Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Modeling And Surveillance Of Pandemic Influenza Outbreaks, Diana Prieto

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pandemic outbreaks are unpredictable as to their virus strain, transmissibility, and impact on our quality of life. Hence, the decision support models for mitigation of pandemic outbreaks must be user-friendly and operational, and also incorporate valid estimates of disease transmissibility and severity. This dissertation research is aimed at 1) reviewing the existing pandemic simulation models to identify their implementation gaps with regard to usability and operability, and suggesting research remedies, 2) increasing operability of simulation models by calibrating them via an epidemiological model that estimates infection probabilities using viral shedding profiles of concurrent pandemic and seasonal influenza, and 3) developing …

Decision Aid Models For Resource Sharing Strategies During Global Influenza Pandemics, Alfredo Santana Reynoso

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pandemic influenza outbreaks have historically entailed significant societal and economic disruptions. Today, our quality of life is threatened by our inadequate preparedness for the imminent pandemic. The key challenges we are facing stem from a significant uncertainty in virus epidemiology, limited response resources, inadequate international collaboration, and the lack of appropriate science-based decision support tools. The existing literature falls short of comprehensive models for global pandemic spread and mitigation which incorporate the heterogeneity of the world regions and realistic travel networks. In addition, there exist virtually no studies which quantify the impact of resource sharing strategies among multiple countries. This …

Analytical Methods To Support Risk Identification And Analysis In Healthcare Systems, Laila Nadime Cure Vellojin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Healthcare systems require continuous monitoring of risk to prevent adverse events. Risk analysis is a time consuming activity that depends on the background of analysts and available data. Patient safety data is often incomplete and biased. This research proposes systematic approaches to monitor risk in healthcare using available patient safety data. The methodologies combine traditional healthcare risk analysis methods with safety theory concepts, in an innovative manner, to allocate available evidence to potential risk sources throughout the system. We propose the use of data mining to analyze near-miss reports and guide the identification of risk sources. In addition, we propose …

Apparent Total Evaporative Resistance Values From Human Trials Over A Range Of Metabolic And Heat Stress Levels, Matthew David Dooris

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Failure to maintain thermal equilibrium can cause uncontrollable increases in body core temperature beyond critical upper limits. In selecting clothing, consideration must be given to the heat transfer properties of clothing that may restrict the cooling capacity of the human body under heat stress conditions, most importantly, apparent total evaporative resistance (R_e,T,_a). This study calculated and compared R_e,T,_a for five clothing ensembles under varying heat stress conditions, including three relative humidity (RH) levels and three stages of heat stress to determine if R_e,T,_a values varied or remained the same with …

Evaluación De La Salud En La Ciudad Región De Bogotá, Wilson Giovanni Jiménez Barbosa

Ciencia y Tecnología para la Salud Visual y Ocular

Introducción el presente estudio hace parte del proyecto Ciudad Región desarrollado por el CentroTransdiciplinario para la Alternatividad al Desarrollo (CTAD), entre el 2009 y el 2011. Objetivo evaluar la evidencia existente de un proceso de integración entre el sector salud de Bogotá y el deCundinamarca, en el marco de la conformación de la Región Capital. Materiales y métodos esta investigación se basó en la búsqueda de fuentes secundarias, tales como registros de afiliación dela Base Única de Afiliados (BDUA) y los datos suministrados por las direcciones de aseguramientoy salud pública de las secretarías de salud del Distrito Capital, entre otras, …

On The Real-Time Performance, Robustness And Accuracy Of Medical Image Non-Rigid Registration, Yixun Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Three critical issues about medical image non-rigid registration are performance, robustness and accuracy. A registration method, which is capable of responding timely with an accurate alignment, robust against the variation of the image intensity and the missing data, is desirable for its clinical use. This work addresses all three of these issues. Unacceptable execution time of Non-rigid registration (NRR) often presents a major obstacle to its routine clinical use. We present a hybrid data partitioning method to parallelize a NRR method on a cooperative architecture, which enables us to get closer to the goal: accelerating using architecture rather than designing …

Identification Of Patient Recovery Patterns After Cardiovascular Surgery Based On Laboratory Tests Results, Alcides Ricardo Santander Mercado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation is proposed a methodology to identify patient's recovery patterns after cardiovascular surgery based on laboratory tests results. The main purpose is to enhance the understanding of the manifestations of postsurgical complications in patients who underwent cardiovascular surgery. The analysis of patients' recovery process is based on the relationship between plasma calcium, ionized calcium and platelet count over time.

Laboratory results from the James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital databases, related to patients admitted to the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) after cardiac surgery (coronary artery bypass, aortic value replacement and mitral valve replacement), are used. These databases contain …

Nanosecond Pulsed Electric Field Induced Cytoskeleton, Nuclear Membrane And Telomere Damage Adversely Impact Cell Survival, Michael W. Stacey, P. Fox, S. Buescher, Juergen F. Kolb

Bioelectrics Publications

We investigated the effects of nanosecond pulsed electric fields (nsPEF) on three human cell lines and demonstrated cell shrinkage, breakdown of the cytoskeleton, nuclear membrane and chromosomal telomere damage. There was a differential response between cell types coinciding with cell survival. Jurkat cells showed cytoskeleton, nuclear membrane and telomere damage that severely impacted cell survival compared to two adherent cell lines. Interestingly, disruption of the actin cytoskeleton in adherent cells prior to nsPEF exposure significantly reduced cell survival. We conclude that nsPEF applications are able to induce damage to the cytoskeleton and nuclear membrane. Telomere sequences, regions that tether and …

