Computer Sciences Commons^™

Barriers To Adopting Agile Practices When Developing Medical Device Software, Martin Mchugh, Fergal Mccaffery, Valentine Casey

Conference papers

Agile methodologies such as XP and Scrum are founded upon the four values and twelve principles of agile software development. A software development project is only considered to be truly agile if these values and principles are followed. However, software developed for use in medical devices must be regulatory compliant and this can make the process of following a single agile methodology such as XP difficult to achieve. This paper outlines how we identified the barriers to agile adoption in the medical device software domain through performing a survey. These barriers include: lack of documentation; maintaining traceability; regulatory compliance; lack …

Speech & Multimodal Resources: The Herme Database Of Spontaneous Multimodal Human-Robot Dialogues, Jing Guang Hang, Emer Gilmartin, Celine De Looze, Brian Vaughan, Nick Campbell

Conference papers

This paper presents methodologies and tools for language resource (LR) construction. It describes a database of interactive speech collected over a three-month period at the Science Gallery in Dublin, where visitors could take part in a conversation with a robot. The system collected samples of informal, chatty dialogue – normally difficult to capture under laboratory conditions for human-human dialogue, and particularly so for human-machine interaction. The conversations were based on a script followed by the robot consisting largely of social chat with some task-based elements. The interactions were audio-visually recorded using several cameras together with microphones. As part of the …

Issues In Designing A Corpus Of Spoken Irish, Elaine Ui Dhonnchadha, Alessio Frenda, Brian Vaughan

Conference papers

This paper describes the stages involved in implementing a corpus of spoken Irish. This pilot project (consisting of approximately 140K of transcribed data) implements parts of the design of a larger corpus of spoken Irish which it is hoped will contain approximately 2 million words when complete. It hoped that such a corpus will provide material for linguistic research, lexicography, the teaching of Irish and for development of language technology for the Irish language.

Integrating Agile Practices With Plan-Driven Medical Device Software Development, Martin Mchugh

Conference papers

The popularity of Agile software development is growing rapidly with an increasing number of projects being developed following Agile methodologies such as Scrum and XP [1]. Research has revealed that following Agile practices when developing software can have a significantly positive impact in reducing development time, reducing cost and increasing overall quality [2-4]. Whilst Agile practices can have a positive impact on a development project there are incompatibilities between Agile methodologies and the plan driven approaches followed when developing safety critical software [5, 6]. However, it has been recognised that “formal techniques …

Changes To The International Regulatory Environment, Martin Mchugh, Fergal Mccaffery, Valentine Casey

Articles

Since 2010, two significant international regulations regarding medical device development have come into force, the amendment to the European Union (EU) Medical Device Directive (MDD) 2007/47/EC and the United States (US) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Final rule on Medical Device Data Systems (MDDS). Adherence to these regulations is mandatory to be able to market a medical device in the respective region. The ability to understand these regulations and apply them to a development project can be difficult. The MDDS final rule changes the safety classification of a number of devices from Class III-high risk to Class I-low risk. The …

Designing And Implementing A Platform For Collecting Multi-Modal Data Of Human-Robot Interaction, Brian Vaughan, Jing Guang Han, Emer Kilmartin, Nick Campbell

Articles

This paper details a method of collecting video and audio recordings of people inter- acting with a simple robot interlocutor. The interaction is recorded via a number of cameras and microphones mounted on and around the robot. The system utilised a number of technologies to engage with interlocutors including OpenCV, Python, and Max MSP. Interactions over a three month period were collected at The Science Gallery in Trinity College Dublin. Visitors to the gallery freely engaged with the robot, with interactions on their behalf being spontaneous and non-scripted. The robot dialogue was a set pattern of utterances to engage interlocutors …

Asynchronous Ultrasonic Trilateration For Indoor Positioning Of Mobile Phones, Viacheslav Filonenko, Charlie Cullen, James Carswell

Conference papers

In this paper we discuss how the innate ability of mobile phone speakers to produce ultrasound can be used for accurate indoor positioning. The frequencies in question are in a range between 20 and 22 KHz, which is high enough to be inaudible by humans but still low enough to be generated by today’s mobile phone sound hardware. Our tests indicate that it is possible to generate the given range of frequencies without significant distortions, provided the signal volume is not turned excessively high. In this paper we present and evaluate the accuracy of our asynchronous trilateration method (Lok8) for …

Effects Of Variations In 3d Spatial Search Techniques On Mobile Query Speed Vs Accuracy, Junjun Yin, James Carswell

Conference papers

This paper presents three Spatial Search Algorithms for determiningthe three dimensional visibility shape (threat dome) at a user’s current locationin a built environment. Users then utilize this 3D shape as their query“window” to retrieve information on only those objects visible within a spatialdatabase. Visibility shape searching addresses the information overloadproblem by providing “Hidden Query Removal” functionality for mobile LBS.This functionality will be especially useful in the Web 4.0 era when trillions ofmicro-sensors become available for query through standard IP access.

