Displaying publications 1 - 20 of 30 in total

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  1. Zhang MWB, Ho RCM, Ng CG
    Technol Health Care, 2017 Dec 04;25(6):1173-1176.
    PMID: 28946598 DOI: 10.3233/THC-170868
    In psychiatry, mindfulness based intervention has been increasingly popular as a means of psychosocial intervention over the last decade. With the alvanche of technological advances, there has been a myriad of mindfulness based applications. Recent reviews have highlighted how these applications are lacking in functionalities and without demonstrated efficacy. Other reviews have emphasized that there is a need to take into consideration the design of an application, due to placebo effects. It is the aim of this technical note to illustrate how the 5-Minutes Mindfulness application, which is an application designed to provide mindfulness exercises to relieve distress and suffering amongst palliative patients, have been conceptualized. The conceptualized application builds on previous evidence of the efficacy of 5-Minutes Mindfulness demonstrated by pilot and randomized trials. In terms of design, the currently conceptualized application has been designed such that placebo effects could be controlled for.
  2. Singh OP, Ahmed IB, Malarvili MB
    Technol Health Care, 2018;26(5):785-794.
    PMID: 30124456 DOI: 10.3233/THC-181288
    BACKGROUND: Assessment of asthma outside of the hospital using a patient independent device is highly in demand due to the limitation of existing devices, which are manual and unreliable if patients are not cooperative.

    OBJECTIVE: The study aims to verify the use of newly developed human respiration, carbon dioxide (CO2) measurement device for the management of asthma outside of the hospital.

    METHOD: The data were collected from 60 subjects aged between 18-35 years via convenience sampling method reported in UTM Health Center using the device. Furthermore, the data were normalized and analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, and area (Az) under receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC).

    RESULT: Findings revealed that the normalized mean values of end-tidal carbon dioxide (EtCO2), Hjorth Activity (HA), and respiratory rate (RR) were lower in asthmatic compared with healthy subjects with minimum deviation from the mean. In addition, each parameter was found to significantly differ statistically for asthma and non-asthma with p< 0.05. Furthermore, the Az shows the strong association for the screening of asthma and non-asthma with an average of 0.71 (95% CI: 0.57-0.83), 0.77 (95% CI: 0.64-0.90), and 0.83 (95% CI: 0.73-0.94) for RR, EtCO2, and HA, respectively.

    CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that the newly developed handheld human respiration CO2 measurement device may possibly be used as an effort-independent asthma management method outside of the hospital.
  3. El-Badawy IM, Singh OP, Omar Z
    Technol Health Care, 2021;29(1):59-72.
    PMID: 32716337 DOI: 10.3233/THC-202198
    BACKGROUND: The quantitative features of a capnogram signal are important clinical metrics in assessing pulmonary function. However, these features should be quantified from the regular (artefact-free) segments of the capnogram waveform.

    OBJECTIVE: This paper presents a machine learning-based approach for the automatic classification of regular and irregular capnogram segments.

    METHODS: Herein, we proposed four time- and two frequency-domain features experimented with the support vector machine classifier through ten-fold cross-validation. MATLAB simulation was conducted on 100 regular and 100 irregular 15 s capnogram segments. Analysis of variance was performed to investigate the significance of the proposed features. Pearson's correlation was utilized to select the relatively most substantial ones, namely variance and the area under normalized magnitude spectrum. Classification performance, using these features, was evaluated against two feature sets in which either time- or frequency-domain features only were employed.

    RESULTS: Results showed a classification accuracy of 86.5%, which outperformed the other cases by an average of 5.5%. The achieved specificity, sensitivity, and precision were 84%, 89% and 86.51%, respectively. The average execution time for feature extraction and classification per segment is only 36 ms.

    CONCLUSION: The proposed approach can be integrated with capnography devices for real-time capnogram-based respiratory assessment. However, further research is recommended to enhance the classification performance.

