1,721,014 research outputs found
Extraction of Muscle Anatomical and Physiological Information from Multi-Channel Surface EMG Signals: Applications in Obstetrics
No full textMotor Unit (MU) innervation zones (IZs) localization is an important step in several clinical and non-clinical applications including 1) Acquisition of sEMG signal for accurate estimation of its amplitude and other parameters by avoiding placing the electrodes on IZs, 2) Accurate estimation of the EMG-Force relationship, 3) Effective injection of Botulinum Toxin in Post-stroke Spasticity near the IZs, and 4) Guiding the obstetricians to perform episiotomy during child delivery by avoiding cutting near the IZs of External Anal Sphincter (EAS) muscle. The minimal invasive way to identify the location of the IZs generally for any muscle and specifically for EAS muscle is to use multi-channel EMG signals. MU IZs can be detected from the multi-channel sEMG signals, for a fusiform muscle if the signal is acquired with an array of electrodes placed parallel to the muscle fibers, using digital signal and image processing algorithms. As most of the signal processing algorithms work on an adequate quality of the signal, thus before detecting the innervation zone it is made sure that the signal is of good quality. For this purpose, a method based on statistical thresholding of various parameters is proposed to detect the bad channels in the sEMG signals. If the number of the bad consecutive channels are more than 2 then it is suggested to acquire the signal again, otherwise each bad channel is approximated by the interpolation of its neighbor channels. As some background noise is always acquired with the EMG signal so further image enhancement techniques are used to enhance the MUAP propagation region in the spatio-temporal images and suppress the background noise. The MUAP pattern is then detected in the spatio-temporal sEMG images using multi-scale Hessian based filtering and the corresponding MU IZs are identified as the starting point of propagation of the MUAP. A software is also developed which can be used to visualize the signals acquired from EAS, detect and display the IZs and more importantly compute and display the histogram of the IZs and generate reports which will help the obstetrician while performing episiotomy during child delivery to avoid cutting vulnerable regions that may lead to fecal incontinence at later age
Automatic detection of motor unit innervation zones of the external anal sphincter by multichannel surface EMG
No full textA method to detect automatically the location of innervation zones (IZs) from 16-channel surface EMG (sEMG) recordings from the external anal sphincter (EAS) muscle is presented in order to guide episiotomy during child delivery. The new algorithm (2DCorr) is applied to individual motor unit action
potential (MUAP) templates and is based on bidimensional cross correlation between the interpolated image of each MUAP template and two images obtained by flipping upside-down (around a horizontal axis) and left–right (around a vertical axis) the original one. The method was tested on 640 simulated MUAP templates of the sphincter muscle and compared with previously developed algorithms (Radon Transform, RT; Template Match, TM). Experimental signals were detected from the EAS of 150 subjects using an intra-anal probe with 16 equally spaced circumferential electrodes. The results of the three algorithms were compared with the actual IZ location (simulated signal) and with IZ location provided by visual analysis (VA) (experimental signals). For simulated signals, the inter quartile error range
(IQR) between the estimated and the actual locations of the IZ was 0.20, 0.23, 0.42, and 2.32 interelectrode distances (IED) for the VA, 2DCorr, RT and TM methods respectively
Power line interference attenuation in multi-channel sEMG signals: Algorithms and analysis
No full textThermal characterisation analysis and modelling techniques for CubeSat-sized spacecrafts
No full text
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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