Basic Spatiotemporal Gait Variables of Young and Older Healthy Volunteers Walking Along a Novel Figure-of-8 Path

Background: Locomotion along curved trajectories requires fine coordination among body segments. Elderly people may adopt a cautious attitude when steering. A simple, expeditious, patient-friendly walking protocol can be a tool to help clinicians. We evaluated the feasibility of a procedure based upon a newly designed Figure-of-eight (nFo8) path and an easy measurement operation.Methods: Sixty healthy volunteers, aged from 20 to 86 years, walked three times at self-selected speed along a 20 m linear (LIN) and the 20 m nFo8 path. Number of steps, mean speed and walk ratio (step length/cadence) were collected. Data were analysed for the entire cohort and for the groups aged 20–45, 46–65, and >65 years.Results: There was no difference in mean LIN walking speed between the two younger groups but the oldest was slower. During nFo8, all groups were slower (about 16%) than during LIN. Cadence was not different across groups but lower during nFo8 in each group. Step length was about 8% shorter in the two younger groups and 14% shorter in the oldest during nFo8 compared to LIN. Walk ratio was the smallest in the oldest group for both LIN and nFo8.Conclusions: A complex nFo8 walking path, with fast and easy measurement of a simple set of variables, detects significant differences with moderate and large effects in gait variables in people >65 years. This challenging trajectory is more revealing than LIN. Further studies are needed to develop a quick clinical tool for assessment of gait conditions or outcome of rehabilitative treatments.

Wearable bioimpedance for continuous and context-aware clinical monitoring

<div>Bioimpedance monitoring provides a non-invasive,</div><div>safe and affordable opportunity to monitor total body water for a wide range of clinical applications. However, the measurement is susceptible to variations in posture and movement. Existing devices do not account for the variations and are therefore unsuitable to perform continuous measurements to depict trend changes. We developed a wearable bioimpedance monitoring system with embedded real-time posture detection using a distributed accelerometer network. We tested the device on 14 healthy volunteers following a standardized protocol of posture change and compared the obtained measurements with an existing commercial device. The impedance measured with both systems had a high correlation (r>0.98) and a Bland-Altman analysis revealed a bias of -4.5 and limits of agreement of -30 and 21. Context-awareness was achieved with processing accelerometer data placed at the upper and lower leg with an accuracy >95%. The calculated current consumption is as low as 10 mA during continuous measurement operation, suggesting that without recharge the system can be used for multiple days. The proposed motion-aware design will enable the measurement of relevant bioimpedance parameters continuously over long periods and aid in informed clinical decision making.</div>

Wearable bioimpedance for continuous and context-aware clinical monitoring

<div>Bioimpedance monitoring provides a non-invasive,</div><div>safe and affordable opportunity to monitor total body water for a wide range of clinical applications. However, the measurement is susceptible to variations in posture and movement. Existing devices do not account for the variations and are therefore unsuitable to perform continuous measurements to depict trend changes. We developed a wearable bioimpedance monitoring system with embedded real-time posture detection using a distributed accelerometer network. We tested the device on 14 healthy volunteers following a standardized protocol of posture change and compared the obtained measurements with an existing commercial device. The impedance measured with both systems had a high correlation (r>0.98) and a Bland-Altman analysis revealed a bias of -4.5 and limits of agreement of -30 and 21. Context-awareness was achieved with processing accelerometer data placed at the upper and lower leg with an accuracy >95%. The calculated current consumption is as low as 10 mA during continuous measurement operation, suggesting that without recharge the system can be used for multiple days. The proposed motion-aware design will enable the measurement of relevant bioimpedance parameters continuously over long periods and aid in informed clinical decision making.</div>

Image processing: why quantum?

Quantum Image Processing has exploded in recent years with dozens of papers trying to take advantage of quantum parallelism in order to offer a better alternative to how current computers are dealing with digital images. The vast majority of these papers define or make use of quantum representations based on very large superposition states spanning as many terms as there are pixels in the image they try to represent. While such a representation may apparently offer an advantage in terms of space (number of qubits used) and speed of processing (due to quantum parallelism), it also harbors a fundamental flaw: only one pixel can be recovered from the quantum representation of the entire image, and even that one is obtained non-deterministically through a measurement operation applied on the superposition state. We investigate in detail this measurement bottleneck problem by looking at the number of copies of the quantum representation that are necessary in order to recover various fractions of the original image. The results clearly show that any potential advantage a quantum representation might bring with respect to a classical one is paid for dearly with the huge amount of resources (space and time) required by a quantum approach to image processing.

