bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Brace Prescription Patterns in Patients Referred to Orthopaedic Clinics for Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (AIS)
Authors: Roy-Beaudry Marjolaine  , Fall Aïssatou  , Beausejour Marie  , Goulet Lise  , Labelle Hubert
Published: February 2025

Even if braces for scoliosis are broadly used, there are no data on the orthopaedic medical practice to evaluate the circumstances of brace prescription. This study aims at comparing scoliosis brace prescription patterns with generally recognized standards. A cross-sectional study was carried out in 2006-2007 on all confirmed AIS patients referred to a paediatric scoliosis clinic for a first visit. Agreement between the actual brace prescription patterns and standards for immediate prescription was analyzed, following the recommendations of the Quebec Scoliosis Network (QSN), as well as the Scoliosis Research Society (SRS) therapeutic inclusion criteria. In addition, chi-2 tests and logistic regression models were used to identify variables related to brace prescription. Amongst the 321 AIS patients, immediate brace treatment was recommended in 70 cases, for about 50% of concordance with the defined criteria. Variables describing the patients' maturity (age, Risser, onset of menses) and deformity magnitude (Cobb angle and rib hump), as well as the treating physician, were the main determinants of brace prescription. Despite the professional consensus on immediate bracing norms, under and over-prescription of brace were documented in this study. Better understanding of these patterns would require documentation of motives associated with prescription at the individual level.
Radiological and Clinical Outcome of Non Surgical Management for Pediatric High Grade Spondylolisthesis
Authors: Bourassa-Moreau Étienne  , Labelle Hubert  , Mac-Thiong Jean-Marc
Published: February 2025

Objective: To describe and compare the quality of life of patients with pediatric high-grade spondylolisthesis managed non-operativelyand operatively. Summary of Background Data: Some authors consider pediatric high-grade spondylolisthesis as an absolute indication for surgery, regardless of symptomswhile others sometimes recommend observation in asymptomatic patients. Very little is known about the indications and outcome of non-operatively managed high-grade spondylolisthesis. Methods: A prospective database comprising all the spondylolisthesis cases from a single pediatric institution was reviewed in order to identify all cases of high gradespondylolisthesis. Quality of life data from Short form (SF)-12 and Scoliosis Research Society (SRS)-22 questionnaires were collected. Non-operatively treated patients were identified and compared to surgically treated patients at baseline and at last follow-up. Results: 34 spondylolisthesiswere identified as high grade and 5 of them were non-operatively treated. Quality of life questionnaires showed less impairment in the non-operativegroup when compared to the surgical group preoperatively. Moreover at last follow-up, quality of life questionnaires were similar between the two groups. There was no worsening of quality of life observed in non-operativepatients during follow-up. Conclusion: The quality of life after surgical treatment of high grade spondylolisthesisissimilar to that of patients with high grade spondylolisthesis and mild symptoms undergoing non–operative treatment.
Growth Modulation of the Thoracic Cage in a Fetal Ovine Model: a Feasibility Study
Authors: Parent S.  , Bouchard S.  , Carrier D.  , Newton P.
Published: February 2025

Introduction: Congenital scoliosis and fused ribs can create athree-dimensional deformity affecting the normal thoracic growth and function resulting in thoracic insufficiency syndrome. The objective of this study was to develop an animal model to evaluate the effect of chest deformity on pre- and post-natal lung development and volume. There is currently no animal model of chest wall deformity mimicking the thoracic insufficiency syndrome seen in humans available to study the impact of an expansion thoracoplasty.
Coupling between Sagittal and Frontal Plane Deformity Correction in Idiopathic Thoracic Scoliosis and its Relationship with Post-operative Sagittal Alignment
Authors: Luk Keith D.K.  , Vidyadhara S.  , Lu D.S.  , Wong Y.W.  , Cheung W.Y.  , Cheung Kenneth M.C.
Published: February 2025

Introduction: Restoration of the sagittal alignment in scoliosis correction surgery is generally achieved by rod pre-contouring intra-operatively. However clinical studies suggested that it could be affected by the inherent properties of the spine rather than the instrumentation or surgical maneuver.
Disproportionate Endochondral-membranous Bone Growth in Peripheral Bone of Girls with Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis
Authors: Yeung H.Y.  , Lam T.P.  , Wang W.W.  , Hung V.W.  , Qin L.  , Lee K.M.  , Qiu Y.  , Cheng J.C.Y.
Published: February 2025

Introduction: Disproportionate endochondral and membranous ossification in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) has been suggested in the axial skeleton. It is also generally accepted that the AIS girls are taller than their healthy peers.
Biological Impact of Growth Modulation Device on the Immature Goat Spine
Authors: Thometz J.  , Liu Xue C.  , Rizza Robert
Published: February 2025

Introduction: A growth modulation device (GMD) was developed to explore the hypothesis: higher compressive forces induced by the GMD between intervertebral regions lead to changes of vertebral endochondral ossification.
Postoperative Appearance Simulation of the External Outcome of Spine Surgery: Preliminary Results
Authors: Dionne O.  , Assi C.K.  , Guilbault F.  , Labelle H.  , Cheriet F.
Published: February 2025