Trust And Reputation For Successful Software Self-Organisation, Pierpaolo Dondio, Jean Marc Seigneur

Books/Book Chapters

Abstract An increasing number of dynamic software evolution approaches is com- monly based on integrating or utilising new pieces of software. This requires reso- lution of issues such as ensuring awareness of newly available software pieces and selection of most appropriate software pieces to use. Other chapters in this book dis- cuss dynamic software evolution focusing primarily on awareness, integration and utilisation of new software pieces, paying less attention on how selection among different software pieces is made. The selection issue is quite important since in the increasingly dynamic software world quite a few new software pieces occur over time, …

Web Supported Emplotment: Using Object And Event Descriptions To Facilitate Storytelling Online And In Galleries, Trevor Collins, Paul Mulholland, Annika Wolff

Publications

The process of emplotment refers to the selection of significant events in a story and the identification of pertinent relations between them, in order to produce a plot providing an interpretation of those events. We are investigating how models of emplotment can be applied to develop web-based tools for creating and interpreting narratives. In particular, we are focusing on the process undertaken by art gallery professionals to design and present exhibitions. This paper presents a set of plot relations developed in collaboration with museum professionals from two national galleries in Ireland, and shows how theories of narrative and digital cultural …

Structure-Reactivity Studies Of Simple 4-Hydroxyprolinamide Organocatalysts In The Asymmetric Michael Addition Reaction Of Aldehydes To Nitroolefins, Fintan Kelleher, John Watts, Lien Luu, Vickie Mckee, Ed Carey

Articles

A series of simple 4-hydroxyprolinamides was synthesised and they were found to act as organocatalysts for the asymmetric conjugate addition of aldehydes to nitroolefins in excellent yields (98%), with complete diastereoselectivity (99:1, syn:anti) and enantioselectivity (98% e.e. for syn). Furthermore, the use of low catalyst loadings (5 mol%) and a low aldehyde molar excess (1.5 equivalents) were achieved.

Evaluating The Benefits Of Octree-Based Indexing For Lidar Data, Abu Saleh Mohammad Mosa, Bianca Schoen-Phelan, Michela Bertolotto, Debra Laefer

Articles

Very large true three-dimensional (3D) point datasets, as opposed to the previously common 2.5D data sets, are progressively more common nowadays, such as from Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). Increasingly, attempts are made to exploit these 3D point data sets beyond mere visualization. However, current Spatial Information Systems provide only limited 3D support. Even commercial systems advertising in-built, 3D data types provide only minimal functionality. Particularly, there is no effective means of indexing large 3D point datasets, which is crucial for efficient analysis and engineering usage. Also many datasets are information rich (e.g. contain color or some other associated semantic …

Curate And Storyspace: An Ontology And Web-Based Environment For Describing Curatorial Narratives, Paul Mulholland, Annika Wolff, Trevolr Collins

Publications

focus on describing the heritage objects that the museum holds in its collection. These are used to manage and describe individual heritage objects according to properties such as artist, date and preservation requirements. Curatorial narratives, such as physical or online exhibitions tell a story that spans across heritage objects and have a meaning that does not necessarily reside in the individual heritage objects themselves. Here we present curate, an ontology for describing curatorial narratives. This draws on structuralist accounts that distinguish the narrative from the story and plot, and also a detailed analysis of two museum exhibitions and the curatorial …

Storyspace: A Story-Driven Approach For Creating Musuem Narratives, Annika Wolff, Paul Mulholland, Tevor Collins

Publications

In a curated exhibition of a museum or art gallery, a selection of heritage objects and associated information is presented to a visitor for the purpose of telling a story about them. The same underlying story can be presented in a number of different ways. This paper describes techniques for creating multiple alternative narrative structures from a single underlying story, by selecting different organising principles for the events and plot structures of the story. These authorial decisions can produce different dramatic effects. Storyspace is a web interface to an ontology for describing curatorial narratives. We describe how the narrative component …

Profiling Instances In Noise Reduction, Sarah Jane Delany, Nicola Segata, Brian Macnamee

