Thousands of medical images are saved in databases every day and the need for algorithms able to handle such data in an unsupervised manner is steadily increasing. The classification of ultrasound images is an outstandingly difficult task, due to the high noise level of these images. We present a detailed description of an algorithm based on multiscale elastic registration capable of unsupervis...

BACKGROUND Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato and Anaplasma phagocytophilum have been considered as pathogens in animals and humans. The role of wild cervids in the epidemiology is not clear. We analyzed questing Ixodes ricinus ticks collected in spring for these pathogens from sites with high (Fjelløyvaer and Strøm) and low density (Tjore, Hinnebu and Jomfruland) of wild cervids to study the spre...

The uptake of faecal occult blood testing in a workplace based colorectal cancer screening programme was investigated. Altogether 1828 employees aged 41-65 years at a large British industrial company were invited to receive a free faecal occult blood test (Haemoccult). Faecal occult blood tests were completed on three separate days. Patients with positive results were invited to undergo colonos...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the changing patterns of the spectrum and frequency of causes for chronic cough, and to explore its clinical implications. METHODS Nine hundred and forty patients consecutively referred to Department of Respiratory Medicine for evaluation of chronic cough between January 2004 and December 2008 were collected and divided into 5 groups by periods of 5 years. The causes ...

BACKGROUND Increased QT interval dispersion (QTd) is a proposed ECG marker of vulnerability to ventricular arrhythmias and of cardiovascular (CV) mortality. However, principal component analysis (PCA) of the T-wave vector loop may more accurately represent repolarization abnormalities than QTd. METHODS AND RESULTS Predictive values of QTd and PCA were assessed in 1839 American Indian particip...

Discretization can turn numeric attributes into discrete ones. Feature selection can eliminate some irrelevant attributes. This paper describes Chi2, a simple and general algorithm that uses the 2 statistic to discretize numeric attributes repeatedly until some inconsistencies are found in the data, and achieves feature selection via discretization. The empirical results demonstrate that Chi2 i...

A pool of Arabidopsis lines transformed with the activation vector was screened for short hypocotyl mutants under dim far-red light, and three mutant lines designated chibi1-3 (chi) were isolated. Among the chi mutants, chi2 was dominant. The chi2 seedlings were short, regardless of the light conditions. The chi2 mature plants exhibited phenotypic features such as dwarfism, reduced male fertili...

The study examines the effect of neighborhood deprivation on gender. It shows that most residents are deprived and that though, in Lagos State, the gender differences in the level of deprivation may not be too pronounced, yet, women, because of their socio-traditional roles in the society are more at a receiving end. There is gender difference in the distance an individual has to cover to get t...

The impact of a school health club on adult perception of onchocerciasis and compliance with ivermectin was evaluated in an onchocerciasis-endemic community in southeastern Nigeria. Venous blood was collected from each of 26, 32 and 124 randomly selected subjects during ivermectin distribution programmes in 1995 1996 and 1997 respectively. Ivermectin concentrations were measured in the samples....

BACKGROUND In a recent study, we reported that the Duke treadmill score was unable to effectively stratify elderly patients according to risk. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prognostic value of exercise single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) in this same population and to examine results by gender. METHODS AND RESULTS A cohort of 247 elderly (age > or =75 years) pat...