists. Moreover, confirmation of both the leverage and asymmetric effect in observed currencies would be able to assist the investors in making rational choices during the trading hours and would confirm considerable profits through profit incentivized strategies. Originality value The study not only add knowledge to the previous study work in relation to the hourly trading pattern of currencies with reference to the IDW effects but also highlights the leverage and asymmetric effect in currencies that will help in formulating future trading strategies particular to emerging economies.

Users’ attitude on perceived security of enterprise systems mobility: an empirical study

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramaraj Palanisamy ◽  
Yang Wu
Keyword(s):  
Cloud Computing ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Mobile Systems ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Perceived Security ◽  
High Level

Purpose This study/ paper aims to empirically examine the user attitude on perceived security of enterprise systems (ES) mobility. Organizations are adopting mobile technologies for various business applications including ES to increase the flexibility and to gain sustainable competitive advantage. At the same time, end-users are exposed to security issues when using mobile technologies. The ES have seen breaches and malicious intrusions thereby more sophisticated recreational and commercial cybercrimes have been witnessed. ES have seen data breaches and malicious intrusions leading to more sophisticated cybercrimes. Considering the significance of security in ES mobility, the research questions in this study are: What are the security issues of ES mobility? What are the influences of users’ attitude towards those security issues? What is the impact of users’ attitude towards security issues on perceived security of ES mobility? Design/methodology/approach These questions are addressed by empirically testing a security model of mobile ES by collecting data from users of ES mobile systems. Hypotheses were evolved and tested by data collected through a survey questionnaire. The questionnaire survey was administered to 331 users from Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). The data was statistically analysed by tools such as correlation, factor analysis, regression and the study built a structural equation model (SEM) to examine the interactions between the variables. Findings The study results have identified the following security issues: users’ attitude towards mobile device security issues; users’ attitude towards wireless network security issues; users’ attitude towards cloud computing security issues; users’ attitude towards application-level security issues; users’ attitude towards data (access) level security issues; and users’ attitude towards enterprise-level security issues. Research limitations/implications The study results are based on a sample of users from Chinese SMEs. The findings may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to examine the model in a different context. The issues requiring further investigation are the role of gender and type of device on perceived security of ES mobile systems. Practical implications The results show that the key security issues are related to a mobile device, wireless network, cloud computing, applications, data and enterprise. By understanding these issues and the best practices, organizations can maintain a high level of security of their mobile ES. Social implications Apart from understanding the best practices and the key issues, the authors suggest management and end-users to work collaboratively to achieve a high level of security of the mobile ES. Originality/value This is an empirical study conducted from the users’ perspective for validating the set of research hypotheses related to key security issues on the perceived security of mobile ES.

EP.FRI.479 Clinical accuracy of u/sound combined with inflammatory markers in Acute Appendicitis

2021 ◽  
Vol 108 (Supplement_7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadia Gulnaz ◽  
Sadia Tasleem ◽  
Farooq Abdullah
Keyword(s):  
Acute Appendicitis ◽  
Clinical Diagnosis ◽  
Inflammatory Markers ◽  
Tertiary Care Hospital ◽  
Tertiary Care ◽  
Negative Appendectomy ◽  
Care Hospital ◽  
Clinical Accuracy ◽  
Negative Appendicectomy ◽  
Sensitivity Specificity

Abstract Traditionally acute appendicitis has been a clinical diagnosis based on patients' history and physical examination, but the accuracy of clinical diagnosis ranges from 70-95%. Pre-operative diagnosis of acute appendicitis still remains an enigmatic challenge, because no single test alone can reduce the rate of negative appendectomy. Hence some authors have recommended a combination of two or more investigations to increase accuracy and therefore the use of imaging is gaining support. The objective of the study was to determine the clinical accuracy of ultrasound, combined with inflammatory markers such as CRP, WBC, and neutrophilia keeping histopathology as the gold standard. Methods The study was conducted in a Tertiary care hospital in Peshawar from September 2014 to March 2015 on 250 patients who were clinically diagnosed with acute appendicitis. All these patients underwent u/sound scanning in addition to blood tests. Findings In this study, WBC had the highest sensitivity (77.68%) followed by neutrophil% (69.96%), CRP(67.10%), and U/Sound (62.96%) respectively. While U/Sound had the highest specificity (70.59%) followed by CRP and TLC (64.71% each) and neutrophil% (58.82%) respectively. When all the four tests were combined the sensitivity, specificity, (99.17% and 98.45%) increased significantly. When all four tests were negative, appendicitis could be safely ruled out. Conclusion Acute appendicitis is very unlikely and surgery can be safely deferred in these patients when all tests are negative thereby reducing the negative appendicectomy rates. 

Investigating the clinical usefulness of definitions of progression with 10-2 visual field

2021 ◽  
pp. bjophthalmol-2020-318188
Author(s):  
Shotaro Asano ◽  
Hiroshi Murata ◽  
Yuri Fujino ◽  
Takehiro Yamashita ◽  
Atsuya Miki ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Field ◽  
False Positive ◽  
False Positive Rate ◽  
Clinical Validity ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Humphrey Field Analyzer ◽  
Positive Rate ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Sensitivity Specificity ◽  
Higher Sensitivity

Background/AimTo investigate the clinical validity of the Guided Progression Analysis definition (GPAD) and cluster-based definition (CBD) with the Humphrey Field Analyzer 10-2 test in diagnosing glaucomatous visual field (VF) progression, and to introduce a novel definition with optimised specificity by combining the ‘any-location’ and ‘cluster-based’ approaches (hybrid definition).Methods64 400 stable glaucomatous VFs were simulated from 664 pairs of 10-2 tests (10 sets × 10 VF series × 664 eyes; data set 1). Using these simulated VFs, the specificity to detect progression and the effects of changing the parameters (number of test locations or consecutive VF tests, and percentile cut-off values) were investigated. The hybrid definition was designed as the combination where the specificity was closest to 95.0%. Subsequently, another 5000 actual glaucomatous 10-2 tests from 500 eyes (10 VFs each) were collected (data set 2), and their accuracy (sensitivity, specificity and false positive rate) and the time needed to detect VF progression were evaluated.ResultsThe specificity values calculated using data set 1 with GPAD and CBD were 99.6% and 99.8%. Using data set 2, the hybrid definition had a higher sensitivity than GPAD and CBD, without detriment to the specificity or false positive rate. The hybrid definition also detected progression significantly earlier than GPAD and CBD (at 3.1 years vs 4.2 years and 4.1 years, respectively).ConclusionsGPAD and CBD had specificities of 99.6% and 99.8%, respectively. A novel hybrid definition (with a specificity of 95.5%) had higher sensitivity and enabled earlier detection of progression.

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