Search Results (15)

Numerous studies showed that patients with heart failure (HF) and COVID-19 are at high risk of in-hospital complications and long-term mortality. Changes in the organisation of the medical system during the pandemic also worsened access to standard procedures, increasing the general mortality in HF and forcing the systems to be reorganised with the implementation and development of telemedical technologies. The main challenges for HF patients during the pandemic could be solved with new technologies aimed to limit the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission, optimise and titrate the therapy, prevent the progression and worsening of HF, and monitor patients with acute HF events in the course of and after COVID-19. Dedicated platforms, phone calls or video conferencing and consultation, and remote non-invasive and invasive cardiac monitoring became potential tools used to meet the aforementioned challenges. These solutions showed to be effective in the model of care for patients with HF and undoubtedly will be developed after the experience of the pandemic. However, the multitude of possibilities requires central coordination and collaboration between institutes with data protection and cost reimbursement to create effective mechanisms in HF management. It is crucial that lessons be learned from the pandemic experience to improve the quality of care for HF patients. Full article

Mobile-health (m-health) is described as the application of medical sensors and mobile computing to the healthcare provision. While 5G networks can support a variety of m-health services, applications such as telesurgery, holographic communications, and augmented/virtual reality are already emphasizing their limitations. These limitations apply to both the Quality of Service (QoS) and the Quality of Experience (QoE). However, 6G mobile networks are predicted to proliferate over the next decade in order to solve these limitations, enabling high QoS and QoE. Currently, academia and industry are concentrating their efforts on the 6G network, which is expected to be the next major game-changer in the telecom industry and will significantly impact all other related verticals. The exponential growth of m-health multimedia traffic (e.g., audio, video, and images) creates additional challenges for service providers in delivering a suitable QoE to their customers. As QoS is insufficient to represent the expectations of m-health end-users, the QoE of the services is critical. In recent years, QoE has attracted considerable attention and has established itself as a critical component of network service and operation evaluation. This article aims to provide the first thorough survey on a promising research subject that exists at the intersection of two well-established domains, i.e., QoE and m-health, and is driven by the continuing efforts to define 6G. This survey, in particular, creates a link between these two seemingly distinct domains by identifying and discussing the role of 6G in m-health applications from a QoE viewpoint. We start by exploring the vital role of QoE in m-health multimedia transmission. Moreover, we examine how m-health and QoE have evolved over the cellular network’s generations and then shed light on several critical 6G technologies that are projected to enable future m-health services and improve QoE, including reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, extended radio communications, terahertz communications, enormous ultra-reliable and low-latency communications, and blockchain. In contrast to earlier survey papers on the subject, we present an in-depth assessment of the functions of 6G in a variety of anticipated m-health applications via QoE. Multiple 6G-enabled m-health multimedia applications are reviewed, and various use cases are illustrated to demonstrate how 6G-enabled m-health applications are transforming human life. Finally, we discuss some of the intriguing research challenges associated with burgeoning multimedia m-health applications. Full article

Recording a video scene as seen by an observer, materializing where is focused his visual attention and allowing an external person to point at a given object in this scene, could be beneficial for various applications such as medical education or remote training. Such a versatile device, although tested at the experimental laboratory demonstrator stage, has never been integrated in a compact and portable way in a real environment. In this context, we built a low-cost, light-weight, head-mounted device integrating a miniature camera and a laser pointer that can be remotely controlled or servo-controlled by an eye tracker. Two motorizations were implemented and tested (pan/tilt and Rilsey-prisms-based). The video was both recorded locally and transmitted wirelessly. Risley prisms allowed finer remote control of camera or laser pointer orientation (0.1° vs. 0.35°), but data processing and Wi-Fi transmission incur significant latency (~0.5 s) limiting the servo-controlling by eye movements. The laser beam was spatially shaped by a Diffractive Optical Element to facilitate object illumination or recognition. With this first proof-of-concept prototype, the data stream needs to be optimized to make full use of the eye tracker, but this versatile device can find various applications in education, healthcare or research. Full article

