The ankle-brachial index (ABI), defined as the ratio of systolic pressure in the ankle arteries and that in the brachial artery, was a useful noninvasive method to detect arterial stenoses. There had been a lot of researches about clinical regularities of ABI; however, mechanism studies were less addressed. For the purpose of a better understanding of the correlation between vascular stenoses a...

OBJECTIVE This study investigated the effects of a high-sympathetic stimulus environment (high-altitude hypoxia) on limb-specific systolic blood pressure (sBP) and ankle-brachial index (ABI) in normal volunteers. We hypothesized that currently accepted normal values for ABI may in fact not reflect an actual normal vascular state in all patients. METHODS Twenty climbers (17 males, 3 females) f...

The southern oscillation index (SOI) is a characteristic of the El Niño phenomenon. SOI monthly averaged data is analyzed for the time interval 1866-2000. The tail of the cumulative distribution of the fluctuations of SOI signal is studied in order to characterize the amplitude scaling of the fluctuations and the occurrence of extreme events. Large fluctuations are more likely to occur than the...

In literature, we can find different metrics to evaluate the detected edges in digital images, like Pratt's figure of merit (FOM), Jaccard's index (JI) and Dice's coefficient (DC). These metrics compare two images, the first one is the reference edges image, and the second one is the detected edges image. It is important to mention that all existing metrics must binarize images before their eva...

Background Questionnaires are essential for measurement of tinnitus severity and treatment-related change. Yet no standard measure is used across clinical and research settings. Current tinnitus questionnaires are limited to measuring severity or change, but not both [1,2]. The Tinnitus Functional Index (TFI) was developed as both a diagnostic measure of the functional impact of tinnitus and to...

Background Idiopathic toe walking (ITW) can present in children above the age of three, and occurs in the absence of any medically diagnosed conditions. Identification of medical conditions that are associated with toe walking can be complex and a potentially daunting task for those that infrequently assess children. In order to facilitate entry for appropriate toe walking children into an ITW ...