Eeg Artifact Removal Using A Wavelet Neural Network, Hoang-Anh T. Nguyen, John Musson, Jiang Li, Frederick Mckenzie, Guangfan Zhang, Roger Xu, Carl Richey, Tom Schnell, Thomas E. Pinelli (Ed.)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper we developed a wavelet neural network. (WNN) algorithm for Electroencephalogram (EEG) artifact removal without electrooculographic (EOG) recordings. The algorithm combines the universal approximation characteristics of neural network and the time/frequency property of wavelet. We compared the WNN algorithm with the ICA technique and a wavelet thresholding method, which was realized by using the Stein's unbiased risk estimate (SURE) with an adaptive gradient-based optimal threshold. Experimental results on a driving test data set show that WNN can remove EEG artifacts effectively without diminishing useful EEG information even for very noisy data.

Prediction Of Brain Tumor Progression Using Multiple Histogram Matched Mri Scans, Debrup Banerjee, Loc Tran, Jiang Li, Yuzhong Shen, Frederic Mckenzie, Jihong Wang, Ronald M. Summers (Ed.), Bram Van Ginneken (Ed.)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In a recent study [1], we investigated the feasibility of predicting brain tumor progression based on multiple MRI series and we tested our methods on seven patients' MRI images scanned at three consecutive visits A, B and C. Experimental results showed that it is feasible to predict tumor progression from visit A to visit C using a model trained by the information from visit A to visit B. However, the trained model failed when we tried to predict tumor progression from visit B to visit C, though it is clinically more important. Upon a closer look at the MRI scans …

Histogram Analysis Of Adc In Brain Tumor Patients, Debrup Banerjee, Jihong Wang, Jiang Li, Norbert J. Pelc (Ed.), Ehsan Samei (Ed.), Robert M. Nishikawa (Ed.)

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

At various stage of progression, most brain tumors are not homogenous. In this presentation, we retrospectively studied the distribution of ADC values inside tumor volume during the course of tumor treatment and progression for a selective group of patients who underwent an anti-VEGF trial. Complete MRI studies were obtained for this selected group of patients including pre- and multiple follow-up, post-treatment imaging studies. In each MRI imaging study, multiple scan series were obtained as a standard protocol which includes T1, T2, T1-post contrast, FLAIR and DTI derived images (ADC, FA etc.) for each visit. All scan series (T1, T2, FLAIR, …

Nanosecond Pulse Electrical Fields Used In Conjunction With Multi-Wall Carbon Nanotubes As A Potential Tumor Treatment, Michael W. Stacey, Christopher Osgood, Bhargava Subhash Kalluri, Wei Cao, Hani Elsayed-Ali, Tarek Abdel-Fattah

Bioelectrics Publications

The objectives of this communication were to fabricate pure samples of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and to determine their toxicity in tumor cell lines. MWCNTs were dispersed in a concentration of the surfactant T80 that was minimally toxic. Cell-type variation in toxicity to MWCNTs was observed but was not significantly different to unexposed controls. Additionally, we investigated the increased cell killing of the pancreatic cancer cell line PANC1 when exposed to ultrashort (nanosecond) pulsed electrical fields (nsPEF) in the presence of MWCNTs as a potential form of cancer therapy. We hypothesized that the unique electronic properties of MWCNTs disrupt cell …

A Study To Determine The Influence Of Workload On Nursing Personnel, Supreeta G. Amin

Dissertations

The alarming number of adverse medical events and associated costs have placed immense importance toward the safety and health of both patients and medical personnel. A shrinking nurse workforce, an aging patient and nursing population coupled with a mismatch between hospital demands and the available nursing staff have created a situation detrimental to both patient and nursing personnel. Long working hours, working more than one job, low staffing ratios, high patient acuity, minimal social support, low experience level, complicated equipment, complex procedures and varying workload are some factors that may have a negative impact on the quality of care provided …

An Integrated Computer-Aided Robotic System For Dental Implantation, Xiaoyan Sun, Yongki Yoon, Jiang Li, Frederic D. Mckenzie

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper describes an integrated system for dental implantation including both preoperative planning utilizing computer-aided technology and automatic robot operation during the intra-operative stage. A novel two-step registration procedure was applied for transforming the preoperative plan to the operation of the robot, with the help of a Coordinate Measurement Machine (CMM). Experiments with a patient-specific phantom were carried out to evaluate the registration error for both position and orientation. After adopting several improvements, registration accuracy of the system was significantly improved. Sub-millimeter accuracy with the Target Registration Errors (TREs) of 0.38±0.16 mm (N=5) was achieved. The target orientation errors after …

Bcc Skin Cancer Diagnosis Based On Texture Analysis Techniques, Shao-Hui Chuang, Xiaoyan Sun, Wen-Yu Chang, Gwo-Shing Chen, Adam Huang, Jiang Li, Frederic D. Mckenzie

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper, we present a texture analysis based method for diagnosing the Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC) skin cancer using optical images taken from the suspicious skin regions. We first extracted the Run Length Matrix and Haralick texture features from the images and used a feature selection algorithm to identify the most effective feature set for the diagnosis. We then utilized a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) classifier to classify the images to BCC or normal cases. Experiments showed that detecting BCC cancer based on optical images is feasible. The best sensitivity and specificity we achieved on our data set were 94% …