At present, Internet of Things (IoT) networks are attracting much attention since they provide emerging opportunities and applications. In IoT networks, the asymmetric and symmetric studies on medical and biomedical video transmissions have become an interesting topic in both academic and industrial communities. Especially, the transmission process shows the characteristics of asymmetry: the symmetric video-encoding and -decoding processes become asymmetric (affected by modulation and demodulation) once a transmission error occurs. In such an asymmetric condition, the quality of service (QoS) of such video transmissions is impacted by many different factors across the physical (PHY-), medium access control (MAC-), and application (APP-) layers. To address this, we propose a cross-layer optimization-based strategy for asymmetric medical video transmission in IoT systems. The proposed strategy jointly utilizes the video-coding structure in the APP- layer, the power control and channel allocation in the MAC- layer, and the modulation and coding schemes in the PHY- layer. To obtain the optimum configuration efficiently, the proposed strategy is formulated and proofed by a quasi-convex problem. Consequently, the proposed strategy could not only outperform the classical algorithms in terms of resource utilization but also improve the video quality under the resource-limited network efficiently. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a substantial intensification of the telemedicine transformation process in orthopedics since 2020. In the light of the legal regulations introduced in Poland, from the beginning of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, physicians, including orthopedic surgeons, have had the opportunity to conduct specialist teleconsultations. Teleconsultations increase epidemiological safety and significantly reduce the exposure of patients and medical staff to direct transmission of the viral vector and the spread of infections. The study aimed to describe diagnoses and clinical aspects of consecutive orthopedic teleconsultations (TC) during the pandemic lockdown. The diagnoses were set according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). Hybrid teleconsultations used smartphones and obligatory Electronic Health Record (EHR) with supplemental voice, SMS, MMS, Medical images, documents, and video conferencing if necessary. One hundred ninety-eight consecutive orthopedic teleconsultations were served for 615 women and 683 men (mean age 41.82 years ± 11.47 years). The most frequently diagnosed diseases were non-acute orthopedic disorders “M” (65.3%) and injuries “S” (26.3%). Back pain (M54) was the most frequent diagnosis (25.5%). Although virtual orthopedic consultation cannot replace an entire personal visit to a specialist orthopedic surgeon, in many cases, teleconsultation enables medical staff to continue to participate in providing medical services at a sufficiently high medical level to ensure patient and physician. The unified approach to TC diagnoses using ICD-10 or ICD-11 may improve further research on telemedicine-related orthopedics repeatability. Future research directions should address orthopedic teleconsultations’ practical aspects and highlight legal, organizational, and technological issues with their implementations. Full article

Fully insertable robotic imaging devices represent a promising future of minimally invasive laparoscopic vision. Emerging research efforts in this field have resulted in several proof-of-concept prototypes. One common drawback of these designs derives from their clumsy tethering wires which not only cause operational interference but also reduce camera mobility. In this paper, a tetherless insertable surgical camera (s-CAM) robot with non-contact transabdominal actuation is presented for single-incision laparoscopic vision. Wireless video transmission and control communication using onboard power help eliminate cumbersome tethering wires. Furthermore, magnetic based camera actuation gets rid of intrinsic physical constraints of mechanical driving mechanisms, thereby improving camera mobility and reducing operational interference. In addition, a custom Bluetooth low energy (BLE) application profile and a real-time operating system (RTOS) based multitask programming framework are also proposed to facilitate embedded software design for insertable medical devices. Initial ex vivo test results of the s-CAM design have demonstrated technical feasibility of a tetherless insertable laparoscopic camera. Effective imaging is confirmed at as low as 500 lx illumination. Wireless laparoscopic vision is accessible within a distance of more than 10 m. Transabdominal BLE communication is stable at over −52 dBm and shows its potential for wireless control of insertable medical devices. RTOS based sfotware event response is bounded within 1 ms while the CPU usage is at 3∼5%. The device is able to work for 50 min with its onboard power. For the mobility, the robot can translate against the interior abdominal wall to reach full abdomen quadrants, tilt between −180${}^{\circ }$ and +180${}^{\circ }$, and pan in the range of 0${}^{\circ }$∼360${}^{\circ }$. The s-CAM has brought robotic laparoscopic imaging one step further toward less invasiveness and more dexterity. Full article

