Medical Biomathematics and Biometrics Commons^™

A Semantic-Based Method For Extracting Concept Definitions From Scientific Publications: Evaluation In The Autism Phenotype Domain, Saeed Hassanpour, Martin J. O’Connor, Amar K. Das

Dartmouth Scholarship

Background: A variety of informatics approaches have been developed that use information retrieval, NLP and text-mining techniques to identify biomedical concepts and relations within scientific publications or their sentences. These approaches have not typically addressed the challenge of extracting more complex knowledge such as biomedical definitions. In our efforts to facilitate knowledge acquisition of rule-based definitions of autism phenotypes, we have developed a novel semantic-based text-mining approach that can automatically identify such definitions within text.

Results: Using an existing knowledge base of 156 autism phenotype definitions and an annotated corpus of 26 source articles containing such definitions, we evaluated and …

An Epidemiological Model Of Rift Valley Fever With Spatial Dynamics, Tianchan Niu, Holly D. Gaff, Yiannis E. Papelis, David M. Hartley

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

As a category A agent in the Center for Disease Control bioterrorism list, Rift Valley fever (RVF) is considered a major threat to the United States (USA). Should the pathogen be intentionally or unintentionally introduced to the continental USA, there is tremendous potential for economic damages due to loss of livestock, trade restrictions, and subsequent food supply chain disruptions. We have incorporated the effects of space into a mathematical model of RVF in order to study the dynamics of the pathogen spread as affected by the movement of humans, livestock, and mosquitoes. The model accounts for the horizontal transmission of …

An Algorithm For Facial Expression Recognition To Assist Handicapped Individuals With Eating Disabilities, Anthony Rudolph De La Loza

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this thesis is to describe an algorithm and implement a software system based upon facial expression recognition that will accurately determine the specific need of a handicapped individual pertaining to the eating process. Then based upon that need, determine the appropriate action that should be executed. This thesis aims to present a solution to allow a special needs individual to eat more efficienty and foster independence, while providing a platform for further research in the area of feature detection to assist individuals with special needs.

A Computational Framework For Proteome-Wide Pursuit And Prediction Of Metalloproteins Using Icp-Ms And Ms/Ms Data, W. Andrew Lancaster, Jeremy L. Praissman, Farris L. Poole, Aleksandar Cvetkovic, Angeli Lal Menon, Joseph W. Scott, Francis E. Jenney, Michael P. Thorgersen, Ewa Kalisiak, Junefredo V. Apon, Sunia A. Trauger, Gary Siuzdak, John A. Tainer, Michael W. W. Adams

PCOM Scholarly Works

BACKGROUND: Metal-containing proteins comprise a diverse and sizable category within the proteomes of organisms, ranging from proteins that use metals to catalyze reactions to proteins in which metals play key structural roles. Unfortunately, reliably predicting that a protein will contain a specific metal from its amino acid sequence is not currently possible. We recently developed a generally-applicable experimental technique for finding metalloproteins on a genome-wide scale. Applying this metal-directed protein purification approach (ICP-MS and MS/MS based) to the prototypical microbe Pyrococcus furiosus conclusively demonstrated the extent and diversity of the uncharacterized portion of microbial metalloproteomes since a majority of the …

The Cardiac Atlas Project--An Imaging Database For Computational Modeling And Statistical Atlases Of The Heart, Carissa G. Fonseca, Michael Backhaus, David A. Bluemke, Randall D. Britten, Jae Do Chung, Brett R. Cowan, Alan H. Kadish

Office of the President Publications and Research

MOTIVATION: Integrative mathematical and statistical models of cardiac anatomy and physiology can play a vital role in understanding cardiac disease phenotype and planning therapeutic strategies. However, the accuracy and predictive power of such models is dependent upon the breadth and depth of noninvasive imaging datasets. The Cardiac Atlas Project (CAP) has established a large-scale database of cardiac imaging examinations and associated clinical data in order to develop a shareable, web-accessible, structural and functional atlas of the normal and pathological heart for clinical, research and educational purposes. A goal of CAP is to facilitate collaborative statistical analysis of regional heart shape …

Computational Analyses Of The Uptake And Distribution Of Carbon Monoxide (Co) In Human Subjects, Kinnera Chada

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Carbon monoxide (CO) is an odorless, colorless, tasteless gas that binds to hemoglobin with high affinity. This property underlies the use of low doses of CO to determine hemoglobin mass (M_Hb) in the fields of clinical and sports medicine. However, hemoglobin bound to CO is unable to transport oxygen and exposure to high CO concentrations is a significant environmental and occupational health concern. These contrasting aspects of CO—clinically useful in low doses but potentially lethal in higher doses—mandates a need for a quantitative understanding of the temporal profiles of the uptake and distribution of CO …

Improving Quantitative Treatment Response Monitoring With Deformable Image Registration, Blake A. Cannon

Dissertations and Theses (Open Access)

Quantitative imaging with 18F-FDG PET/CT has the potential to provide an in vivo assessment of response to radiotherapy (RT). However, comparing tissue tracer uptake in longitudinal studies is often confounded by variations in patient setup and potential treatment induced gross anatomic changes. These variations make true response monitoring for the same anatomic volume a challenge, not only for tumors, but also for normal organs-at-risk (OAR). The central hypothesis of this study is that more accurate image registration will lead to improved quantitation of tissue response to RT with 18F-FDG PET/CT. Employing an in-house developed “demons” based deformable image registration algorithm, …

Cellular Automata Rules Generator For Microbial Communities, Melissa Marie Quintana

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project is to provide a visual representation as program output so that the rules and the radius of effect can be estimated. Currently there is a need for a method that extracts the cellular automata rules which simulate the growth patterns of microbial communities found within extreme environments. Contains source code.

To Live And Die In Ca, Jane Frances Curnutt

Theses Digitization Project

This thesis investigates the nature of elementary cellular automata to better understand their relationship of the models they support to the biological organisms that create the mats and soil crusts found in extreme environments here on earth. Cellular automata have been used to study growth and patterns in forests, arid desert environments, predator-prey problems, and sea shells. It has also been used to study areas of diverse epidemiology and linguistics. Cellular automata have been used as the core of computer games as well. This investigation has led to develop a graphical grammar for simple cellular automata, using L-systems, a grammar …

Reordered Subsets Reconstruction Of Proton Computed Tomography, Wenzhe Xue

Theses Digitization Project

This project investigates the improvement of iterative reconstruction using reordered subsets. Block iterative projection and Ordered Subset reconstruction algorithms are developed to improve the performance of image reconstruction. Contains source code.

Authentication Of Biometric Features Using Texture Coding For Id Cards, Jonathan Blackledge, Eugene Coyle

Conference papers

The use of image based information exchange has grown rapidly over the years in terms of both e-to-e image storage and transmission and in terms of maintaining paper documents in electronic form. Further, with the dramatic improvements in the quality of COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) printing and scanning devices, the ability to counterfeit electronic and printed documents has become a widespread problem. Consequently, there has been an increasing demand to develop digital watermarking techniques which can be applied to both electronic and printed images (and documents) that can be authenticated, prevent unauthorized copying of their content and, in the case of printed …