Minimally invasive atrial fibrillation surgery (MIAFS) has become a well established and increasingly used option for managing patients with stand-alone arrhythmia. Pulmonary veins (PVs) isolation continues to be the cornerstone of ablation strategies. Indeed, in most cases, atrial fibrillation (AF) is triggered in or near the PVs. Nevertheless, ectopic beats initiating AF may occasionally aris...

Protected values (PVs) are those that people think should not be traded off. Baron and Spranca (1997) proposed that such values result from rules concerning actions (as opposed to values for outcomes). This proposal implies that PVs should show a particularly large bias against harmful acts that undermine the value in question, as opposed to harmful omissions (omission bias). We found this corr...

Even though the primo vascular system (PVS) has been observed in large caliber lymph vessels by several independent teams, the presence of the PVS in the thoracic duct has been reported by only one team, probably because reproducing the experiment is technically difficult. This brief report presents a new, relatively straightforward method, which is a simple modification of the previous method ...

A realistic user interface is rigorously developed for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Generic Patient Controlled Analgesia (GPCA) pump prototype. The GPCA pump prototype is intended as a realistic workbench for trialling development methods and techniques for improving the safety of such devices. A model-based approach based on the use of formal methods is illustrated and implemented...

Segmentation of perivascular spaces (PVS) from brain magnetic resonance images (MRI) is important for understanding the brain’s lymphatic system and its relationship with neurological diseases. The Frangi filter might be a valuable tool for this purpose. However, its parameters need to be adjusted in response to the variability in scanner’s parameters and study protocols. Knowing the neuroradio...

This paper presents a practical application of the PVS theorem prover involving requirements analysis of real-time control systems. This work was conducted within the SafeFM project and relied on a real world avionics case study. We show how PVS was used to formalize the software requirements for the system and to verify safety-related properties. We also present the main result of the experime...

Assisted reproductive techniques require an efficient semen collection procedure in cases of ejaculatory dysfunction. Anejaculation may be of psychogenic or neurogenic origin but can be overcome with stimulatory techniques. Penile vibratory stimulation (PVS) therapy for anejaculation has recently emerged as an alternative to rectal probe electroejaculation (RPE) and more invasive testicular pro...

In this paper, we demonstrate feasibility of a development framework that integrates semi-formal graphical modeling techniques with formal methods (FMs). In particular, the framework integrates the Unified Modeling Language (UML) with the PVS environment to exploit the synergy between them. System descriptions are given in the graphical UML notations and translated into PVS specifications based...

Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) is the most common type of urinary incontinence, and approximately 200 different methods have been described for its surgical management. A better understanding of the pathophysiology of SUI has led to the development of surgical therapies focused on creating a strong suburethral supportive layer and urethral resistance. The most important advantage of the pubo...

Received ; accepted – 2 – ABSTRACT The Princeton Variability Survey (PVS) is a robotic survey which makes use of readily available, " off-the-shelf " type hardware products, in conjunction with a powerful set of commercial software products, in order to monitor and discover variable objects in the night sky. The main goal of the PVS has been to devise an automated telescope and data reduction s...