The relation between the profusion and predominant type of small rounded opacities on chest radiographs taken within four years of death and the postmortem counts of dust lesions in four classes (macules, "pinhead" fibrotic nodules, nodules 1-3 mm, and nodules greater than 3-9 mm in diameter) has been examined for 71 coalworkers without progressive massive fibrosis. The radiographs were categor...

The extent of agreement between International Labour Office (ILO) and clinical readings of chest x ray films from construction workers was studied. From a survey of 5898 workers 258 subjects with a profusion of small opacities of > or = 1/1 and a stratified sample of subjects with profusion < 1/1 were selected. Only 41% of the films classified as ILO profusion category > or = 1/1 were clinicall...

The aim of this study was to develop a screening system of chest radiographs of miners with pneumoconiosis. Chest radiographs were of coal mine or silica dust exposed miners participating in a health screening program. A total of 236 regions of interest (ROIs) (166, 49, and 21 with profusions of category (shape and size) 0, 1(q), and 1(r), respectively) were identified from 74 digitized chest r...

This study involved the examination of 1,006 chest x-ray films of workers from the industries devoted to shipyard welding, stone grinding, and refractory crushing in southern Okayama prefecture. Of the reviewed films, analysis was focused on subjects with a profusion rate of 0/1 as well as pneumoconiotic subjects (exhibiting profusion rates of 1/0 or greater) in order to discover cases in the b...

BACKGROUND The Sheet Metal Occupational Health Institute Trust (SMOHIT) established a screening program in 1985 to examine the health hazards of the sheet metal industry in the U.S. and Canada. METHODS 17,345 individuals with over 20 years in the trade and who participated in the program were followed for causes of death between 1986 and 2010. Both SMRs and Cox proportional hazards models inv...

The aim of this research is to develop new image processing models that can be used to characterize single opacities and opacity density within pre-selected regions of interest (ROI). We derive our new image processing models based on the International Labor Organization (ILO) standard for assessing opacity shape and profusion. Pattern Spectrum analysis is used for opacity shape and profusion m...

The goal of this project is to develop an intelligent, adaptive Web search tool. Our work is based on ProFusion, a Web meta-search engine developed at the University of Kansas. ProFusion analyzes incoming queries, categorizes them, and automatically picks the best search engines for the query based on a priori knowledge (confidence factors) which represents the suitability of each search engine...

Storage phosphor computed radiography (SR) and flat-panel detector (FPD) radiography are two types of digital X-ray utilizing different techniques. We compared these two techniques with conventional analogue chest radiograph (AR) among pneumoconiotic patients and healthy controls. Thirty individuals consisting of 20 silica-exposed ex-workers and 10 healthy controls without occupational exposure...