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Assessment of databases to determine the validity of beta- and gamma-carbonic anhydrase sequences from vertebrates
No full textDevelopment of Measurement Concepts for Canine Dry Electrode Electrocardiogram and Human Cardiac Construct Contraction Force Measurements
No full textInterest towards personal health has been growing during recent years. Heart rate (HR) monitoring has become an everyday life practice. The importance of this can be put to a context with the fact that approximately 40% of human deaths are caused by cardiac diseases. In its most basic forms HR monitoring does not reveal all information which would be available with methods such as electrocardiogram (ECG).
The trend of health monitoring is also becoming more and more common with pets and animals. HR monitoring systems are available for these applications but as with humans they seldom offer opportunity to explore the ECG outside the clinical environment. There the equipment can be bulky and require attention to operate properly. Known issues with the ECG electrodes in animal applications are that they may require shaving, use of electrically conductive gel or may be painful for the animal. Therefore, low maintenance dry ECG electrodes would be beneficial for these applications.
Cardiac diseases can be treated with various therapy methods which often involve the use of cardiac drugs. Drug development however is expensive and time consuming. The development work includes drug toxicity testing which has been carried out with, for example, animal testing. This raises ethical questions in the development work. Also, it has been proven that these toxicity research results may not provide accurate information about the cardiac drug toxicity to humans; in addition, the efficiency of the drug may often vary from patient to patient. Advances in stem cell culturing has enabled the opportunity to fabricate human genome cardiac constructs which can be used in the drug testing. Action- and biopotential measurements can be carried out in the drug development testing procedures. However cardiac contraction force measurement has been proposed to reveal more information about the drug efficacy and toxicity than the biopotential measurements.
In this thesis two cardiac cycle measurement topics were studied 1) the dry canine ECG electrodes and 2) contraction force measurement system for human induced cardiac constructs. In order to study anomalies and abnormalities of the measured cardiac cycles, a pattern matcher analysis method is proposed for a classification and detection of those.
Five different dry canine ECG electrodes were constructed, and their performance was tested. None of these ECG electrodes required shaving or application of electrically conductive gel. The testing procedure was used to resemble everyday use of the electrodes. The highest average proportion of the correctly detected heartbeats of 95% was achieved with gold plated electrodes in a standing and sitting posture while the lowest figure was 41% with 12- pin polymeric electrode during walking.
Cardiac construct contraction force was studied with a single and dual axis piezoelectric cantilever force measurement systems. These were developed, fabricated, and evaluated for contraction force measurement of cardiac constructs in vitro. Maximum measured contraction forces ranged from 3.0 to 11.2 µN during the cycle. The coefficient of variation of these force measurements varied from 1.0% to 16.8% depending on the configuration of the measurement
Impact of HPV vaccination on cervical screening performance : a population-based cohort study
No full text3D Semantic Mesh for Augmented Reality
No full textIn the augmented reality (AR) or robotics applications, it is important to enhance the perception of robots or users. In many AR applications, 3D spaces of both indoor and outdoor scenes are already available but usually they do not present the environment with the semantic labels.
Therefore, in this project we propose a pipeline to construct the labeled 3D mesh of the actual environment of our office. The first stage is acquiring the point cloud data of the real office. The second stage is the 3D semantic segmentation on the point cloud. A pre-trained convolutional neural networks are used for the 3D semantic segmentation. After the segmentation process, each point in the office is assigned one specific class. Then, the surface reconstruction from the point cloud is the third step in our proposed approach. The last stage is the integration of the result of the semantic segmentation and the mesh of our data. The class of each point is interpolated to the vertices of triangular mesh to generate the annotated 3D mesh. The final result of this work is the mesh of our office, which is annotated by the classes by using the different colors of each class.