Articles

The dependency on the quality of the training data has led to significant work in noise reduction for instance-based learning algorithms. This paper presents an empirical evaluation of current noise reduction techniques, not just from the perspective of their comparative performance, but from the perspective of investigating the types of instances that they focus on for re- moval. A novel instance profiling technique known as RDCL profiling allows the structure of a training set to be analysed at the instance level cate- gorising each instance based on modelling their local competence properties. This profiling approach o↵ers the opportunity of investigating …

Significantly Reducing The Processing Times Of High-Speed Photometry Data Sets Using A Distributed Computing Model, Paul Doyle, Fredrick Mtenzi, Niall Smith, Adrian Collins, Brendan O'Shea

Other

The scientific community is in the midst of a data analysis crisis. The increasing capacity of scientific CCD instrumentation and their falling costs is contributing to an explosive generation of raw photometric data. This data must go through a process of cleaning and reduction before it can be used for high precision photometric analysis. Many existing data processing pipelines either assume a relatively small dataset or are batch processed by a High Performance Computing centre. A radical overhaul of these processing pipelines is required to allow reduction and cleaning rates to process terabyte sized datasets at near capture rates using …

Sms Spam Filtering: Methods And Data, Sarah Jane Delany, Mark Buckley, Derek Greene

Articles

Mobile or SMS spam is a real and growing problem primarily due to the availability of very cheap bulk pre-pay SMS packages and the fact that SMS engenders higher response rates as it is a trusted and personal service. SMS spam filtering is a relatively new task which inherits many issues and solu- tions from email spam filtering. However it poses its own specific challenges. This paper motivates work on filtering SMS spam and reviews recent devel- opments in SMS spam filtering. The paper also discusses the issues with data collection and availability for furthering research in this area, analyses …

Personality Modulates The Effects Of Emotional Arousal And Valence On Brain Activation, Elizabeth G. Kehoe, John M. Toomey, Joshua H. Balsters, Arun L.W. Bokde

Articles

The influence of personality on the neural correlates of emotional processing is still not well characterized. We investigated the relationship between extraversion and neuroticism and emotional perception using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in a group of 23 young, healthy women. Using a parametric modulation approach, we examined how the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal varied with the participants’ ratings of arousal and valence, and whether levels of extraversion and neuroticism were related to these modulations. In particular, we wished to test Eysenck's biological theory of personality, which links high extraversion to lower levels of reticulothalamic–cortical arousal, and neuroticism …

The Importance Of Human Mental Workload In Web Design, Luca Longo, Fabio Rusconi, Lucia Noce, Stephen Barrett

Conference papers

The focus of this study is the introduction of the construct of Human Mental Workload (HMW) in Web design, aimed at supporting current interaction design practices. An experiment has been conducted using the original Wikipedia and Google web-interfaces, and using two slightly different versions. Three subjective psychological mental workload assessment techniques (NASA-TLX, Workload Profile and SWAT) with a well-established assessments usability tool (SUS) have been adopted. T-tests have been performed to study the statistical significance of the original and modified web-pages, in terms of workload required by typical tasks and perceived usability. Preliminary results show that, in one ideal case, …

An Investigation Into Feature Selection For Oncological Survival Prediction, Dmitry Strunkin, Brian Mac Namee, John D. Kelleher

Conference papers

In machine learning based clinical decision support (CDS) systems the features used to train prediction models are of paramount importance. Strong features will lead to accurate models, whereas as weak features will have the opposite effect. Feature sets can either be designed by domain experts, or automatically extracted for unstructured data that happens to be available from some process other than a CDS system. This paper compares the usefulness of structured expert-designed features to features extracted from unstructured data sources in an oncological survival prediction application scenario.

Formalising Human Mental Workload As Non-Montonic Concept For Adaptive And Personalised Web-Design, Luca Longo

Books/Book Chapters

Web Design has been evolving with Web-based systems becoming more complex and structured due to the delivery of personalised information adapted to end-users. Although information presented can be useful and well formatted, people have little mental workload available for dealing with unusable systems. Subjective mental workload assessments tools are usually adopted to measure the impact of Web-tasks upon end-users thanks to their ease of use and are aimed at supporting design practices. The Nasa Task Load Index subjective procedure has been taken as a reference technique for measuring mental workload, but it has a background in aircraft cockpits, supervisory and …

Developing A Promo Video In Premiere Elements: A Day In Dublin, Jerome Casey

Instructional Guides

No abstract provided.