  4. Namazi H, Aghasian E, Ala TS
    Technol Health Care, 2020;28(1):57-66.
    PMID: 31104032 DOI: 10.3233/THC-181579
    Analysis of human brain activity is an important topic in human neuroscience. Human brain activity can be studied by analyzing the electroencephalography (EEG) signal. In this way, scientists have employed several techniques that investigate nonlinear dynamics of EEG signals. Fractal theory as a promising technique has shown its capabilities to analyze the nonlinear dynamics of time series. Since EEG signals have fractal patterns, in this research we analyze the variations of fractal dynamics of EEG signals between four datasets that were collected from healthy subjects with open-eyes and close-eyes conditions, patients with epilepsy who did and patients who did not face seizures. The obtained results showed that EEG signal during seizure has greatest complexity and the EEG signal during the seizure-free interval has lowest complexity. In order to verify the obtained results in case of fractal analysis, we employ approximate entropy, which indicates the randomness of time series. The obtained results in case of approximate entropy certified the fractal analysis results. The obtained results in this research show the effectiveness of fractal theory to investigate the nonlinear structure of EEG signal between different conditions.
  5. Ahamed MRA, Babini MH, Namazi H
    Technol Health Care, 2020 Mar 13.
    PMID: 32200368 DOI: 10.3233/THC-192105
    BACKGROUND: The human voice is the main feature of human communication. It is known that the brain controls the human voice. Therefore, there should be a relation between the characteristics of voice and brain activity.

    OBJECTIVE: In this research, electroencephalography (EEG) as the feature of brain activity and voice signals were simultaneously analyzed.

    METHOD: For this purpose, we changed the activity of the human brain by applying different odours and simultaneously recorded their voices and EEG signals while they read a text. For the analysis, we used the fractal theory that deals with the complexity of objects. The fractal dimension of EEG signal versus voice signal in different levels of brain activity were computed and analyzed.

    RESULTS: The results indicate that the activity of human voice is related to brain activity, where the variations of the complexity of EEG signal are linked to the variations of the complexity of voice signal. In addition, the EEG and voice signal complexities are related to the molecular complexity of applied odours.

    CONCLUSION: The employed method of analysis in this research can be widely applied to other physiological signals in order to relate the activities of different organs of human such as the heart to the activity of his brain.

  6. Gan KB, Yahyavi ES, Ismail MS
    Technol Health Care, 2016 Sep 14;24(5):761-8.
    PMID: 27163300 DOI: 10.3233/THC-161161
    BACKGROUND: At the emergency triage center, assessment of the present of the danger signs and measurement of vital signs are measured according to the guidelines. The respiration rate is still posing a challenge to the doctor as it is impractical to use conventional devices. Attaching measurement devices to the patient will induce artificial measurements (self-awareness stress effects) besides being time-consuming. Currently, the medical officers visually count the number of times the chest movement in a minute, sometimes poses cultural challenges especially for female patients.

    OBJECTIVE: The main objective of this paper is to develop a robust algorithm to extract respiration rate using the contactless displacement sensor.

    METHODS: In this study, chest movements were used as an indicative of inspiration and expiration to measure respiratory rate using the contactless displacement sensor. The contactless optical signals were recorded from 32 healthy subjects in four different controlled breathing conditions: rest, coughing, talking and hand movement to obtain the motion artifacts that the patients may have in the emergency department. The Empirical mode decomposition (EMD) algorithm was used to derive continuous RR signal from the contactless optical signal.

    RESULTS: The analysis showed that there is a good correlation (0.9702) with RMSE of 0.33 breaths per minutes between the contact respiration rate and contactless respiration rate using empirical mode decomposition method.

    CONCLUSION: It can be concluded that the empirical mode decomposition method can extract the respiration rate of the contactless optical signal from chest movement.

  7. Soundirarajan M, Kuca K, Krejcar O, Namazi H
    Technol Health Care, 2021 Nov 19.
    PMID: 34842201 DOI: 10.3233/THC-213528
    BACKGROUND: Analysis of the reactions of different organs to external stimuli is an important area of research in physiological science.

    OBJECTIVE: In this paper, we investigated the correlation between the brain and facial muscle activities by information-based analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals and electromyogram (EMG) signals using Shannon entropy.

    METHOD: The EEG and EMG signals of thirteen subjects were recorded during rest and auditory stimulations using relaxing, pop, and rock music. Accordingly, we calculated the Shannon entropy of these signals.

    RESULTS: The results showed that rock music has a greater effect on the information of EEG and EMG signals than pop music, which itself has a greater effect than relaxing music. Furthermore, a strong correlation (r= 0.9980) was found between the variations of the information of EEG and EMG signals.

    CONCLUSION: The activities of the facial muscle and brain are correlated in different conditions. This technique can be utilized to investigate the correlation between the activities of different organs versus brain activity in different situations.

  8. Kamal SM, Sim S, Tee R, Nathan V, Aghasian E, Namazi H
    Technol Health Care, 2020;28(4):381-390.
    PMID: 31796717 DOI: 10.3233/THC-191965
    BACKGROUND: The human brain controls all actions of the body. Walking is one of the most important actions that deals with the movement of the body. In fact, the brain controls and regulates human walking based on different conditions. One of the conditions that affects human walking is the complexity of path of movement. Therefore, the brain activity should change when a person walks on a path with different complexities.