Persistence of external trunk asymmetry after scoliosis treatment is frequent and difficult to predict by clinicians. This is a significant problem considering that correction of the apparent deformity is a major factor of satisfaction for patients.
The Quantification of Volumetric Asymmetry by Dynamic Surface Topography
Authors: Shannon T.M.L.
Published: February 2025

The psychosocial impact of the cosmetic defect on Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis patients is an important factor that must be considered when developing treatment plans and monitoring outcomes. There is new emphasis on finding ways to quantify reliably paraspinous back surface volumetric asymmetry numerically, with the objective of providing a scoring that can give an impression of the severity of the deformity at each clinical presentation.
Biomechanical Modeling of Nonstructural Spinal Curves for Scoliosis Instrumentation Simulation: Preliminary Results
Authors: Wang Xiaoyu  , Aubin Carl-Éric  , Labelle Hubert  , Crandall Dennis
Published: February 2025

Introduction: For severe spine deformities, instrumentation remains an effective option. Biomechanical models have been proposed to simulate the instrumentation and improve the preoperative planning. The modeling of the nonstructural curves remains a challenging difficulty because of the different patient-specific spontaneous corrections.
Towards a Handheld Probe based on Optical Coherence Tomography for Minimally Invasive Spine Surgeries
Authors: Beaudette Kathy  , Strupler Mathias  , Driscoll Mark  , Maciejko Romain  , Aubin Carl-Éric  , Boudoux Caroline
Published: February 2025

Minimally invasive surgical (MIS) techniques for the correction of scoliosis are under development. The installation of fusionless implants targeting the vertebral growth plate requires precise identification of spinal micro-structures. During ex vivo studies, we demonstrate that optical coherence tomography (OCT) allows visualization of spinal tissues including the growth plate, the intervertebral disc and the vertebral body. This study aims at designing a handheld probe using OCT and assessing its potential for use in MIS. An OCT handheld probe was built which satisfies criteria for resolution, penetration and field of view required for spinal MIS techniques. Ex vivo images of rat tail and porcine vertebrae enabled differentiating musculoskeletal tissues of the spine (growth plate, intervertebral disc and vertebral body). Pending in vivo studies on porcine models, we evaluated the probe on a human finger and demonstrated its ability to image human tissues at video rate (25 fps) with proper imaging depth and resolution. These preliminary results showed the potential of the OCT probe for dynamic and precise imaging of spinal tissues.
Evaluation of Reducibility of Trunk Asymmetry in Lateral Bending
Authors: Debanné Philippe  , Pazos Valérie  , Labelle Hubert  , Cheriet Farida
Published: February 2025

The value of the lateral bending test is important in the assessment of spinal curve mobility and prediction of surgical outcome in the treatment of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS). However, radiographic bending tests are unable to assess the reducibility of trunk asymmetry. This study aims to exploit surface topography measurement in order to evaluate the changes in shape of the trunk (a) between bending and neutral standing positions, and (b) between standing pre- and post-operative visits, in a cohort of adolescents with AIS having undergone surgical correction; and to correlate the differences measured in cases (a) and (b). Our cohort includes 13 patients with right thoracic AIS. Each patient had their 3D trunk surface digitized with a multi-head InSpeck system in standing posture (at the pre-op and post-op visits) and in maximum voluntary right and left bending (at the pre-op visit). We developed a novel trunk shape analysis method which produces a set of inclined trunk cross-sections allowing comparison between different postures. Two asymmetry indices, trunk rotation (TR) and back surface rotation (BSR), were computed in all cases and a statistical analysis was performed. Our correlation study (Pearson test) showed fair correlations in most cases between the changes in side-bending and those post-surgery, with the strongest relationship (p-value < 0.01) when combining the TR measurements from both bendings. These results provide evidence that the bending test can be used to assess trunk asymmetry reducibility. The proposed approach could provide a non-invasive trunk asymmetry reducibility test for routine clinical use in AIS surgery planning.
Sentinel e-health network on grid: developments and challenges
Authors: De Vlieger Paul  , Boire Jean-Yves  , Breton Vincent  , Legre Yannick  , Manset David  , Revillard Jérôme  , Sarramia David  , Maigne Lydia
Published: February 2025

Grid technologies have proven their capabilities to settle challenging problems of medical data access. The grid ability to access distributed databases in a secure and reliable way while preserving data ownership opened new perspectives in medical data sharing and disease surveillance. This paper focuses on the implementation challenges of grid-powered sentinel networks within the e-sentinelle project. This initiative aims to create a lightweight grid dedicated to cancer data exchange and enable automatic disease surveillance according to definition of epidemiological alarms. Particularly, issues related to security, patient identification, databases integration, data representation and medical record linkage are discussed.
Visualization, Analysis, and Design of COMBO-FISH Probes in the Grid-Based GLOBE 3D Genome Platform
Authors: Kepper Nick  , Schmitt Eberhard  , Lesnussa Michael  , Weiland Yanina  , Eussen Hubert B.  , Grosveld Frank G.  , Hausmann Michael  , Knoch Tobias A.
Published: February 2025

