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Fulltext Ambient noise reduction using improved least mean square adaptive filtering

Noor, A.O.A., Samad, S.A., Hussain, A.

ASM Science Journal, 2010;4(2):133-141.
MyJurnal

In this paper, an improved method of reducing ambient noise in speech signals is introduced. The proposed noise canceller was developed using a computationally efficient (DFT) filter bank to decompose input signals into sub-bands. The filter bank was based on a prototype filter optimized for minimum output distortion. A variable step-size version of the (LMS) filter was used to reduce the noise in individual branches. The subband noise canceller was aimed to overcome problems associated with the use of the conventional least mean square (LMS) adaptive algorithm in noise cancellation setups. Mean square error convergence was used as a measure of performance under white and ambient interferences. Compared to conventional as well as recently developed techniques, fast initial convergence and better noise cancellation performances were obtained under actual speech and ambient noise.
Management of diarrhoea cases by community pharmacies in 3 cities of Pakistan

Hussain A, Ibrahim MI

East Mediterr Health J, 2012 Jun;18(6):635-40.
PMID: 22888622

Community pharmacies are valued for their potential role in the management of common ailments. This cross-sectional study aimed to document the management of diarrhoea by community pharmacies in 3 cities in Pakistan. Visits were performed to 371 randomly selected pharmacies to request advice for a simulated paediatric case of diarrhoea. The pharmacy's management was scored on a checklist including history taking and provision of advice and information. Customers were served by a salesperson in 97.3% of visits and by a pharmacist in only 2.2%. Medication was dispensed in 77.1% of visits. Of the medications dispensed, 58.7% were antiamoebics, 14.0% antibiotics and 18.9% antidiarrhoeals; only 8.4% were oral rehydration salts. None of the regimens matched with a standard prescription. The dosage regimen was explained to the customer in only 52.6% of cases. Drug safety, unqualified personnel, lack of history taking, inappropriate treatment and lack of counselling are concerns to be addressed.
Organizational barriers and ethnicity in the Scottish NHS

Sheffield J, Hussain A, Coleshill P

J Manag Med, 1999;13(4-5):263-4.
PMID: 10787497

The NHS faces a crisis in terms of staffing and recruitment. Many of the ethnic minority GPs in inner city areas throughout the UK are coming up to retirement age, and there is an insufficient supply of trainees to fill estimated vacancies. Over 2,000 nursing vacancies exist across the UK, and recruitment to the profession and retention within the profession are poor. Nurses have been recruited from overseas for the past 40 years, and are currently being recruited from Finland, Malaysia, and the West Indies, whilst doctors are being sought in India, Pakistan and Africa. Overseas recruitment is not a new phenomenon, and numerous studies have been carried out to examine equal opportunities and racial discrimination within the NHS. The aim of this paper was to examine ethnicity and equal opportunities within the Scottish NHS and record the levels of organisational awareness of ethnicity and equal opportunities' issues. The paper also examines the link between health service delivery to ethnic minorities and internal cultural attitudes to staff.
Fulltext Robust digit recognition with dynamic time warping and recursive least squares

Al-Haddad, S.A.R., Samad, S.A., Hussain, A., Ishak, K.A., Noor, A.O.A.

ASM Science Journal, 2008;2(1):75-81.
MyJurnal

Robustness is a key issue in speech recognition. A speech recognition algorithm for Malay digits from zero to nine and an algorithm for noise cancellation by using recursive least squares (RLS) is proposed in this article. This system consisted of speech processing inclusive of digit margin and recognition using zero crossing and energy calculations. Mel-frequency cepstral coefficient vectors were used to provide an estimate of the vocal tract filter. Meanwhile dynamic time warping was used to detect the nearest recorded voice with appropriate global constraint. The global constraint was used to set a valid search region because the variation of the speech rate of the speaker was considered to be limited in a reasonable range which meant that it could prune the unreasonable search space. The algorithm was tested on speech samples that were recorded as part of a Malay corpus. The results showed that the algorithm managed to recognize almost 80.5% of the Malay digits for all recorded words. The addition of a RLS noise canceller in the preprocessing stage increased the accuracy to 94.1%.
Medication counselling and dispensing practices at community pharmacies: a comparative cross sectional study from Pakistan

Hussain A, Ibrahim MI

Int J Clin Pharm, 2011 Oct;33(5):859-67.
PMID: 21853362 DOI: 10.1007/s11096-011-9554-6

