Microscope Digital Camera Adapter

Quantitative microlaryngoscopic measurements of vocal fold polyps, glottal gap and their relation to vocal function.

Medicina (Kaunas). 2008;44(4):266-72

Authors: Uloza V, Kaseta M, Pribuisiene R, Saferis V, Jokūzis V, Gelzinis A, Bacauskiene M

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to quantify the size of vocal fold polyps and to investigate the relationship between the glottal gap and parameters of acoustic voice analysis and phonetography. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Eighty-one microlaryngoscopic images and digital recordings of voices (acoustic analysis and phonetogram) acquired from the patients with vocal fold polyps (VFPs) were employed in this study. Vocal fold (VF) images were collected during routine direct microlaryngoscopy using Moller-Wedel Universa 300 surgical microscope, 3-CCD Elmo 768 x 576-pixel color video camera and a 300 W Xenon light source. Acoustic voice analysis and phonetography were established using Dr. Speech (Tiger Electronics Inc.) software. Microlaryngoscopic images were processed by original software created by ELINTA and displayed on a monitor. The relative lengths and widths of vocal fold polyps as well as percentage area of VFP were calculated. The Pearson's correlation was applied to reveal the correlation between VFP dimensions and acoustic voice parameters. RESULTS: There were no statistically significant differences between the dimensions of left and right vocal folds and VFPs. Statistically significant slight to mild correlations between measured dimensions of VFP acoustic and phonetogram parameters were revealed, with HNR and phonetogram area showing the strongest correlation to the size of VFPs. CONCLUSION: The results of our study confirm that quantitative microlaryngoscopic measurements of vocal fold polyp and glottal gap dimensions may be a useful tool for objective assessment of glottic incompetence and voice impairment.

PMID: 18469502 [PubMed - in process]

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An open and reconfigurable wireless sensor network for pervasive health monitoring.

Methods Inf Med. 2008;47(3):229-34

Authors: Triantafyllidis A, Koutkias V, Chouvarda I, Maglaveras N

OBJECTIVES: Sensor networks constitute the backbone for the construction of personalized monitoring systems. Up to now, several sensor networks have been proposed for diverse pervasive healthcare applications, which are however characterized by a significant lack of open architectures, resulting in closed, non-interoperable and difficult to extend solutions. In this context, we propose an open and reconfigurable wireless sensor network (WSN) for pervasive health monitoring, with particular emphasis in its easy extension with additional sensors and functionality by incorporating embedded intelligence mechanisms. METHODS: We consider a generic WSN architecture comprised of diverse sensor nodes (with communication and processing capabilities) and a mobile base unit (MBU) operating as the gateway between the sensors and the medical personnel, formulating this way a body area network (BAN). The primary focus of this work is on the intra-BAN data communication issues, adopting SensorML as the data representation mean, including the encoding of the monitoring patterns and the functionality of the sensor network. RESULTS: In our prototype implementation two sensor nodes are emulated; one for heart rate monitoring and the other for blood glucose observations, while the MBU corresponds to a personal digital assistant (PDA) device. Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) is used to implement both the sensor nodes and the MBU components. Intra-BAN wireless communication relies on the Blue-tooth protocol. Via an adaptive user interface in the MBU, health professionals may specify the monitoring parameters of the WSN and define the monitoring patterns of interest in terms of rules. CONCLUSIONS: This work constitutes an essential step towards the construction of open, extensible, inter-operable and intelligent WSNs for pervasive health monitoring.

PMID: 18473089 [PubMed - in process]