The genome architecture in cell nuclei plays an important role in modern microscopy for the monitoring of medical diagnosis and therapy since changes of function and dynamics of genes are interlinked with changing geometrical parameters. The planning of corresponding diagnostic experiments and their imaging is a complex and often interactive IT intensive challenge and thus makes high-performance grids a necessity. To detect genetic changes we recently developed a new form of fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) – COMBinatorial Oligonucleotide FISH (COMBO-FISH) – which labels small nucleotide sequences clustering at a desired genomic location. To achieve a unique hybridization spot other side clusters have to be excluded. Therefore, we have designed an interactive pipeline using the grid-based GLOBE 3D Genome Viewer and Platform to design and display different labelling variants of candidate probe sets. Thus, we have created a grid-based virtual “paper” tool for easy interactive calculation, analysis, management, and representation for COMBO-FISH probe design with many an advantage: Since all the calculations and analysis run in a grid, one can instantly and with great visual ease locate duplications of gene subsequences to guide the elimination of side clustering sequences during the probe design process, as well as get at least an impression of the 3D architectural embedding of the respective chromosome region, which is of major importance to estimate the hybridization probe dynamics. Beyond, even several people at different locations could work on the same process in a team wise manner. Consequently, we present how a complex interactive process can profit from grid infrastructure technology using our unique GLOBE 3D Genome Platform gateway towards a real interactive curative diagnosis planning and therapy monitoring.
Web service catalogue for Biomedical Grid infrastructure
Authors: Garcia M.  , Karlsson J.  , Trelles O.
Published: February 2025

A great variety of services have been developed to address problems in the field of biomedicine. The EU project Advancing Clinico-Genomics Trials on Cancer (ACGT – http://www.eu-acgt.org) provides a Grid-based platform for improved medical knowledge discovery and integration of biomedical data in clinical trials on cancer. Metadata describing biomedical services needs to be shared to enable discovery and service composition (as workflows). This paper reports a catalogue for knowledge-based discovery of service metadata and a software module to wrap existing command line programs as a secure Grid service able to handle sensitive information.
Research Traceability using Provenance Services for Biomedical Analysis
Authors: Anjum Ashiq  , Bloodsworth Peter  , Branson Andrew  , Habib Irfan  , McClatchey Richard  , Solomonides Tony  , Soomro Kamran  , The neuGRID Consortium
Published: February 2025

We outline the approach being developed in the neuGRID project to use provenance management techniques for the purposes of capturing and preserving the provenance data that emerges in the specification and execution of workflows in biomedical analyses. In the neuGRID project a provenance service has been designed and implemented that is intended to capture, store, retrieve and reconstruct the workflow information needed to facilitate users in conducting user analyses. We describe the architecture of the neuGRID provenance service and discuss how the CRISTAL system from CERN is being adapted to address the requirements of the project and then consider how a generalised approach for provenance management could emerge for more generic application to the (Health)Grid community.
Two Twin Aluminium Domes of the Enel Plant in Civitavecchia (Italy)
Authors: Mazzolani Federico M.
Published: February 2025

Two twin aluminium domes have been erected within the thermo-electrical power plant of the Italian Electrical Department (ENEL) in Torreveldaliga Nord near Civitavecchia (Italy).
Using SNOMED CT to identify a Crossmap between two Classification Systems: A Comparison with an Expert-Baseda Data-Driven Strategy
Authors: Bakhshi-Raiez Ferishta  , Cornet Ronald  , Bosman Rob. J.  , Joore Hans  , de Keizer Nicolette F.
Published: February 2025

A crossmap between successive versions of classification systems is necessary to maintain the continuity of health care documentation. A reference terminology can serve as an intermediary to support this task. Within this study we evaluated the use of SNOMED CT to create a crossmap between two versions of an intensive care classification system. Firstly, the SNOMED CT crossmap was compared with an expert-based and a data-driven crossmap. Next, the influence of these crossmap strategies on the health care outcome was evaluated. For 50% of the analyzed cases, the three mapping strategies resulted in the same crossmaps. In other cases, there was an overlap between the SNOMED CT crossmaps and the crossmaps provided by one of the two other strategies. Differences in the crossmap results had however no significant influence on the health care outcomes. SNOMED CT can be used as an intermediary to solve the problem of crossmapping between versions of classification systems.
Enhancing a Taxonomy for Health Information Technology: An Exploratory Study of User Input Towards Folksonomy
Authors: Dixon Brian E.  , McGowan Julie J.
Published: February 2025