OBJECTIVES: The study aimed to assess and compare medication counselling and dispensing practices at community pharmacies in three major cities of Pakistan.
METHODS: A total of 1113 patient dispenser interactions were observed from a randomly selected sample of 371 pharmacies by using convenient sampling technique in the three respective cities namely Islamabad (118), Peshawar (120) and Lahore (133). The data collection tool was adapted from WHO structure observation form and was modified according to the objectives of the study.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The process of prescription handling at community pharmacies in terms of patient dispenser interaction, prescription validation and medication counseling was assessed. The data was coded, entered and analyzed by using SPSS Version 16.
RESULTS: A total of 1113 patient dispenser interactions were observed at the community pharmacies in the three respective cities namely Islamabad (n = 354), Peshawar (n = 360) and Lahore (n = 399). Out of 1113 patient/dispenser interactions the providers present at the community pharmacies were; pharmacist (degree of B-pharm/pharm D) 1.6% (n = 18), pharmacy assistant (diploma in pharmacy) 7% (n = 78), diploma holder (certified course of drug dispensing) 5.6% (n = 62) and salesmen (no medicine related education) 85.8% (n = 955).There was no significant difference in the practice between pharmacists, pharmacy assistants, diploma holders and salesmen. Prescription validation was carried out in 18% (n = 206) of the cases, drugs verification in 32% (n = 360) of the cases while labelling of drugs was performed in only 6% (n = 76) of the cases. Completely counselling about medication was provided in 3.1% (n = 35) of the cases while no counselling at all was given in 52.7% (n = 582) of the cases.
CONCLUSION: The process of medication counselling and dispensing practices at community pharmacies in Pakistan is not satisfactory. The patients are largely handled by unqualified salesmen. Thus there is a strong need to improve medication counselling and dispensing practices at community pharmacies by improving the skills of the dispensers through a mix of interventions, and law should be implemented to ensure presence of qualified person which in turn will result in the provision of better patient oriented services at community pharmacies.
Qualification, knowledge and experience of dispensers working at community pharmacies in Pakistan

Hussain A, Ibrahim MI

Pharm Pract (Granada), 2011 Apr;9(2):93-100.
PMID: 24688615

Pharmacies are managed by a variety of dispensers in terms of qualification, knowledge and experience in Pakistan.
The pattern of bacteriological cultures in a state laboratory

Lim Swee Eng, Bin Mohamed Hussain AH

Med J Malaysia, 1973 Dec;28(2):103-8.
PMID: 4276266
Fulltext Knowledge and perceptions of prescribers regarding adherence to standard treatment guidelines for malaria: a comparative cross-sectional study from Pakistan

Malik M, Hassali MA, Shafie AA, Hussain A

East Mediterr Health J, 2014 Apr;20(4):221-8.
PMID: 24952118

Despite the availability of standard treatment guidelines for malaria in Pakistan adherence to protocols by prescribers is poor. This descriptive, cross-sectional study aimed to explore the perceptions and knowledge of prescribers in Islamabad and Rawalpindi cities towards adherence to standard treatment guidelines for malaria. A questionnaire was distributed to a random sample of 360 prescribers; 64.7% were satisfied with the available antimalarial drugs and 41.3% agreed that antimalarial drugs should only be prescribed after diagnostic testing. Only half the prescribers had the guidelines available in their health facility. Almost all the prescribers (97.7%) agreed that there was a need for more educational programmes about the guidelines. Most prescribers were unaware of the correct standard treatment regimen for Plasmodium falciparum and P. vivax malaria. There were no differences in knowledge between males and females, but prescribers having more experience, practising as general practitioners and working in private health-care facilities possessed significantly better knowledge than their counterparts.
Fulltext Predicting physical time series using dynamic ridge polynomial neural networks

Al-Jumeily D, Ghazali R, Hussain A

PLoS One, 2014;9(8):e105766.
PMID: 25157950 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0105766

Forecasting naturally occurring phenomena is a common problem in many domains of science, and this has been addressed and investigated by many scientists. The importance of time series prediction stems from the fact that it has wide range of applications, including control systems, engineering processes, environmental systems and economics. From the knowledge of some aspects of the previous behaviour of the system, the aim of the prediction process is to determine or predict its future behaviour. In this paper, we consider a novel application of a higher order polynomial neural network architecture called Dynamic Ridge Polynomial Neural Network that combines the properties of higher order and recurrent neural networks for the prediction of physical time series. In this study, four types of signals have been used, which are; The Lorenz attractor, mean value of the AE index, sunspot number, and heat wave temperature. The simulation results showed good improvements in terms of the signal to noise ratio in comparison to a number of higher order and feedforward neural networks in comparison to the benchmarked techniques.
Fulltext Development of a voice activity controlled noise canceller