Wearable bioimpedance for continuous and context-aware clinical monitoring

<div>Bioimpedance monitoring provides a non-invasive,</div><div>safe and affordable opportunity to monitor total body water for a wide range of clinical applications. However, the measurement is susceptible to variations in posture and movement. Existing devices do not account for the variations and are therefore unsuitable to perform continuous measurements to depict trend changes. We developed a wearable bioimpedance monitoring system with embedded real-time posture detection using a distributed accelerometer network. We tested the device on 14 healthy volunteers following a standardized protocol of posture change and compared the obtained measurements with an existing commercial device. The impedance measured with both systems had a high correlation (r>0.98) and a Bland-Altman analysis revealed a bias of -4.5 and limits of agreement of -30 and 21. Context-awareness was achieved with processing accelerometer data placed at the upper and lower leg with an accuracy >95%. The calculated current consumption is as low as 10 mA during continuous measurement operation, suggesting that without recharge the system can be used for multiple days. The proposed motion-aware design will enable the measurement of relevant bioimpedance parameters continuously over long periods and aid in informed clinical decision making.</div>

Whole outline scanning measurement of internal gear by using CNC gear measuring machine

A three-dimensional probe is mounted on a specialized gear measuring machine whose measurement target is limited on the working flanks. The newly developed measuring machine has a coordinate measuring mechanism, aiming to be a highly versatile and relatively inexpensive measuring machine. According to our previous research, in addition to the working tooth surface, shape data of the root, bottom and tip profiles can be acquired with a single measurement operation. However, the target object for which this developed method has been applied was only the external cylindrical gear. In this paper, we applied and expanded the development method to the internal cylindrical gear and the evaluation of the axial displacement in the same cross-sectional scanning of the internal helical gear are performed.

CAIP Application in OMM Operation for Box Primitive Feature: Inpection Code Generation for on Machine Measurement Operation

The aims of this research is to build CAIP systems on OMM operation which have an ability to measure workpiece automatically based on drawing data from design division at a machine. The flow of information between each part becomes important as the design of the drawing data from design division to production division or quality control. CAIP system (Computer Aided Inspection Planning) is expected to ensure the flow of drawing information to quality control without any changed even though the amount of data that a lot. CAIP system use early drawing data from the design division. The type of drawing data which is used by each CAD software is STEP drawing data. STEP data consists of products information such as surface geometry, line, point, and direction of the vector surface. The information that can be used to build a CAIP system is a feature. Therefore, a feature reconstruction process is necessary based on the data STEP geometry information. Feature types which is used in this study are a type of box primitive feature. A Probe, a measuring instrument, can be operated in CMM (Coordinate Measurement Machine) and CNC machine. A product measuring on CNC machine during or after machining process called OMM (On Machine Measurement) operation. As a result, measuring can be performed without moving the product from the machine. In this research, 5 Axis CNC machine with Heidenhain DMU150 iTNC530 controller is used.

Development of Computer Aided Inspection Planning (CAIP) Application in on Machine Measurement Operation (OMM) Operations for Box Primitive Features: Generating Inspection Codes

The aims of this research is to develop a Computer Aided Inspection Planning (CAIP) system in OMM operations which has an ability to measure workpieces automatically at a machine tools based on drawing data issued by the design division. The information that can be used to build a CAIP system is a feature. Therefore, a feature reconstruction process is necessary based on the data STEP geometry information. The Feature types used in this research is a type of box primitive feature. A Probe, a measuring instrument, can be operated in CMM (Coordinate Measurement Machine) and CNC machine. A product measuring on CNC machine during or after machining process called OMM (On Machine Measurement) operation. As a result, measuring can be performed without moving the product from the machine. In this research, 5 Axis CNC machine with Heidenhain DMU150 iTNC530 controller is used.