This 3D semantic mesh will be able to have an opportunity to be uploaded on the smart phone or portable devices for the further development. Then, users can explore this semantically labeled space by using their mobile devices
Asiakkaiden kokemuksia puhelinneuvonnan toteutumisesta perusterveydenhuollossa : kirjallisuuskatsaus
No full textDevelopment of novel human in vitro vascularized adipose tissue model with functional macrophages
No full textAssessment of Data Visualizations for Clinical Decision Support
No full textSince the wide adoption of electronic health records, the amount of clinical data has increased dramatically. It has been estimated that in 2013 there was a total of 153 exabytes of clinical data, and by 2020 this number will increase to 2 314 worldwide. Another estimate has calculated that the average patient generates 80 megabytes of data per year. Clinicians rely on clinical data to make informed decisions at the point of care. However, the volume and complexity of clinical data along with time constraints, make the diagnosis process challenging, time-consuming and prone to errors. It has been estimated that the number of deaths due to clinical misdiagnosed are between 44 000 and 98 000 per year in the United States. By using computerized data visualization techniques, clinicians can extract valuable insights, reducing cognitive overload. Consistent and structured methodologies that assess clinical data visualizations and their effect on the decision making process, are still missing. The gap that the thesis aims to bridge is to develop a methodology that allows the assessment of clinical data visualizations in terms of their efficacy in supporting clinical decision making. The purpose of this thesis is to develop such methodology, which studies the reasoning derived from the visualization and how this affects the clinical decision making process at an individual level. The first experiment compared five different visualization techniques. The study measured the quantity and quality of insights obtained by the users of the visualizations. This assessment technique has not been used before in the context of clinical data. By evaluating the visualizations in this way, it was objectively determined that from the visualization techniques used in the study, the radar plots were the most effective in enabling the generation of hypotheses and in acquiring accurate understanding of the data. The second experiment studied a dashboard representing the evolution of health and wellness of a modelled patient. The dashboard included an improved version of the radar plots used in the previous study. By using methods such as heuristics, cognitive walk-through, analytic tasks, and usability questionnaires, it was objectively determined that the dashboard was effective in assisting users to find critical information and gain accurate understanding of the clinical data. The study was able to quantify and demonstrate the degree to which the dashboard proved useful for its intended audience by scoring an average of 6.02 out of 7 points in the usability studies and a completion rate of analytical tasks of 96 percent. The third and last experiment compared an existing tabular interface for clinical data against an interactive visualized timeline. The methodology used in this study was the same as in the first experiment. However, the chronological and longitudinal nature of the clinical data required adaptations to the methodology. The use of this methodology to evaluate longitudinal data visualizations has not been reported in previous studies. By applying this novel approach, it was objectively determined that the timeline enabled clinicians to deduce the underlying conditions of the patients, reflecting a deep understanding of the data by connecting information scattered over a period of time. These three assessments followed state-of-the-art methodologies in the discipline of data visualization that have not been used before for the purpose of clinical decision making. The objectives of the thesis were met by applying novel assessment techniques. By applying quantitative and qualitative research, it was possible to compare visualizations in a clinical context and provided better understanding on what makes a good visualization. The publications in this dissertation document experiments conducted to study the reasoning derived from the visualization and how this affects the clinical decision making process at an individual level. By utilizing consistent methodologies such as the insight-based, usability testing and cognitive walkthrough, different visualizations were objectively compared and assessed. These documented experiments can serve as blueprints for future studies. With a deeper understanding on the impact of visualization tools in the clinical decision making process, researchers can develop better visualizations to ease the cognitive burden of making sense of complex data. With better visualizations, clinicians can gain deeper understanding of the data, making better decisions, resulting in better patient outcome
Asteroid Tomography by Utilizing Nanosatellites
No full textViimeisen kymmenen vuoden aikana pienten ns. nanosatelliittien hyödyntäminen matalalla Maan kiertoradalla on kasvattanut suosiotaan CubeSat-standardin ansiosta. Nämä nanosatelliitit ovat olleet tärkeä osa ns. uutta avaruusteollisuutta, jossa toinen toistaan suuremmat tavoitteet on mahdollista saavuttaa halvempaa tekniikkaa hyödyntäen. Nanosatelliitteja on käytetty toistaiseksi pääasiassa tutkimus- ja teknologiankehitystarkoituksiin, ja varsinaiset tieteelliset avaruusmissiot on tehty suurempia avaruuslaitteita käyttäen. Yksi tällaisista missioista oli Euroopan avaruusjärjestö ESA:n Rosetta-missio, joka kohtasi komeetta 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenkon elokuuussa 2014. Lennon yhtenä peruselementtinä oli kokeilla radiotomografiakoetta, jossa komeetan sisustan rakenne olisi kartoitettu tutkasignaaleilla. Tämä väitöskirja tutkii nanosatelliittien käyttöä pienten Maan lähiasteroidien sisustan kartoitukseen. Tätä ei ole yritetty aikaisemmin. Väitöskirjatutkimuksen aikana ESA valitsi nanosatelliitteja Didymos-asteroidille lentävälle Hera-missiolleen. Yksi valituista nanosatelliiteista sisältää radiotomografiainstrumentin, joka pohjautuu aikaisemmassa Rosetta-missiossa ja sen Philae-laskeutujassa käytettyyn tekniikkaan.