Drift Detection Using Uncertainty Distribution Divergence, Patrick Lindstrom, Brian Mac Namee, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference papers

Concept drift is believed to be prevalent inmost data gathered from naturally occurring processes andthus warrants research by the machine learning community.There are a myriad of approaches to concept drift handlingwhich have been shown to handle concept drift with varyingdegrees of success.

However, most approaches make the keyassumption that the labelled data will be available at nolabelling cost shortly after classification, an assumption whichis often violated. The high labelling cost in many domainsprovides a strong motivation to reduce the number of labelledinstances required to handle concept drift. Explicit detectionapproaches that do not require labelled instances to detectconcept drift show great …

A Framework For Generating Data To Simulate Application Scoring, Kenneth Kennedy, Sarah Jane Delany, Brian Mac Namee

Conference papers

In this paper we propose a framework to generate artificial data that can be used to simulate credit risk scenarios. Artificial data is useful in the credit scoring domain for two reasons. Firstly, the use of artificial data allows for the introduction and control of variability that can realistically be expected to occur, but has yet to materialise in practice. The ability to control parameters allows for a thorough exploration of the performance of classification models under different conditions. Secondly, due to non-disclosure agreements and commercial sensitivities, obtaining real credit scoring data is a problematic and time consuming task. By …

Prosodic Synchrony In Co-Operative Task-Based Dialogues: A Measure Of Agreement And Disagreement, Brian Vaughan

Conference papers

Prosodic synchrony has been reported to be an important aspect of conversational dyads. In this paper, synchrony in four different dyads is examined. A Time Aligned Moving Average (TAMA) procedure is used to temporally align the prosodic measurements for the detection of synchrony in the dyads. An overlapping windowed correlation procedure is used to measure synchrony for six different prosodic parameters: mean pitch, pitch range, mean intensity, intensity range, centre of gravity and spectral slope. This study shows that a windowed correlation procedure better captures the dynamic nature of speech synchrony than a single measure across a whole conversation. This …

Using Crowdsourcing In The Rating Of Emotional Speech Assets, Sarah Jane Delany, Alexey Tarasov, John Snel, Charlie Cullen

Other resources

No abstract provided.

A Novel Methodology For Evaluating User Interfaces In Health Care, Luca Longo, Bridget Kane

Conference papers

A pilot study is reported to identify an improved method of evaluating digital user interfaces in health care. Experience and developments from the aviation industry and the NASA-TLX mental workload assessment tools are applied in conjunction with Nielsen heuristics for evaluating an Electronic Health Record System in an Irish hospital. The NASA-TLX performs subjective workload assessments on operators working with various human-computer systems. Results suggest that depending on the cognitive workload and the working context of users, the usability will differ for the same digital interface. We conclude that incorporating the NASA-TLX with Nielsen's heuristics offers a more reliable method …

How Can Software Smes Become Medical Device, Fergal Mccaffery, Valentine Casey, Martin Mchugh

Conference papers

The amount of software content within medical devices has grown considerably over recent years and will continue to do so as the level of complexity of medical devices increase. This is driven by the fact that software is introduced to produce sophisticated medical devices that would not be possible using only hardware. This therefore presents opportunities for software development SMEs to become medical device software development organisations. However, some obstacles need to be addressed and overcome in order to make the transition from being a generic software development organisation to becoming a medical device software development organisation. This paper describes …

Us Fda Releases Final Rule On Medical Device Data Systems:What Does This Mean For Device Manufacturers, Martin Mchugh, Fergal Mccaffery, Valentine Casey

Articles

On 16 April 2011, the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) final rule on medical device data systems (MDDSs) came into force. This rule attempts to remove the uncertainty surrounding the safety classification of certain information technology systems used in healthcare. Devices that now meet the criteria of being an MDDS are classified as Class I (general controls). However, this final ruling explicitly precludes specific software applications that meet the definition of an MDDS, such as electronic health record applications and computerised physician order entry applications, as being beyond the scope of an MDDS. Similarly, ambiguity still remains surrounding mobile …

Standalone Software As An Active Medical Device, Martin Mchugh, Fergal Mccaffery, Valentine Casey

Conference papers

With the release of the latest European Medical Device Directive (MDD) standalone software can now be classified as an active medical device. Consequently the methods used to ensure device safety and reliability needs to be reviewed. IEC 62304 is the current software development lifecycle framework followed by medical device software developers but important processes are beyond the scope of IEC 62304. These processes are covered by additional standards. However since the MDD became mandatory these additional standards are not comprehensive enough to ensure the reliability of an active medical device consisting of only software. By employing software process improvement techniques …