The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has created a public website to disseminate critical information regarding its health information technology initiative. The website is maintained by AHRQ's Natiomal Resource Center (NRC) for Health Information Technology. In the latest continuous quality improvement project, the NRC used the site's search logs to extract user-generated search phrases. The phrases were then compared to the site's controlled vocabulary with respect to language, grammar, and search precision. Results of the comparison demonstrate that search log data can be a cost-effective way to improve controlled vocabularies as well as information retrieval. User-entered search phrases were found to also share many similarities with folksonomy tags.
Using the Abstraction Network in Complement to Description Logics for Quality Assurance in Biomedical Terminologies - A Case Study in SNOMED CT
Authors: Wei Duo  , Bodenreider Olivier
Published: February 2025

Objectives: To investigate errors identified in SNOMED CT by human reviewers with help from the Abstraction Network methodology and examine why they had escaped detection by the Description Logic (DL) classifier. Case study; Two examples of errors are presented in detail (one missing IS-A relation and one duplicate concept). After correction, SNOMED CT is reclassified to ensure that no new inconsistency was introduced. Conclusions: DL-based auditing techniques built in terminology development environments ensure the logical consistency of the terminology. However, complementary approaches are needed for identifying and addressing other types of errors.
Usability of Clinician Order Entry Systems in Singapore: An Assessment of End-User Satisfaction
Authors: Tan Yung Ming  , Flores J.V.P.G.  , Tay Mee Lee
Published: February 2025

Objectives: To gather end-user feedback and evaluate factors that influence end-user satisfaction of order entry systems used in the hospitals under National Healthcare Group, Singapore. Design: Questionnaires were sent to a randomly selected group of 100 doctors and nurses. Results & Conclusions: 52 doctors and nurses responded to the survey. The users' satisfaction with the clinical systems was average. (Mean satisfaction score is 3.85 on a scale of 1 to 7). Users generally agree that the systems could help reduce patient care errors and improve delivery of quality care to patients. System reliability, intuitive navigational capabilities and ease of use are strongly and positively correlated with user satisfaction. System response time however, is found to be strongly but negatively correlated with user satisfaction with a correlation coefficient of −0.717 (p<0.001). These findings suggest that more efforts should be made to improve these aspects in order to improve user satisfaction. These elements should also form important considerations in all future clinical systems development.
Evaluation Methodology for Automatic Radiology Reporting Transcription Systems
Authors: Salvador Valéria Farinazzo Martins  , de Assis Moura Jr. Lincoln
Published: February 2025

This article describes a usability evaluation methodology for automatic transcription system used for radiology reporting. In order to assess this class of system's limitations and strengths, a review of the concepts involved in this kind of system is done in a critical way. Specific requirements, for this category of application, that are forgotten when a product is launched in the market, are listed and a methodology for their evaluation is presented.
Does CPOE Actually Disrupt Physicians-Nurses Communications?
Authors: Pelayo Sylvia  , Anceaux Françoise  , Rogalski Janine  , Beuscart-Zephir Marie-Catherine
Published: February 2025

This study addresses the question of the respective impact of organizational vs. technical environment variables on the collaborative aspects of healthcare work situations. It analyzes the physicians-nurses communications during the medication use process, according to both the organization of their work and their technical environment. Participant observations, interviews and recording of the dialogs were performed in 4 hospitals functioning with either a CPOE or a Paper based system. The study (i) presents the identification and description of the communications' processes involving doctors-nurses face-to-face communications and the supports that mediate medication information and (ii) focuses on the amount of face-to-face communications depending on the organization of work and the technical system used. The analyses demonstrate that the organizational variables have a larger impact than the technical environment on the quality and quantity of the communications and cooperation activities.
Supporting Human Interaction and Human Resources Coordination in Distributed Clinical Guidelines
Authors: Bottrighi Alessio  , Torchio Mauro  , Montani Stefania  , Molino Gianpaolo  , Terenziani Paolo
Published: February 2025

Clinical guidelines (GL) play an important role in medical practice: the one of optimizing the quality of patient care on the basis of the best and most recent evidence based medicine. In order to achieve this goal, the interaction between different actors, who cooperate in the execution of the same GL, is a crucial issue. As a matter of fact, in many cases (e.g. in chronic disease treatment) the GL execution requires that patient treatment is not performed/completed in the hospital, but is continued in different contexts (e.g. at home, or in the general practitioner's ambulatory), under the responsibility of different actors. In this situation, the correct interaction and communication between the actors themselves is critical for the quality of care, and human resources coordination is a key issue to be addressed by the managers of the involved healthcare service. In this paper we describe how computerized GL management can be extended in order to support such needs, and we illustrate our approach by means of a practical case study.
Social Networking in the National Health Service in England: A Quantitative Analysis of the Online Identities of 152 Primary Care Trusts
Authors: Hawker Mark D.
Published: February 2025