    OBJECTIVE: In this research we benefit from fractal analysis to study the effect of complexity of path of movement on the complexity of human brain reaction.

    METHODS: For this purpose we calculate the fractal dimension of the electroencephalography (EEG) signal when subjects walk on different paths with different fractal dimensions (complexity).

    RESULTS: The results of the analysis show that the complexity of brain activity increases with the increment of complexity of path of movement.

    CONCLUSION: The method of analysis employed in this research can also be employed to analyse the reaction of the human heart and respiration when subjects move on paths with different complexities.

  9. Kamal SM, Babini MH, Tee R, Krejcar O, Namazi H
    Technol Health Care, 2023;31(1):205-215.
    PMID: 35848002 DOI: 10.3233/THC-220191
    BACKGROND: One of the important areas of heart research is to analyze heart rate variability during (HRV) walking.

    OBJECTIVE: In this research, we investigated the correction between heart activation and the variations of walking paths.

    METHOD: We employed Shannon entropy to analyze how the information content of walking paths affects the information content of HRV. Eight healthy students walked on three designed walking paths with different information contents while we recorded their ECG signals. We computed and analyzed the Shannon entropy of the R-R interval time series (as an indicator of HRV) versus the Shannon entropy of different walking paths and accordingly evaluated their relation.

    RESULTS: According to the obtained results, walking on the path that contains more information leads to less information in the R-R time series.

    CONCLUSION: The analysis method employed in this research can be extended to analyze the relation between other physiological signals (such as brain or muscle reactions) and the walking path.

  10. Pakniyat N, Namazi H
    Technol Health Care, 2021 Sep 17.
    PMID: 34542048 DOI: 10.3233/THC-213052
    BACKGROUND: The analysis of brain activity in different conditions is an important research area in neuroscience.

    OBJECTIVE: This paper analyzed the correlation between the brain and skin activities in rest and stimulations by information-based analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG) and galvanic skin resistance (GSR) signals.

    METHODS: We recorded EEG and GSR signals of eleven subjects during rest and auditory stimulations using three pieces of music that were differentiated based on their complexity. Then, we calculated the Shannon entropy of these signals to quantify their information contents.

    RESULTS: The results showed that music with greater complexity has a more significant effect on altering the information contents of EEG and GSR signals. We also found a strong correlation (r= 0.9682) among the variations of the information contents of EEG and GSR signals. Therefore, the activities of the skin and brain are correlated in different conditions.

    CONCLUSION: This analysis technique can be utilized to evaluate the correlation among the activities of various organs versus brain activity in different conditions.

  11. Ahamed NU, Sundaraj K, Alqahtani M, Altwijri O, Ali MA, Islam MA
    Technol Health Care, 2014 Oct 15.
    PMID: 25318958
    BACKGROUND: The relationship between surface electromyography (EMG) and force have been the subject of ongoing investigations and remain a subject of controversy. Even under static conditions, the relationships at different sensor placement locations in the biceps brachii (BB) muscle are complex.

    OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to compare the activity and relationship between surface EMG and static force from the BB muscle in terms of three sensor placement locations.

    METHODS: Twenty-one right hand dominant male subjects (age 25.3 ± 1.2 years) participated in the study. Surface EMG signals were detected from the subject's right BB muscle. The muscle activation during force was determined as the root mean square (RMS) electromyographic signal normalized to the peak RMS EMG signal of isometric contraction for 10 s. The statistical analysis included linear regression to examine the relationship between EMG amplitude and force of contraction [40-100% of maximal voluntary contraction (MVC)], repeated measures ANOVA to assess differences among the sensor placement locations, and coefficient of variation (CoV) for muscle activity variation.

    RESULTS: The results demonstrated that when the sensor was placed on the muscle belly, the linear slope coefficient was significantly greater for EMG versus force testing (r^{2} = 0.61, P > 0.05) than when placed on the lower part (r^{2}=0.31, P< 0.05) and upper part of the muscle belly (r^{2}=0.29, P > 0.05). In addition, the EMG signal activity on the muscle belly had less variability than the upper and lower parts (8.55% vs. 15.12% and 12.86%, respectively).

    CONCLUSION: These findings indicate the importance of applying the surface EMG sensor at the appropriate locations that follow muscle fiber orientation of the BB muscle during static contraction. As a result, EMG signals of three different placements may help to understand the difference in the amplitude of the signals due to placement.