Abid Noor AO, Samad SA, Hussain A

Sensors (Basel), 2012;12(5):6727-45.
PMID: 22778667 DOI: 10.3390/s120506727

In this paper, a variable threshold voice activity detector (VAD) is developed to control the operation of a two-sensor adaptive noise canceller (ANC). The VAD prohibits the reference input of the ANC from containing some strength of actual speech signal during adaptation periods. The novelty of this approach resides in using the residual output from the noise canceller to control the decisions made by the VAD. Thresholds of full-band energy and zero-crossing features are adjusted according to the residual output of the adaptive filter. Performance evaluation of the proposed approach is quoted in terms of signal to noise ratio improvements as well mean square error (MSE) convergence of the ANC. The new approach showed an improved noise cancellation performance when tested under several types of environmental noise. Furthermore, the computational power of the adaptive process is reduced since the output of the adaptive filter is efficiently calculated only during non-speech periods.
Fulltext System interface for an integrated intelligent safety system (ISS) for vehicle applications

Hannan MA, Hussain A, Samad SA

Sensors (Basel), 2010;10(2):1141-53.
PMID: 22205861 DOI: 10.3390/s100201141

This paper deals with the interface-relevant activity of a vehicle integrated intelligent safety system (ISS) that includes an airbag deployment decision system (ADDS) and a tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS). A program is developed in LabWindows/CVI, using C for prototype implementation. The prototype is primarily concerned with the interconnection between hardware objects such as a load cell, web camera, accelerometer, TPM tire module and receiver module, DAQ card, CPU card and a touch screen. Several safety subsystems, including image processing, weight sensing and crash detection systems, are integrated, and their outputs are combined to yield intelligent decisions regarding airbag deployment. The integrated safety system also monitors tire pressure and temperature. Testing and experimentation with this ISS suggests that the system is unique, robust, intelligent, and appropriate for in-vehicle applications.
Carbon capture from natural gas using multi-walled CNTs based mixed matrix membranes

Hussain A, Farrukh S, Hussain A, Ayoub M

Environ Technol, 2019 Mar;40(7):843-854.
PMID: 29161995 DOI: 10.1080/09593330.2017.1408696

Most of the polymers and their blends, utilized in carbon capture membranes, are costly, but cellulose acetate (CA) being inexpensive is a lucrative choice. In this research, pure and mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) have been fabricated to capture carbon from natural gas. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) has been utilized in the fabrication of membranes to modify the chain flexibility of polymers. Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) provide mechanical strength, thermal stability, an extra free path for CO2 molecules and augment CO2/CH4 selectivity. Membranes of pure CA, CA/PEG blend of different PEG concentrations (5%, 10%, 15%) and CA/PEG/MWCNTs blend of 10% PEG with different MWCNTs concentrations (5%, 10%, 15%) were prepared in acetone using solution casting techniques. Fabricated membranes were characterized using SEM, TGA and tensile testing. Permeation results revealed remarkable improvement in CO2/CH4 selectivity. In single gas experiments, CO2/CH4 selectivity is enhanced 8 times for pure membranes containing 10% PEG and 14 times for MMMs containing 10% MWCNTs. In mix gas experiments, the CO2/CH4 selectivity is increased 13 times for 10% PEG and 18 times for MMMs with 10% MWCNTs. Fabricated MMMs have a tensile strength of 13 MPa and are more thermally stable than CA membranes.
Fulltext Sudden event recognition: a survey

Suriani NS, Hussain A, Zulkifley MA

Sensors (Basel), 2013 Aug 05;13(8):9966-98.
PMID: 23921828 DOI: 10.3390/s130809966

Event recognition is one of the most active research areas in video surveillance fields. Advancement in event recognition systems mainly aims to provide convenience, safety and an efficient lifestyle for humanity. A precise, accurate and robust approach is necessary to enable event recognition systems to respond to sudden changes in various uncontrolled environments, such as the case of an emergency, physical threat and a fire or bomb alert. The performance of sudden event recognition systems depends heavily on the accuracy of low level processing, like detection, recognition, tracking and machine learning algorithms. This survey aims to detect and characterize a sudden event, which is a subset of an abnormal event in several video surveillance applications. This paper discusses the following in detail: (1) the importance of a sudden event over a general anomalous event; (2) frameworks used in sudden event recognition; (3) the requirements and comparative studies of a sudden event recognition system and (4) various decision-making approaches for sudden event recognition. The advantages and drawbacks of using 3D images from multiple cameras for real-time application are also discussed. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research directions in sudden event recognition.
Fulltext A comparison between low-dose and standard-dose non-contrasted multidetector CT scanning of the paranasal sinuses

