A number of methods have previously been described which carry out linkage analysis considering information for two or more loci simultaneously. Apart from some ad hoc methods such as analysing subsamples, these methods use information regarding linkage at all loci under consideration. However, if the actual genotype-specific effects are known for some loci then it would be preferable to consid...

In this paper we introduce a Relaxed Dimensional Factorization (RDF) preconditioner for saddle point problems. Properties of the preconditioned matrix are analyzed and compared with those of the closely related Dimensional Splitting (DS) preconditioner recently introduced by Benzi and Guo [7]. Numerical results for a variety of finite element discretizations of both steady and unsteady incompre...

OBJECTIVES Biomedical ontologies exist to serve integration of clinical and experimental data, and it is critical to their success that they be put to widespread use in the annotation of data. How, then, can ontologies achieve the sort of user-friendliness, reliability, cost-effectiveness, and breadth of coverage that is necessary to ensure extensive usage? METHODS Our focus here is on two di...

Non-missile penetrating brain injuries are rare events in western countries. We report a case with lethal stab injury of the brain and identification of the weapon used in the assault by digital superimposition on CT scans taken at admission of the victim to a hospital. Furthermore, all cases with knife stab wounds of the skull between 1971 and 2000 were analyzed and compared with literature re...

To design and implement a set of quality assurance tests for an innovative 3D volumetric display for radiation treatment planning applications. A genuine 3D display (Perspecta Spatial 3D, Actuality-Systems Inc., Bedford, MA) has been integrated with the Pinnacle TPS (Philips Medical Systems, Madison WI), for treatment planning. The Perspecta 3D display renders a 25 cm diameter volume that is vi...

Edge detection in medical images has generated significant interest in the medical informatics community, especially in recent years. With the advent of imaging technology in biomedical and clinical domains, the growth in medical digital images has exceeded our capacity to analyze and store them for efficient representation and retrieval, especially for data mining applications. Medical decisio...

In the early 1980’s, the ultrasonic polar scan (UPS) technique was developed to assess the fiber direction of composites in a nondestructive way. In spite of the recognition by several researchers as being a sophisticated and promising methodology for nondestructive testing (NDT) and materials science, little advance was made during the following 30 years. Recently however, the UPS technique ex...

Accurate predictions of functional outcome after limb salvage surgery (LSS) in the lower limb are important for several reasons, including informing the patient preoperatively and, in some cases, deciding between amputation and LSS. This study aimed to elucidate the correlation between surgeon-predicted and patient-reported functional outcome of LSS in the Netherlands. Twenty-three patients (be...

Diagnostic brain MRI scans are usually performed by trained medical technologists who manually prescribe the position and orientation of a scanning volume. In this study, a fully automatic computer algorithm is described which compensates for variable patient positioning and acquires brain MRI scans in a predefined reference orientation. The method involves acquiring a rapid water-only pilot sc...