Increasing numbers of the public are becoming digitally connected. In particular, younger “born digital” generations now use the World Wide Web as their primary source of information alongside conventional media such as television and print. Little is known as to whether health organisations are using new media channels such as Facebook and Twitter to engage with the public and patients. This quantitative analysis investigates the online identities of Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) in the NHS in England to inspect their usage of social utilities. Results showed that a total of 61 organisations (40.13%) use at least one utility with the most popular being Twitter (n=30) and Bebo the least (n=1). However, organisations appear to be failing to take advantage of the interactive nature of social utilities instead using them as unidirectional information “push” channels. The ways in which health organisations could use social utilities for engagement is underexplored and so we must look to other research disciplines for best practice and evidence.
Why do People Want a Paper Copy of Their Electronic Patient Record?
Authors: Wibe Torunn  , Ekstedt Mirjam  , Hellesø Ragnhild  , Slaughter Laura
Published: February 2025

Changes have recently been passed in the Norwegian legislation, allowing for more exchange of patient information between health personnel. These legal changes came as a result of a long and still ongoing debate concerning the potential conflict between confidentiality issues and patient safety as health care is getting more fragmented. At the same time, an increasing number of patients now make use of their legal right to access their patient record. In this paper, we shed light on some of the reasons why patients request a copy of their record. We report the preliminary results from an interview study in which seventeen patients who have asked for a copy of their patient record following a hospital stay have been interviewed. In our interview study, securing transmission of information between health care workers is one of the main reasons for requesting a copy of the record. We will discuss how this finding might contribute to the ongoing debate.
Integration of Workflow and Rule Engines for Clinical Decision Support Services
Authors: Lee JaeHoon  , Kim JeongAh  , Cho InSook  , Kim Yoon
Published: February 2025

Although recent studies have suggested the feasibility of integrating workflow and rule technology in a Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS), their implementation has not been verified yet. This paper proposes a knowledge engine which integrates workflow and rule engine as a tool for interpretation and execution of computer interpretable clinical guidelines. The objective of this paper is to validate its feasibility in two perspectives: clinical knowledge coverage and execution performance. The two open source engines which were selected and integrated were chosen due to their reliability and consistency. Implementation of workflow and rule engine integration has shown that the integrated knowledge engine (uBrain) is an effective CDSS for the execution of clinical guidelines.
Healthcare System Evolution towards SOA: A Security Perspective
Authors: Koufi Vassiliki  , Malamateniou Flora  , Vassilacopoulos George  , Papakonstantinou Despina
Published: February 2025

Healthcare providers often face the challenge of integrating diverse and geographically disparate IT systems to respond to changing requirements and to exploit the capabilities of modern technologies. Hence, systems evolution, through modification and extension of the existing IT infrastructure, becomes a necessity. This paper assumes a healthcare systems evolution towards a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and places emphasis on the development of an appropriate authorization model and mechanism that ensures authorized access to integrated patient information through web service invocations.
Implementation of a Secure and Interoperable Generic e-Health Infrastructure for Shared Electronic Health Records based on IHE Integration Profiles
Authors: Schabetsberger Thomas  , Wozak Florian  , Katt Basel  , Mair Richard  , Hirsch Bernhard  , Hörbst Alexander
Published: February 2025

Introduction: The ubiquitous availability of medical or care data for authorized clinicians and nurses is expected to increase quality while reducing costs in the health care sector. The standardized, distributed provision of medical or care data is capable to support the vision of patient centered shared electronic health records (SEHRs). A main contribution to cross-institutional data exchange is provided by Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE). However, holistic implementations of IHE based eHealth infrastructures for SEHRs are currently rare and security and privacy regulations are not fully covered by existing IHE Integration Profiles. This work aims to point out our experiences and lessons learned from five years of development and the implementation of IHE compliant products. Methods: Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS) describes the base components for exchanging medical or care data. A unique patient Identification is described by the Patient Identifier Cross-referencing (PIX) and the Patient Demographics Query (PDQ) Integration Profile. All interactions are logged in an “Audit Record Repository” deployed once per Affinity Domain and defined in the Audit Trail and Node Authentication (ATNA) Integration Profile. Results: Based on the IHE Integration Profile XDS and other Integration Profiles high-level components for eHealth infrastructures and applications, supporting a holistic, secure concept and, based on these concepts, software products for a technical cooperative care infrastructure, has been developed. The products are practically evaluated in a project for setting up an IHE XDS Affinity Domain in the Austrian district of Tyrol and a number of lessons have been learned.
Extracting Medication Information from French Clinical Texts
Authors: Deléger Louise  , Grouin Cyril  , Zweigenbaum Pierre
Published: February 2025

Much more Natural Language Processing (NLP) work has been performed on the English language than on any other. This general observation is also true of medical NLP, although clinical language processing needs are as strong in other languages as they are in English. In specific subdomains, such as drug prescription, the expression of information can be closely related across different languages, which should help transfer systems from English to other languages. We report here the implementation of a medication extraction system which extracts drugs and related information from French clinical texts, on the basis of an approach initially designed for English within the framework of the i2b2 2009 challenge. The system relies on specialized lexicons and a set of extraction rules. A first evaluation on 50 annotated texts obtains 86.7% F-measure, a level higher than the original English system and close to related work. This shows that the same rule-based approach can be applied to English and French languages, with a similar level of performance. We further discuss directions for improving both systems.
Performance Analysis of a POS Tagger applied to Discharge Summaries in Portuguese
Authors: Oleynik Michel  , Nohama Percy  , Cancian Pindaro Secco  , Schulz Stefan
Published: February 2025