  12. Zhou H, Daud DMBA
    Technol Health Care, 2024 Mar 20.
    PMID: 38578908 DOI: 10.3233/THC-231435
    BACKGROUND: Sports have been a fundamental component of any culture and legacy for centuries. Athletes are widely regarded as a source of national pride, and their physical well-being is deemed to be of paramount significance. The attainment of optimal performance and injury prevention in athletes is contingent upon physical fitness. Technology integration has implemented Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) to augment the athletic training milieu.

    OBJECTIVE: The present study introduces an approach for assessing athlete physical fitness in training environments: the Internet of Things (IoT) and CPS-based Physical Fitness Evaluation Method (IoT-CPS-PFEM).

    METHODS: The IoT-CPS-PFEM employs a range of IoT-connected sensors and devices to observe and assess the physical fitness of athletes. The proposed methodology gathers information on diverse fitness parameters, including heart rate, body temperature, and oxygen saturation. It employs machine learning algorithms to scrutinize and furnish feedback on the athlete's physical fitness status.

    RESULTS: The simulation findings illustrate the efficacy of the proposed IoT-CPS-PFEM in identifying the physical fitness levels of athletes, with an average precision of 93%. The method under consideration aims to tackle the existing obstacles of conventional physical fitness assessment techniques, including imprecisions, time lags, and manual data-gathering requirements. The approach of IoT-CPS-PFEM provides the benefits of real-time monitoring, precision, and automation, thereby enhancing an athlete's physical fitness and overall performance to a considerable extent.

    CONCLUSION: The research findings suggest that the implementation of IoT-CPS-PFEM can significantly impact the physical fitness of athletes and enhance the performance of the Indian sports industry in global competitions.

  13. Ali MA, Sundaraj K, Ahmad RB, Ahamed NU, Islam MA, Sundaraj S
    Technol Health Care, 2014;22(4):617-25.
    PMID: 24990168 DOI: 10.3233/THC-140833
    Normally, surface electromyography electrodes are used to evaluate the activity of superficial muscles during various kinds of voluntary contractions of muscle fiber. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of repetitive isometric contractions on the three heads of the triceps brachii muscle during handgrip force exercise.
  14. Ahmad HAB, El-Badawy IM, Singh OP, Hisham RB, Malarvili MB
    Technol Health Care, 2018;26(4):573-579.
    PMID: 29758955 DOI: 10.3233/THC-171067
    BACKGROUND: Fetal heart rate (FHR) monitoring device is highly demanded to assess the fetus health condition in home environments. Conventional standard devices such as ultrasonography and cardiotocography are expensive, bulky and uncomfortable and consequently not suitable for long-term monitoring. Herein, we report a device that can be used to measure fetal heart rate in clinical and home environments.

    METHODS: The proposed device measures and displays the FHR on a screen liquid crystal display (LCD). The device consists of hardware that comprises condenser microphone sensor, signal conditioning, microcontroller and LCD, and software that involves the algorithm used for processing the conditioned fetal heart signal prior to FHR display. The device's performance is validated based on analysis of variance (ANOVA) test.

    RESULTS: FHR data was recorded from 22 pregnant women during the 17th to 37th week of gestation using the developed device and two standard devices; AngelSounds and Electronic Stethoscope. The results show that F-value (1.5) is less than F𝑐𝑟𝑖𝑡, (3.1) and p-value (p> 0.05). Accordingly, there is no significant difference between the mean readings of the developed and existing devices. Hence, the developed device can be used for monitoring FHR in clinical and home environments.

  15. Namazi H, Aghasian E, Ala TS
    Technol Health Care, 2019;27(3):233-241.
    PMID: 30829625 DOI: 10.3233/THC-181497
    Brain activity analysis is an important research area in the field of human neuroscience. Moreover, a subcategory in this field is the classification of brain activity in terms of different brain disorders. Since the Electroencephalography (EEG) signal is, in fact, a non-linear time series, employing techniques to investigate its non-linear structure is rather crucial. In this study, we evaluate the non-linear structure of the EEG signal between healthy and schizophrenic adolescents using fractal theory. The results of our analysis revealed that in terms of all recording channels, the EEG signal of healthy subjects is more complex compared to the ones suffering from schizophrenia. The statistical analysis also indicated that there is a significant difference in the complex structure of the EEG signal between these two groups of subjects. We also utilized approximate entropy in our analysis in order to verify the obtained results of the fractal analysis. The result of the entropy analysis suggested that EEG signal for healthy subjects is less random compared to the EEG signal in schizophrenic individuals. In addition, the employed methodology in this research can be further investigated in order to classify the brain activity in terms of other brain disorders, where one can explore how the complex structure of the EEG signal alters between them.
  16. Pakniyat N, Babini MH, Kulish VV, Namazi H
    Technol Health Care, 2021 Aug 13.
    PMID: 34397441 DOI: 10.3233/THC-213136
    BACKGROUND: Analysis of the heart activity is one of the important areas of research in biomedical science and engineering. For this purpose, scientists analyze the activity of the heart in various conditions. Since the brain controls the heart's activity, a relationship should exist among their activities.