Background: The highly contagious COVID-19 has created unprecedented challenges in providing care to patients with resectable non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). Surgical management now needs to consider the risks of malignant disease progression by delaying surgery, and those of COVID-19 transmission to patients and operating room staff. The goal of our study was to describe our experience in providing both emergent and elective surgical procedures for patients with NSCLC during the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel, and to present our point of view regarding the safety of performing lung cancer surgery. Methods: This observational cross-sectional study included all consecutive patients with NSCLC who operated at Tel Aviv Medical Center, a large university-affiliated hospital, from February 2020 through December 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel. The patients’ demographics, COVID-19 preoperative screening results, type and side of surgery, pathology results, morbidity and mortality rates, postoperative complications, including pulmonary complications management, and hospital stay were evaluated. Results: Included in the study were 113 patients, 68 males (60.2%) and 45 females (39.8%), with a median age of 68.2 years (range, 41–89). Of these 113 patients, 83 (73.5%) underwent video-assisted thoracic surgeries (VATS), and 30 (26.5%) underwent thoracotomies. Fifty-five patients (48.7%) were preoperatively screened for COVID-19 and received negative results. Fifty-six postoperative complications were reported in 35 patients (30.9%). A prolonged air leak was detected in 11 patients (9.7%), atrial fibrillation in 11 patients (9.7%), empyema in 5 patients (4.4%), pneumonia in 9 patients (7.9%) and lobar atelectasis in 7 patients (6.2%). Three patients (2.7%) with postoperative pulmonary complications required mechanical ventilation, and two of them (1.6%) underwent tracheostomy. Two patients (1.6%) were postoperatively diagnosed as positive for COVID-19. Conclusions: Our data demonstrate the feasibility and efficacy of implementing precautionary strategies to ensure the safety of lung cancer patients undergoing pulmonary resection during the COVID-19 pandemic. The strategy was equally effective in protecting the surgical staff and healthcare providers, and we recommend performing lung cancer surgery during the pandemic era. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the world socially and economically changing behaviors towards medical facilities, public gatherings, workplaces, and education. Educational institutes have been shutdown sporadically across the globe forcing teachers and students to adopt distance learning techniques. Due to the closure of educational institutes, work and learn from home methods have burdened the network resources and considerably decreased a viewer’s Quality of Experience (QoE). The situation calls for innovative techniques to handle the surging load of video traffic on cellular networks. In the scenario of distance learning, there is ample opportunity to realize multi-cast delivery instead of a conventional unicast. However, the existing 5G architecture does not support service-less multi-cast. In this article, we advance the case of Virtual Network Function (VNF) based service-less architecture for video multicast. Multicasting a video session for distance learning significantly lowers the burden on core and Radio Access Networks (RAN) as demonstrated by evaluation over a real-world dataset. We debate the role of Edge Intelligence (EI) for enabling multicast and edge caching for distance learning to complement the performance of the proposed VNF architecture. EI offers the determination of users that are part of a multicast session based on location, session, and cell information. Moreover, user preferences and network’s contextual information can differentiate between live and cached access patterns optimizing edge caching decisions. While exploring the opportunities of EI-enabled distance learning, we demonstrate a significant reduction in network operator resource utilization and an increase in user QoE for VNF based multicast transmission. Full article

Background: The educational process in different medical schools has been negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. As a part of the Saudi government’s attempts to contain the spread of the virus, schools’ and universities’ educational activities and face-to-face lectures have been modified to virtual classrooms. The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of the faculty and the students of an electronic objective structured clinical examination (E-OSCE) activity that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic in the oldest medical school in Saudi Arabia. Methods: An e-OSCE style examination was designed for the final-year medical students by the pediatrics department, College of Medicine at King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The examination was administered by Zoom™ video conferencing where both students and faculty participated through their laptop or desktop computers. In order to explore the students’ and the faculty’s perceptions about this experience, a newly designed 13-item online questionnaire was administered at the end of the e-OSCE. Results: Out of 136 participants (23 faculty and 112 students), 73 respondents (e.g., 54% response rate) filled out the questionnaire. Most of the respondents (69.8%) were very comfortable with this new virtual experience. Most participants (53.4%) preferred the e-OSCE compared to the classic face-to-face clinical OSCE during the pandemic. Regarding the e-OSCE assessment student tool, 46.6% reported that it is similar to the classic face-to-face OSCE; however, 38.4% felt it was worse. Conclusions: The e-OSCE can be a very effective alternative to the classic face-to-face OSCE due to the current circumstances that still pose a significant risk of infection transmission. Future studies should examine different virtual strategies to ensure effective OSCE delivery from the perspective of both faculty and students. Full article

This research provides a study on a smart body area network (SmartBAN) physical layer (PHY), as an of the Internet of medical things (IoMT) technology, for an advanced human monitoring system in industrial use. The SmartBAN provides a new PHY and a medium access control (MAC) layer, improving its performance and providing very low-latency emergency information transmission with low energy consumption compared with other wireless body area network (WBAN) standards. On the other hand, IoMT applications are expected to become more advanced with smarter wearable devices, such as augmented reality-based human monitoring and work support in a factory. Therefore, it is possible to develop more advanced human monitoring systems for industrial use by combining the SmartBAN with multimedia devices. However, the SmartBAN PHY is not designed to transmit multimedia information such as audio and video. To address this issue, multilevel phase shift keying (PSK) modulation is applied to the SmartBAN PHY, and the symbol rate is improved by setting the roll-off rate appropriately to realize the system. The numerical results show that a sufficient link budget, receiver sensitivity and fade margin were obtained even when those approaches were applied to the SmartBAN PHY. The results indicate that these techniques are required for high-quality audio or video transmission, as well as vital sign data transmission, in a SmartBAN. Full article