Part of speech taggers need a considerable amount of data to train their models. Such data is not readily available for medical texts in Portuguese. We evaluated the accuracy of a morphological tagger against a gold standard when trained with corpora of different sizes and domains. Accuracy was the highest with a medical corpus during the complete training process, achieving 91.5%. Training on a newswire corpus achieved 75.3% only. Furthermore, an active learning technique has been adapted to the POS tagging task. The algorithm uses a POS tagger committee to isolate the sentences with the highest disagreement indexes for manual correction. However, the method was not able to reduce training and tagging times when compared to a random selection strategy. We encourage that future works employ some effort in order to annotate a small amount of random data in the domain of study, which should be enough for higher accuracy rates.
Implicit Learning of Compiled Macro-Actions for Planning
Authors: Newton M.A. Hakim  , Levine John
Published: February 2025

We build a comprehensive macro-learning system and contribute in three different dimensions that have previously not been addressed adequately. Firstly, we learn macro-sets considering implicitly the interactions between constituent macros. Secondly, we effectively learn macros that are not found in given example plans. Lastly, we improve or reduce degradation of plan-length when macros are used; note, our main objective is to achieve fast planning. Our macro-learning system significantly outperforms a very recent macro-learning method both in solution speed and plan length.
Foundations of Tree-like Local Model Updates
Authors: Zhang Yan  , Kelly Michael  , Zhou Yi
Published: February 2025

Model update is an approach to enhance model checking functions by providing computer aided modifications in system development [2, 9]. It has been observed that one major obstacle restricting the application of this approach, e.g. CTL model update [15], is that the update has to take the entire system model into account, and that is usually not feasible for large scale domains. In this paper, we develop a tree-like local model update approach under the framework of ACTL – a widely used fragment of CTL in property specification. We define a bisimulation based minimal change principle on tree-like local model update, reveal its relationship to traditional belief update and provide essential semantic characterizations. We also investigate primary semantic and computational properties in relation to tree-like local model update. Finally we briefly describe the update system prototype that we have implemented and summarize our experimental results.
Modeling the problem of many hands in organisations
Authors: de Lima Tiago  , Royakkers Lambèr  , Dignum Frank
Published: February 2025

In this paper we provide a formalism to reason about the problem of many hands in organisations. This is a problem that arises whenever the organisation is responsible for some undesirable outcome but none of its members can be held responsible for the outcome. The formalism proposed here is a logic that extends the Coalition Epistemic Dynamic Logic by adding a notion of group knowledge and also organisational structures to its semantics. An organisational structure is a set of agents and some relations between them. It defines the power and coordination links between agents, which defines how agents delegate tasks and communicate. We give formal definitions for individual and collective responsibility, as well as for the problem of the many hands.
Integrating Probability Constraints into Bayesian Nets
Authors: Peng Yun  , Zhang Shenyong
Published: February 2025

This paper presents a formal convergence proof for EIPFP, an algorithm that integrates low dimensional probabilistic constraints into a Bayesian network (BN) based on the mathematical procedure IPFP. It also extends E-IPFP to deal with constraints that are inconsistent with each other or with the BN structure.
A Parallel Factorization Algorithm for Stiffness Matrix Based on Threadpool
Authors: Chen Juntao  , Xiao Ming  , Zhang Yuting
Published: February 2025

Stiffness matrix factorization is a major step in solving finite element problems or in pretreatment of iteration (e.g. ICCG). According to the two essential conditions of parallel computing, which are parallel algorithm and multithreading, the parallel algorithm for stiffness matrix factorization is presented based on multicore processor environment. Firstly, the Cholesky's LDLTmethod is translated in order to make it applicable to parallel computing. Afterwards, threapool is employed. It is able to generate multithreading which can be used repeatedly. Then the algorithm is optimized considering load-balancing of each thread. Thus the proposed algorithm can overcome the limitations of OpenMP when it is applied in nested loop. Therefore, high efficiency of parallel factorization of stiffness matrix is achieved. Numerical tests are carried out on different processor platforms. The comparison results indicate that the proposed algorithm has high efficiency of parallel computing and a low demand of platform. Moreover, this algorithm has explicit concept and minor programming difficulty. It is particularly applicable to solving the problems caused by the limitations of OpenMP. Thus it is of considerable practical values.
Countermeasure against Liquefaction using Interlocked Soil Improvement Piles
Authors: Kawamura Jun  , Kamata Toshiyuki  , Araki Kazuhiro  , Ishii Takeshi  , Saitoh Kunio
Published: February 2025