Tämä väitöstutkimus laajentaa Tampereen yliopiston inversio-ongelmien tutkimusryhmän aikaisempaa työtä. Tutkimuksessa on simuloitu radioaaltojen etenemistä asteroidin sisällä elementtimenetelmällä, sekä koko vastaanotetun aaltodatan käyttämistä huippuluokan matemaattisilla inversiomenetelmillä siten, että asteroidin sisä-rakenne saadaan kuvannettua. Painopiste työssä on mittausmenetelmän ja kohinan vaikutuksessa kuvannustulokseen sekä mallinnuksen parantamiseen siten, että elementtimenetelmää voidaan käyttää, vaikka mittausta suorittavat avaruusalukset olisivat simulaatiossa käytetyn elementtiverkon ulkopuolella. Tärkeä osa työtä on myös viimeisimpien grafiikkaprosessoreiden (GPU) hyödyntäminen, koska niiden avulla simulaatioiden suoritusaikaa pystytään nopeuttamaan sekä lokaaleilla työasemilla että laskentaklustereissa.
Nanosatelliitin käyttämisestä tässä tarkoituksessa tehtiin Deep Interior Scanning CubeSat (DISCUS) -niminen soveltuvuustutkimus yhdessä projektikumppaneiden kanssa. DISCUS-konseptin tavoitteena oli lennättää nanosatelliitti Maan lähiasteroidille ja tehdä tarvittavat mittaukset, tallentaa data ja lähettää data Maahan. Tutkimus sisältää analyysin tällä hetkellä saatavilla olevista nanosatelliitien komponenteista, niiden realistisista suoritusarvoista, lennon parametrien analyysin sekä mahdolliset kohdeasteroidit. DISCUS-konseptia laajennettiin myöhemmin avaruusmissioksi nimeltä Asteroid In-situ Interior Investigation - 3way (Ai3), joka oli ehdolla ESA:n F-tyypin missiohaussa kesällä 2018. Vaikka Ai3:a ei valittu, se oli yksi kuudesta ehdotuksesta haun toisella kierroksella. Yleinen kiinnostus Maan lähiasteroidien tutkimukseen osoittaa, että ne ovat tärkeitä tieteen, maapallon puolustuksen sekä myös kaupallisten toimijoiden näkökulmista, mikä motivoi asteroidien kuvantamisen tekniikan jatkotutkimuksia.In the last 10 years, utilization of nanosatellites has gained popularity in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) applications via the CubeSat standard. They have been an important part of so called new space economy, where larger and larger objectives in space can be achieved with low-cost, off-the-shelf electronics. While CubeSats have remained for research and technology development purposes, the science-oriented space missions have utilized larger spacecraft. One such mission was the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Rosetta mission, which reached comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in August 2014. An integral part of the mission was to attempt a radio tomography experiment, where the interior structure of the comet would have been mapped via radar signals. This thesis considers utilization of CubeSat-scale spacecraft to attempt to recover the interior structure of a small Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA). This has not been attempted before. During this thesis project, ESA selected CubeSats to fly on the Hera mission to asteroid Didymos. One of these CubeSats will include a radar instrument based on the one on Rosetta and its lander, Philae.
This thesis extends the previous work of the Inverse Problems research group in Tampere University in simulating radio wave propagation within the asteroid via Finite-Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method as well as using the full wave measurement data in state of the art mathematical inversion strategies to recover the interior structure of the asteroid. Here, the focus is on investigating the effects of the measurement strategy and noise to the inversion results, improving the speed and accuracy of the method by using a multiresolution approach, and extending the modeling domain to make it possible to performthe simulations when the transmitting and receiving spacecraft are in far field, outside the finite element mesh based simulation domain. Important aspect of the work includes utilization of state-oftheart Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) which make it possible to accelerate the simulations both locally and in a calculation cluster.
A CubeSat feasibility study called Deep Interior Scanning CubeSat (DISCUS) was performed during the thesis project with the project collaborators. The goal of DISCUS is to fly a CubeSat to a NEA and perform the measurements, store the data and send the data back to Earth. The study includes analysis of currently available CubeSat hardware with realistic performance parameters, analysis of the mission parameters and the potential target asteroids, and realistic orbital parameters to perform the measurements on-site. DISCUS concept was later extended for a space mission called Asteroid In-situ Interior Investigation - 3way (Ai3), which was proposed for ESA’s F-class mission call in summer of 2018. While Ai3 was not selected, it was one of the six proposals on the second round of the process. The general interest towards studies of NEAs indicate that NEAs remain important for science, planetary protection purposes, as well as commercial companies, which motivates further studies in the topic
Clinical and Histopathological Effects of Current Keloid Treatments
No full textKeloidien hoito on edelleen haastavaa, vaikka lukuisia hoitomenetelmiä onkin esitetty. Keloidiarpi saattaa syntyä jopa minimaalisen ihon trauman seurauksena, eikä syytä keloidien esiintymiseen tiedetä. Keloidit voivat aiheuttaa potilaalle sekä toiminnallista että kosmeettista haittaa. Yleensä ne oireilevat kutinana ja kipuna. Keloidit syntyvät häiriintyneen haavan paranemisketjun seurauksena, mutta etiopatogeneesi on edelleen laajalti tuntematon, vaikka aiheesta on huomattavan paljon tutkimuksia. Keloidisairaus ilmenee yleensä nuoremmilla aikuisilla, joiden iho on vielä säilyttänyt kimmoisuutensa.