Lam S, Bux S, Kumar G, Ng Kh, Hussain A

Biomed Imaging Interv J, 2009 Jul;5(3):e13.
PMID: 21611051 MyJurnal DOI: 10.2349/biij.5.3.e13

To compare the image quality of the low-dose to the standard-dose protocol of MDCT scanning of the paranasal sinuses, based on subjective assessment and determine the radiation doses to the eyes and thyroid gland and dose reduction between these two protocols.
Fulltext Motion Capture Technologies for Ergonomics: A Systematic Literature Review

Salisu S, Ruhaiyem NIR, Eisa TAE, Nasser M, Saeed F, Younis HA

Diagnostics (Basel), 2023 Aug 04;13(15).
PMID: 37568956 DOI: 10.3390/diagnostics13152593

Muscular skeletal disorder is a difficult challenge faced by the working population. Motion capture (MoCap) is used for recording the movement of people for clinical, ergonomic and rehabilitation solutions. However, knowledge barriers about these MoCap systems have made them difficult to use for many people. Despite this, no state-of-the-art literature review on MoCap systems for human clinical, rehabilitation and ergonomic analysis has been conducted. A medical diagnosis using AI applies machine learning algorithms and motion capture technologies to analyze patient data, enhancing diagnostic accuracy, enabling early disease detection and facilitating personalized treatment plans. It revolutionizes healthcare by harnessing the power of data-driven insights for improved patient outcomes and efficient clinical decision-making. The current review aimed to investigate: (i) the most used MoCap systems for clinical use, ergonomics and rehabilitation, (ii) their application and (iii) the target population. We used preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis guidelines for the review. Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science were used to search for relevant published articles. The articles obtained were scrutinized by reading the abstracts and titles to determine their inclusion eligibility. Accordingly, articles with insufficient or irrelevant information were excluded from the screening. The search included studies published between 2013 and 2023 (including additional criteria). A total of 40 articles were eligible for review. The selected articles were further categorized in terms of the types of MoCap used, their application and the domain of the experiments. This review will serve as a guide for researchers and organizational management.
Fulltext Robust identification of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastics through Bayesian decision

Zulkifley MA, Mustafa MM, Hussain A, Mustapha A, Ramli S

PLoS One, 2014;9(12):e114518.
PMID: 25485630 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0114518

Recycling is one of the most efficient methods for environmental friendly waste management. Among municipal wastes, plastics are the most common material that can be easily recycled and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is one of its major types. PET material is used in consumer goods packaging such as drinking bottles, toiletry containers, food packaging and many more. Usually, a recycling process is tailored to a specific material for optimal purification and decontamination to obtain high grade recyclable material. The quantity and quality of the sorting process are limited by the capacity of human workers that suffer from fatigue and boredom. Several automated sorting systems have been proposed in the literature that include using chemical, proximity and vision sensors. The main advantages of vision based sensors are its environmentally friendly approach, non-intrusive detection and capability of high throughput. However, the existing methods rely heavily on deterministic approaches that make them less accurate as the variations in PET plastic waste appearance are too high. We proposed a probabilistic approach of modeling the PET material by analyzing the reflection region and its surrounding. Three parameters are modeled by Gaussian and exponential distributions: color, size and distance of the reflection region. The final classification is made through a supervised training method of likelihood ratio test. The main novelty of the proposed method is the probabilistic approach in integrating various PET material signatures that are contaminated by stains under constant lighting changes. The system is evaluated by using four performance metrics: precision, recall, accuracy and error. Our system performed the best in all evaluation metrics compared to the benchmark methods. The system can be further improved by fusing all neighborhood information in decision making and by implementing the system in a graphics processing unit for faster processing speed.
Fulltext Analysis and optimization of spiral circular inductive coupling link for bio-implanted applications on air and within human tissue

Mutashar S, Hannan MA, Samad SA, Hussain A

Sensors (Basel), 2014;14(7):11522-41.
PMID: 24984057 DOI: 10.3390/s140711522

The use of wireless communication using inductive links to transfer data and power to implantable microsystems to stimulate and monitor nerves and muscles is increasing. This paper deals with the development of the theoretical analysis and optimization of an inductive link based on coupling and on spiral circular coil geometry. The coil dimensions offer 22 mm of mutual distance in air. However, at 6 mm of distance, the coils offer a power transmission efficiency of 80% in the optimum case and 73% in the worst case via low input impedance, whereas, transmission efficiency is 45% and 32%, respectively, via high input impedance. The simulations were performed in air and with two types of simulated human biological tissues such as dry and wet-skin using a depth of 6 mm. The performance results expound that the combined magnitude of the electric field components surrounding the external coil is approximately 98% of that in air, and for an internal coil, it is approximately 50%, respectively. It can be seen that the gain surrounding coils is almost constant and confirms the omnidirectional pattern associated with such loop antennas which reduces the effect of non-alignment between the two coils. The results also show that the specific absorption rate (SAR) and power loss within the tissue are lower than that of the standard level. Thus, the tissue will not be damaged anymore.
Fulltext Energy harvesting for the implantable biomedical devices: issues and challenges