A measure to bind improvement soil columns by interlocking them with horizontal improved soil slab is proposed. In this way, the gross rigidity is increased; therefore the prevention of the liquefaction is achieved. The purpose of the study is to examine effectiveness of the layout which is improved in this measure. We did a numerical experiment using FEM. To be concrete, a dynamic effective stress analysis program, which can represent the conditions of the ground liquefaction during earthquake, was used and evaluated.
Influence Analysis on a Subway Shield Tunnel Crossing below a High Speed Railway
Authors: Xu Gancheng  , Hu Ping  , Li Chengxue
Published: February 2025

This paper chooses the section between the stations of Majiapu Donglu and Yongdingmenwai Dajie on Beijing subway line 14 as the object. Numerical simulation is adopted to analyze the function of grouting reinforcement in control of deformation of the earth surface while a shield tunnel crosses below the Beijing-Tianjin intercity high speed railway. A 3D numerical model is made to simulate the construction process of a shield tunnel crossing below a high speed railway with a top speed of 350km/h, where the differential settlement between the two rails is required less than 5mm. The calculation result indicates that grouting reinforcement to the stratum of a certain extension of the crossing section can effectively control the settlement of the existing railway caused by shield tunneling so as to ensure safety operation of the railway. And the behind-segment grouting parameters and soil compartment pressure in the shield structure gained in the study can be instructional for further design and construction of tunnels.
Data Mining for Business Applications: Introduction
Authors: Soares Carlos  , Ghani Rayid
Published: February 2025

This chapter introduces the volume on Data Mining (DM) for Business Applications. The chapters in this book provide an overview of some of the major advances in the field, namely in terms of methodology and applications, both traditional and emerging. In this introductory paper, we provide a context for the rest of the book. The framework for discussing the contents of the book is the DM methodology, which is suitable both to organize and relate the diverse contributions of the chapters selected. The chapter closes with an overview of the chapters in the book to guide the reader.
An Ensemble of Classifiers Methodology for Stemming in Inflectional Languages: Using the Example of Latvian
Authors: Eger Steffen  , Sējāne Ineta
Published: February 2025

In this paper, we present a stemming methodology based both on a hand-crafted rule-based system and data-driven machine learning approaches. The rule-based system models phenomena of Latvian, a highly inflectional language, in a linguistically sound and consistent way. While the handcrafted stemmer can be used on its own, it may also serve as a supplier of training data for our statistical modeling. This relies on two assumptions which are quite natural in the context of stemming and many other NLP applications such as grapheme-to-phoneme conversion, lemmatization, etc., namely that the output sequence is not longer than the input sequence and that the orderings of input and output sequence characters are ‘similar’. Under these conditions, we train several machine learning algorithms and show that very good results for stemming in Latvian can be obtained by combining them via bootstrapping and ensemble of classifiers methods.
A Generic User Profile Adaptation Framework
Authors: Marin Lucas  , Isern David  , Moreno Antonio
Published: February 2025

The paper presents a recommender system that permits to manage user preferences using linguistic criteria and, after collecting information about selections made by the user, it performs an unsupervised adaptation of the user profile. It has been implemented as a Web application and designed in a generic way so that it can be applied to any decision making problem. It includes two separate modules: a module to rate and rank all alternatives received by the system according to the current interests of the user, and a module to adapt the current user profile in an unsupervised fashion collecting implicit information about the user interaction with the system. The paper presents some preliminary results and discusses the performance of the adaptation algorithm.
MEC – Monitoring Clusters' Transitions
Authors: Oliveira Márcia  , Gama João
Published: February 2025

In this work we address the problem of monitoring the evolution of clusters, which became an important research issue in recent years due to our ability to collect and store data that evolves over time. The evolution is traced through the detection and categorization of transitions undergone by clusters' structures computed at different points in time. We adopt two main strategies for cluster characterization – representation by enumeration and representation by comprehension -, and propose the MEC (Monitor of the Evolution of Clusters) framework, which was developed along the lines of the change mining paradigm. MEC includes a taxonomy of various types of clusters' transitions, a tracking mechanism that depends on cluster representation, and a transition detection algorithm. Our tracking mechanism can be subdivided in two methods, devised to monitor clusters' transitions: one based on graph transitions, and another based on clusters' overlap. To demonstrate the feasibility and applicability of MEC we present real world case studies, using datasets from different knowledge areas, such as Economy and Education.
Simulation-Based Validation of the p53 Transcriptional Activity with Hybrid Functional Petri Net
Authors: Doi Atsushi  , Nagasaki Masao  , Matsuno Hiroshi  , Miyano Satoru
Published: February 2025