Yleisesti ehkä käytetyin keloidien hoitomenetelmä on triamsinolonipistokset (TAC). Nykykäsityksen mukaan huomattava osa keloideista ei kuitenkaan reagoi toivotulla tavalla kortisonihoitoon. Näin ollen on tullut tarve harkita muita hoitovaihtoja kuten 5-fluorourasiili (5-FU) injektioita. Lisäksi triamsinolonihoidosta on raportoitu huomattavasti paikallisia haitta-vaikutuksia.
Tässä väitöskirjatyössä tutkittiin Tampereen yliopistollisessa sairaalassa vuosina 1996-2018 hoidettuja keloidipotilaita sekä retrospektiivisesti että prospektiivisesti. Ensimmäisessä osassa tehtiin 50 keloidin satunnaiskontrolloitu tutkimus, jonka seuranta aika oli 6 kuukautta. Tutkimuksen tarkoitus oli selvittää 5-FU hoidon roolia keloidien hoidossa sekä verrata sen tehoa TAC injektioihin. Tutkimuksessa käytettiin sekä kliinisiä että histologisia menetelmiä tulosten arvioimiseksi. Tutkimuksen toisessa osassa tutkittiin kirurgian ja siihen yhdistetyn sädehoidon tuloksia Taysissa retrospektiivisessä seurantatutkimuksessa.
Tutkimuksessa todettiin, että TAC-hoidossa ilmenee kuitenkin todennäköisesti luultua enemmän paikallisia haittavaikutuksia, kuten ihoatrofiaa ja pintaverisuonten laajentumista. Lisäksi tutkimuksessa todettiin, että kortisonin aiheuttamat haittavaikutukset ovat aikaisemmin raportoitua pysyvämpiä muutoksia, jotka eivät todennäköisesti parane itsestään. Väitöstyön tulosten mukaan molemmat hoidot, TAC ja 5-FU, ovat yhtä tehokkaita keloidien hoidossa. Immunohistokemiallisissa analyyseissä todettiin, että myofibroblastit ovat tärkeässä roolissa keloidisairaudessa etenkin niissä keloideissa, jotka reagoivat suotuisasti 5-FU ja TAC-hoitoihin. Keloidien kirurginen hoito yhdistettynä toimenpiteen jälkeiseen sädehoitoon todettiin analysoidussa aineistossa tehokkaimmaksi hoidoksi, minkä vuoksi tätä hoitomenetelmää tulisikin mahdollisesti harkita ensisijaisena hoitona etenkin aikuisilla keloidipotilailla.From a therapeutic point of view, keloids represent a clinical challenge. The high recurrence rate of the disease is one of the many obstacles involved. Keloids are induced by even the most minor skin trauma, and their etiopathogenesis is still only partially understood despite exhaustive studies. Keloid disease mostly affects people in their early adulthood. A number of different treatment strategies are currently available, which can be very confusing for the treating physician. There is also a lack of proper scientific data. To date, there seems to be a consensus that the first line of keloid treatment is triamcinolone (TAC) injections, when feasible. However, recent evidence and clinical findings suggest that up to half of keloid patients are resistant to this treatment. Also, a relatively high number of side effects, like skin atrophy and telangiectasias, have been reported after TAC treatments. Hence, the use of alternative treatment modalities, such as 5-flurouracil (5-FU), have been reported for keloids. In addition, the role of surgical excision with post-operative radiotherapy has increased in keloid treatment.
Keloid patients, who attended Tampere University Hospital in 1996-2018, were studied retrospectively and prospectively. At first, 43 patients with 50 keloids were enrolled to a randomized controlled trial comparing the efficacy and biological effects of TAC and 5-FU injections. Then, the collected biopsies were analyzed obtained from these 43 patients and assessed the histological effects of these injection on keloid tissue in vivo. Finally in the results of the keloids treated with surgery and radiotherapy in Tampere University hospital were assessed retrospectively.
According this study, local adverse effects (telangiectasis, skinatrophy) seem to be more permanent than what has been presented previously. No significant difference was found between the efficacy of TAC and 5-FU in the treatment of keloids, and both of these drugs can be used safely. However, according to this study, it seems that TAC injections result in greater local side effects, including skin atrophy and telangiectasia, than 5-FU. According a histological and immunohistological analysis, myofibroblasts play a crucial role in keloid formation, especially in keloids which respond to these (TAC, 5-FU) therapies. Finally, it seems that the most effective method of keloid treatment is surgery and adjuvant radiotherapy, which may be considered as the first line therapy in adult patients