Hannan MA, Mutashar S, Samad SA, Hussain A

Biomed Eng Online, 2014;13:79.
PMID: 24950601 DOI: 10.1186/1475-925X-13-79

The development of implanted devices is essential because of their direct effect on the lives and safety of humanity. This paper presents the current issues and challenges related to all methods used to harvest energy for implantable biomedical devices. The advantages, disadvantages, and future trends of each method are discussed. The concept of harvesting energy from environmental sources and human body motion for implantable devices has gained a new relevance. In this review, the harvesting kinetic, electromagnetic, thermal and infrared radiant energies are discussed. Current issues and challenges related to the typical applications of these methods for energy harvesting are illustrated. Suggestions and discussion of the progress of research on implantable devices are also provided. This review is expected to increase research efforts to develop the battery-less implantable devices with reduced over hole size, low power, high efficiency, high data rate, and improved reliability and feasibility. Based on current literature, we believe that the inductive coupling link is the suitable method to be used to power the battery-less devices. Therefore, in this study, the power efficiency of the inductive coupling method is validated by MATLAB based on suggested values. By further researching and improvements, in the future the implantable and portable medical devices are expected to be free of batteries.
Fulltext Why hospital pharmacists have failed to manage antimalarial drugs stock-outs in pakistan? A qualitative insight

Malik M, Hassali MA, Shafie AA, Hussain A

Malar Res Treat, 2013;2013:342843.
PMID: 24223321 DOI: 10.1155/2013/342843

Purpose. This study aimed to explore the perceptions of hospital pharmacists towards drug management and reasons underlying stock-outs of antimalarial drugs in Pakistan. Methods. A qualitative study was designed to explore the perceptions of hospital pharmacists regarding drug management and irrational use of antimalarial drugs in two major cities of Pakistan, namely, Islamabad (national capital) and Rawalpindi (twin city). Semistructured interviews were conducted with 16 hospital pharmacists using indepth interview guides at a place and time convenient for the respondents. Interviews, which were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim, were evaluated by thematic content analysis and by other authors' analysis. Results. Most of the respondents were of the view that financial constraints, inappropriate drug management, and inadequate funding were the factors contributing toward the problem of antimalarial drug stock-outs in healthcare facilities of Pakistan. The pharmacists anticipated that prescribing by nonproprietary names, training of health professionals, accepted role of hospital pharmacist in drug management, implementation of essential drug list and standard treatment guidelines for malaria in the healthcare system can minimize the problem of drug stock outs in healthcare system of Pakistan. Conclusion. The current study showed that all the respondents in the two cities agreed that hospital pharmacist has failed to play an effective role in efficient management of anti-malarial drugs stock-outs.
Solid waste bin detection and classification using Dynamic Time Warping and MLP classifier

Islam MS, Hannan MA, Basri H, Hussain A, Arebey M

Waste Manag, 2014 Feb;34(2):281-90.
PMID: 24238802 DOI: 10.1016/j.wasman.2013.10.030

The increasing requirement for Solid Waste Management (SWM) has become a significant challenge for municipal authorities. A number of integrated systems and methods have introduced to overcome this challenge. Many researchers have aimed to develop an ideal SWM system, including approaches involving software-based routing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Radio-frequency Identification (RFID), or sensor intelligent bins. Image processing solutions for the Solid Waste (SW) collection have also been developed; however, during capturing the bin image, it is challenging to position the camera for getting a bin area centralized image. As yet, there is no ideal system which can correctly estimate the amount of SW. This paper briefly discusses an efficient image processing solution to overcome these problems. Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) was used for detecting and cropping the bin area and Gabor wavelet (GW) was introduced for feature extraction of the waste bin image. Image features were used to train the classifier. A Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) classifier was used to classify the waste bin level and estimate the amount of waste inside the bin. The area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves was used to statistically evaluate classifier performance. The results of this developed system are comparable to previous image processing based system. The system demonstration using DTW with GW for feature extraction and an MLP classifier led to promising results with respect to the accuracy of waste level estimation (98.50%). The application can be used to optimize the routing of waste collection based on the estimated bin level.

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