MDM2 and p19ARF are essential proteins in cancer pathways forming a complex with protein p53 to control the transcriptional activity of protein p53. It is confirmed that protein p53 loses its transcriptional activity by forming the functional dimer with protein MDM2. However, it is still unclear that protein p53 keeps its transcriptional activity when it forms the trimer with proteins MDM2 and p19ARF. We have observed mutual behaviors among genes p53, MDM2, p19ARF and their products on a computational model with hybrid functional Petri net (HFPN) which is constructed based on information described in the literature. The simulation results suggested that protein p53 should have the transcriptional activity in the forms of the trimer of proteins p53, MDM2, and p19ARF. This paper also discusses the advantages of HFPN based modeling method in terms of pathway description for simulations.
Impact of Delays and Noise on Dopamine Signal Transduction
Authors: Wu Jialiang  , Qi Zhen  , Voit Eberhard O.
Published: February 2025

Dopamine is a critical neurotransmitter for the normal functioning of the central nervous system. Abnormal dopamine signal transmission in the brain has been implicated in diseases such as Parkinson's disease (PD) and schizophrenia, as well as in various types of drug addition. It is therefore important to understand the dopamine signaling dynamics in the presynaptic neuron of the striatum and the synaptic cleft, where dopamine synthesis, degradation, compartmentalization, release, reuptake, and numerous regulatory processes occur. The biochemical and biological processes governing this dynamics consist of interacting discrete and continuous components, operate at different time scales, and must function effectively in spite of intrinsic stochasticity and external perturbations. Not fitting into the realm of purely deterministic phenomena, the hybrid nature of the system requires special means of mathematical modeling, simulation and analysis. We show here how hybrid functional Petri-nets (HFPNs) and the software Cell Illustrator®facilitate computational analyses of systems that simultaneously contain deterministic, stochastic, and delay components. We evaluate the robustness of dopamine signaling in the presence of delays and noise and discuss implications for normal and abnormal states of the system.
Evaluation of a VR and Stereo-Endoscopic Tool to Facilitate 3rd Ventriculostomy
Authors: Abhari Kamyar  , de Ribaupierre Sandrine  , Peters Terry  , Eagleson Roy
Published: February 2025

Endoscopic third ventriculostomy is a minimally invasive technique to treat hydrocephalus, which is a condition in which the patient is retaining excessive amount of cerebrospinal fluid in the head. While this surgical procedure is fairly routine, it carries some risks, mainly associated with the lack of depth perception, since monocular endoscopes provide only 2D views. We studied the advantages given by a 3D stereoendoscope over a 2D monocular endoscope, first by assessing the variability of stereoacuity in each subject, then in analyzing their overall correct response rate in differentiating between heights of two different images with 2D and 3D vision.
Biopsym: a Learning Environment for Trans-Rectal Ultrasound Guided Prostate Biopsies
Authors: Janssoone Thomas  , Chevreau Grégoire  , Vadcard Lucile  , Mozer Pierre  , Troccaz Jocelyne
Published: February 2025

This paper describes a learning environment for image-guided prostate biopsies for cancer diagnosis; it is based on an ultrasound probe simulator virtually exploring real datasets obtained from patients. The aim is to make the training of young physicians easier and faster with a tool that combines lectures, biopsy simulations and recommended exercises to master this medical gesture. It is designed particularly to help improve the acquisition of the three-dimensional representation of the prostate required for practicing biopsy sequences. The simulator uses haptic feedback to compute the position of the virtual probe from three-dimensional (3D) ultrasound recorded data. This paper presents the current version of this learning environment.
Classification of Pulmonary System Diseases Patterns Using Flow-Volume Curve
Authors: Arabalibeik Hossein  , Jafari Samaneh  , Agin Khosro
Published: February 2025

Spirometry is the most common pulmonary function test. It provides useful information for early detection of respiratory system abnormalities. While decision support systems use normally calculated parameters such as FEV1, FVC, and FEV1% to diagnose the pattern of respiratory system diseases, expert physicians pay close attention to the pattern of the flow-volume curve as well. Fisher discriminant analysis shows that coefficients of a simple polynomial function fitted to the curve, can capture the information about the disease patterns much better than the familiar single point parameters. A neural network then can classify the abnormality pattern as restrictive, obstructive, mixed, or normal. Using the data from 205 adult volunteers, total accuracy, sensitivity and specificity for four categories are 97.6%, 97.5% and 98.8% respectively.
A Model for Flexible Tools Used in Minimally Invasive Medical Virtual Environments
Authors: Soler Francisco  , Luzon M. Victoria  , Pop Serban R.  , Hughes Chris J.  , John Nigel W.  , Torres Juan Carlos
Published: February 2025

Within the limits of current technology, many applications of a virtual environment will trade-off accuracy for speed. This is not an acceptable compromise in a medical training application where both are essential. Efficient algorithms must therefore be developed. The purpose of this project is the development and validation of a novel physics-based real time tool manipulation model, which is easy to integrate into any medical virtual environment that requires support for the insertion of long flexible tools into complex geometries. This encompasses medical specialities such as vascular interventional radiology, endoscopy, and laparoscopy, where training, prototyping of new instruments/tools and mission rehearsal can all be facilitated by using an immersive medical virtual environment. Our model recognises and uses accurately patient specific data and adapts to the geometrical complexity of the vessel in real time.