MammoWeb continuing medical education (CME): a web-based breast imaging CME program.
(9/826)
The ubiquity of the world-wide web allows unique educational opportunities for continuing medical education (CME). We have designed a comprehensive breast imaging CME curriculum to permit individual physicians in their homes or offices to use personal computers to ease the burden of this process. Category 1 CME credits can be earned off-hours without having the physician travel out of town. In addition, since the course is computer-based, the overall costs to the participant are substantially reduced. The program can be updated on an ongoing basis to include new technology or to provide additional information requested by the users. (+info)
Digital photography of digital imaging and communications in medicine-3 images from computers in the radiologist's office.
(10/826)
To fully take advantage of the widespread use of digital imaging systems and to update and eliminate redundant steps involved in medical radiographic publication, we present our experience of processing Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM)-3 digital images from the point of acquisition to the point of publisher-ready radiographic images without intervening hardcopies. (+info)
Interhospital network system using the worldwide web and the common gateway interface.
(11/826)
We constructed an interhospital network system using the worldwide web (WWW) and the Common Gateway Interface (CGI). Original clinical images are digitized and stored as a database for educational and research purposes. Personal computers (PCs) are available for data treatment and browsing. Our system is simple, as digitized images are stored into a Unix server machine. Images of important and interesting clinical cases are selected and registered into the image database using CGI. The main image format is 8- or 12-bit Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) image. Original clinical images are finally stored in CD-ROM using a CD recorder. The image viewer can browse all of the images for one case at once as thumbnail pictures; image quality can be selected depending on the user's purpose. Using the network system, clinical images of interesting cases can be rapidly transmitted and discussed with other related hospitals. Data transmission from relational hospitals takes 1 to 2 minutes per 500 Kbyte of data. More distant hospitals (e.g., Rakusai Hospital, Kyoto) takes 1 minute more. The mean number of accesses our image database in a recent 3-month period was 470. There is a total about 200 cases in our image database, acquired over the past 2 years. Our system is useful for communication and image treatment between hospitals and we will describe the elements of our system and image database. (+info)
The influence of maxillary incisor inclination on arch length.
(12/826)
This ex vivo study was designed to investigate Andrews' hypothesis that there is a space implication when incisors are torqued correctly. A working model was constructed to allow acrylic typodont incisors of varying known values of inclination to be substituted into the model. The arch lengths of the various 'set-ups' were measured using a reflex microscope linked to a PC. In order to quantify the space requirement of clinical relevance for adequate incisor torque, the method was repeated by substituting replicas of patients' 'natural' incisors. For both acrylic and natural incisors it was found that, as the inclination of the teeth increased, there was an increase in all arch lengths, this being greater for the natural incisors. This larger increase for the natural incisors was related not only to their increased size, but was also dependent on the morphology of the incisor. Those incisors which were parallel-sided showed the greatest increase in arch length, whereas the incisors that were relatively triangular in shape showed the smallest increase. When the inclination of an 'average' set of 21/12 is increased by 5 degrees, an increase in the arch length of approximately 1 mm may be expected. (+info)
Correlation of the exposure to a pollutant with a task-related action or workplace: the CAPTIV system.
(13/826)
Usually, measurement of pollution at the workplace is performed by air sampling on solid absorbents and filters. The information obtained is the mean value of worker exposure over the sampling period. The use of specific sensors for chemicals can give complementary information, namely continuous exposure information. The CAPTIV system permits one to centralize and store this information along with a video system which restores the images of the workplace. Also, the stored video sequences, correlated to specified exposures, can be found automatically. This gives a rich information resource. In particular it allows one to correlate the occupational activity with the exposure level. The analysis of collected information may lead to advice on good practice at the workplace or even to proposals for modification of existing equipment and processes. A huge quantity of information to be processed is obtained with this new approach. The best use of it can only be made with the help of a high capacity processing tool. That is the reason why CAPTIV has been equipped with a data processor support system. At the end of this paper, we present an example of using CAPTIV to study a stone-cutting work station. (+info)
Bayesian adaptive estimation of psychometric slope and threshold.
(14/826)
We introduce a new Bayesian adaptive method for acquisition of both threshold and slope of the psychometric function. The method updates posterior probabilities in the two-dimensional parameter space of psychometric functions and makes predictions based on the expected mean threshold and slope values. On each trial it sets the stimulus intensity that maximizes the expected information to be gained by completion of that trial. The method was evaluated in computer simulations and in a psychophysical experiment using the two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) paradigm. Threshold estimation within 2 dB (23%) precision requires less than 30 trials for a typical 2AFC detection task. To get the slope estimate with the same precision takes about 300 trials. (+info)
Massive parallel analysis of DNA-Hoechst 33258 binding specificity with a generic oligodeoxyribonucleotide microchip.
(15/826)
A generic oligodeoxyribonucleotide microchip was used to determine the sequence specificity of Hoechst 33258 binding to double-stranded DNA. The generic microchip contained 4096 oxctadeoxynucleo-tides in which all possible 4(6)= 4096 hexadeoxy-nucleotide sequences are flanked on both the 3'- and 5'-ends with equimolar mixtures of four bases. The microchip was manufactured by chemical immobilization of presynthesized 8mers within polyacrylamide gel pads. A selected set of immobilized 8mers was converted to double-stranded form by hybridization with a mixture of fluorescently labeled complementary 8mers. Massive parallel measurements of melting curves were carried out for the majority of 2080 6mer duplexes, in both the absence and presence of the Hoechst dye. The sequence-specific affinity for Hoechst 33258 was calculated as the increase in melting temperature caused by ligand binding. The dye exhibited specificity for A:T but not G:C base pairs. The affinity is low for two A:T base pairs, increases significantly for three, and reaches a plateau for four A:T base pairs. The relative ligand affinity for all trinucleotide and tetranucleotide sequences (A/T)(3)and (A/T)(4)was estimated. The free energy of dye binding to several duplexes was calculated from the equilibrium melting curves of the duplexes formed on the oligonucleotide microchips. This method can be used as a general approach for massive screening of the sequence specificity of DNA-binding compounds. (+info)
Multiresolution browsing of pathology images using wavelets.
(16/826)
Digitized pathology images typically have very high resolution, making it difficult to display in their entirety on the computer screen and inefficient to transmit over the network for educational purposes. Progressive zooming of pathology images is desirable despite the availability of inexpensive networking bandwidth. An efficient progressive image resolution refining system for on-line distribution of pathology image using wavelets has been developed and is discussed in this paper. The system is practical for real-world applications, pre-processing and coding each 24-bit image of size 2400 x 3600 within 40 seconds on a Pentium II PC. The transmission process is in real-time. Besides its exceptional speed, the algorithm has high flexibility. The server encodes the original pathology images without loss. Based on the image request from a client, the server dynamically generates and sends out the part of the image at the requested scale and quality requirement. The algorithm is expandable for medical image databases such as PACS. (+info)