Background: In order to facilitate more effective patient assessment and diagnostic support by improving the flow of information between ambulance nurses (AN) and physicians in the role of regional medical support (RMS), an application was developed for transmitting real-time video images. Objective: The objective of this study was to elucidate the physicians’ experiences using a video application to support the assessment and triage procedure in ambulance care, when patients are deemed to not have an urgent need for emergency care. Design: The design for this research was a qualitative interview study. Ten physicians, working as RMS in ambulance care, were purposively selected to participate. The telemedicine concept studied consisted of a real-time video image application, in addition to the currently used mobile phone. When a patient was deemed eligible for inclusion in the study, the ambulance nurse (AN) contacted the RMS via telephone to initiate a video consultation. To elucidate the RMS experience of using the application, a conventional content analysis was performed. Results: The main theme “a feeling of being satisfied through a sense of increased patient safety” emerged from the following two categories: adds value in diagnosing situations (three subcategories, i.e., support in diagnosing, usability, and technical weakness) and increase communication opportunities (four subcategories, i.e., assessing the level of care, patient dialogue, professional communication, and team learning). Conclusions: Physicians in the role of RMS experienced a positive impact using video image transmission in addition to the currently used mobile phone. This evaluation was derived from a sense of increased patient safety in the assessment situation when patients were considered to be triaged to self-care. Full article

Multipath diversity leads to a possible higher performance for real-time high definition video, especially for medical video transmission, which would improve the stability of multiple transmission paths in the symmetrical state, and avoid the potential losses of imaging information in the communication process. Most of the previous works are always based on the single-path end-to-end transmission, although the service had been demonstrated that it is unable to meet the rigorous demand for the RT-HDMV. In the paper, a multipath relay service based on the QoE (quality of experience) evaluation method is proposed for the RT-HDMV (real-time high definition medical video). The method eliminates several of the limitations in the existing methods for some conventional single-path transmission. It can fully utilize the finite network resources and transmission bandwidth to meet the users’ demands of the RT-HDMV to get a better score of the QoE. We use a four-stage framework to evaluate the QoE, which consists of constructing the multipath relay transmission for the RT-HDMV, calculating the weights of diversified QoS parameters in the multipath, designing the load distribution strategy by the mapping between the QoS (quality of service) and QoE, and redefining the rule of the QoE evaluation. Many experiments show that the proposed design scheme achieves weighting of the transmission sub-paths and computes the QoE score. Compared with the state-of-art methods in the single path transmission scene, our framework mainly gains the excellent performance for the RT-HDMV. Full article

The operations of digitization, transmission and storage of medical data, particularly images, require increasingly effective encoding methods not only in terms of compression ratio and flow of information but also in terms of visual quality. At first, there was DCT (discrete cosine transform) then DWT (discrete wavelet transform) and their associated standards in terms of coding and image compression. The 2nd-generation wavelets seeks to be positioned and confronted by the image and video coding methods currently used. It is in this context that we suggest a method combining bandelets and the SPIHT (set partitioning in hierarchical trees) algorithm. There are two main reasons for our approach: the first lies in the nature of the bandelet transform to take advantage of capturing the geometrical complexity of the image structure. The second reason is the suitability of encoding the bandelet coefficients by the SPIHT encoder. Quality measurements indicate that in some cases (for low bit rates) the performance of the proposed coding competes with the well-established ones (H.264 or MPEG4 AVC and H.265 or MPEG4 HEVC) and opens up new application prospects in the field of medical imaging. Full article

The increasing availability of huge image collections in different application fields, such as medical diagnosis, remote sensing, transmission and encoding, machine/robot vision, and video processing, microscopic imaging has pressed the need, in the last few last years, for the development of efficient techniques capable of managing and processing large collection of image data [...] Full article

This survey aims to encourage the multidisciplinary communities to join forces for innovation in the mobile health monitoring area. Specifically, multidisciplinary innovations in medical emergency scenarios can have a significant impact on the effectiveness and quality of the procedures and practices in the delivery of medical care. Wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs) are a promising technology capable of improving the existing practices in condition assessment and care delivery for a patient in a medical emergency. This technology can also facilitate the early interventions of a specialist physician during the pre-hospital period. WBSNs make possible these early interventions by establishing remote communication links with video/audio support and by providing medical information such as vital signs, electrocardiograms, etc. in real time. This survey focuses on relevant issues needed to understand how to setup a WBSN for medical emergencies. These issues are: monitoring vital signs and video transmission, energy efficient protocols, scheduling, optimization and energy consumption on a WBSN. Full article