    OBJECTIVE: In this research, for the first time the coupling between heart and brain activities was analyzed by information-based analysis.

    METHODS: Considering Shannon entropy as the indicator of the information of a system, we recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) signals of 13 participants (7 M, 6 F, 18-22 years old) in different external stimulations (using pineapple, banana, vanilla, and lemon flavors as olfactory stimuli) and evaluated how the information of EEG signals and R-R time series (as heart rate variability (HRV)) are linked.

    RESULTS: The results indicate that the changes in the information of the R-R time series and EEG signals are strongly correlated (ρ=-0.9566).

    CONCLUSION: We conclude that heart and brain activities are related.

  17. Kamal SM, Dawi NBM, Sim S, Tee R, Nathan V, Aghasian E, et al.
    Technol Health Care, 2020;28(6):675-684.
    PMID: 32200366 DOI: 10.3233/THC-192034
    BACKGROUND: Walking is one of the important actions of the human body. For this purpose, the human brain communicates with leg muscles through the nervous system. Based on the walking path, leg muscles act differently. Therefore, there should be a relation between the activity of leg muscles and the path of movement.

    OBJECTIVE: In order to address this issue, we analyzed how leg muscle activity is related to the variations of the path of movement.

    METHOD: Since the electromyography (EMG) signal is a feature of muscle activity and the movement path has complex structures, we used entropy analysis in order to link their structures. The Shannon entropy of EMG signal and walking path are computed to relate their information content.

    RESULTS: Based on the obtained results, walking on a path with greater information content causes greater information content in the EMG signal which is supported by statistical analysis results. This allowed us to analyze the relation between muscle activity and walking path.

    CONCLUSION: The method of analysis employed in this research can be applied to investigate the relation between brain or heart reactions and walking path.

  18. Soundirarajan M, Pakniyat N, Sim S, Nathan V, Namazi H
    Technol Health Care, 2021;29(1):99-109.
    PMID: 32568131 DOI: 10.3233/THC-192085
    BACKGROUND: Human facial muscles react differently to different visual stimuli. It is known that the human brain controls and regulates the activity of the muscles.

    OBJECTIVE: In this research, for the first time, we investigate how facial muscle reaction is related to the reaction of the human brain.

    METHODS: Since both electromyography (EMG) and electroencephalography (EEG) signals, as the features of muscle and brain activities, contain information, we benefited from the information theory and computed the Shannon entropy of EMG and EEG signals when subjects were exposed to different static visual stimuli with different Shannon entropies (information content).

    RESULTS: Based on the obtained results, the variations of the information content of the EMG signal are related to the variations of the information content of the EEG signal and the visual stimuli. Statistical analysis also supported the results indicating that the visual stimuli with greater information content have a greater effect on the variation of the information content of both EEG and EMG signals.

    CONCLUSION: This investigation can be further continued to analyze the relationship between facial muscle and brain reactions in case of other types of stimuli.

  19. Kamal SM, Dawi NM, Namazi H
    Technol Health Care, 2021;29(6):1109-1118.
    PMID: 33749623 DOI: 10.3233/THC-202744
    BACKGROUND: Walking like many other actions of a human is controlled by the brain through the nervous system. In fact, if a problem occurs in our brain, we cannot walk correctly. Therefore, the analysis of the coupling of brain activity and walking is very important especially in rehabilitation science. The complexity of movement paths is one of the factors that affect human walking. For instance, if we walk on a path that is more complex, our brain activity increases to adjust our movements.

    OBJECTIVE: This study for the first time analyzed the coupling of walking paths and brain reaction from the information point of view.

    METHODS: We analyzed the Shannon entropy for electroencephalography (EEG) signals versus the walking paths in order to relate their information contents.

    RESULTS: According to the results, walking on a path that contains more information causes more information in EEG signals. A strong correlation (p= 0.9999) was observed between the information contents of EEG signals and walking paths. Our method of analysis can also be used to investigate the relation among other physiological signals of a human and walking paths, which has great benefits in rehabilitation science.

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