Attentional bias for emotional faces in depressed and non-depressed individuals: an eye-tracking study.

Current assessment tools for clinicians in mental health evaluation relies mostly on patient self-report and clinician's judgement. Recent studies suggest that affective disorders are correlated to attentional bias for visual information. This study used eye-tracking technology to measure attentional bias for faces in depressed and non-depressed individuals. The experiment was based on a free-viewing task of pair of faces including 4 types of expressions: neutral, sad, happy and angry. 69 individuals took part in this study. All the participants completed the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II) to evaluate the severity of depressive symptoms. The attention indexes were total time for eye events, total fixation duration, ratio of total fixation and eye events, and fixation duration on each face. The results showed that depressed individuals have a significant (p = 0.005) difference in the total time of eye events (302.4±41.2) compared to non-depressed individuals (331.5±39.3) and revealed a tendency to disengage from emotional stimuli with differences in the total fixation in pair of faces. The study demonstrated that the use of eye-tracking is a valuable tool to asses attentional bias and important technology that could be used to improve diagnosis technics.

Using Thermography as Auxiliary Tool to Thyroid Cancer Diagnosis: a Case Study.

The diagnostic medicine evolves and takes benefit from the development of technology constantly. New therapeutic modalities are studied in the area of oncology in order to assist, evaluate, and monitor the diagnosis of cancer. The thyroid cancer is a disease that has increased in incidence and mainly affects women. Infrared thermography is an imaging technique that helps to diagnose several kinds of cancer as shown in several researches. It is useful for monitoring therapeutic procedures and detecting the appearance of new nodes. Its effectiveness depends on the use of correct protocol of acquisition and analysis of the images and precise assessment of thermograms. This work focuses on checking the viability of thermal imaging in the evaluation of thyroid cancer recurrence. A female patient presented right lobectomy of the thyroid gland and diagnosed with adenoma in the upper third of the left lobe of the thyroid participated in the study. The dynamic thermography under cold stressing was used. The analysis of variation rate and the average difference of temperature in the cancerous tissue (left lobe) comparing to the healthy tissue (isthmus) were performed. Forty photos were evaluated during fifteen minutes. The images were taken every ten seconds in the first five minutes. The temperature variation rate increased in both regions during this time according to the results. The average of temperature difference, compared to the healthy tissue (isthmus) after cold stressing is 1.0o C after 5 or 10 minutes and 0.8oC after 15 minutes. The temperature ripple was higher on the healthy tissue (5°C) than on the cancerous one (3.6oC) right after cold stressing. Thermography seems to be effective in detecting the new thyroid nodule in the left lobe.

Comparison between thermal recovery in women with Raynaud's Phenomenon and not diagnosed women using thermography.

Thermography detects the infrared radiation emanated from bodies and transduces it in electrical analog signal. It has application as a complementary exam in several medical segments, including the reheating study to detect diseases like Raynaud's Phenomenon (RP). In this way, the aim of this study is to compare the heating behavior of the RP women and not diagnosed (ND) women for selection of diagnosis criteria. This retrospective study was undertaken in the city of Curitiba, Brazil. For the study, twenty-four volunteer women, with the age range of 30-70 years, were taken to participate of a survey, 12 of them have the clinical diagnostic of Secondary Raynauld's Phenomenon, and twelve women were not diagnosed. Volunteers answered an anamnesis and had the central body temperature measured. They were oriented to keep the hands free and to do not touch anything during 15 minutes for acclimatization. Then, the hands were immersed for 60 seconds in a container with water at 10 °C. New pictures were taken every five minutes during twenty minutes after the immersion. The heating curve of the right hand shows that RP women's hands are colder than ND women and are slower to reheat the temperature after cold stress. The ring (fourth finger) has a linear behavior in both hands. It was the coldest one and the slowest to reheat. Statistical difference was observed in critical times of reheating at 15 and 20 minutes after the cold stress. These results show that this finger could become a reference in studies to determine cutting points and to facilitate the clinical diagnosis of RP.

Evaluation of pelvis slope and flattening on children gymnasts by Biophotogrammetry technique.

This work proposes to detect possible affections or abnormalities in pelvic belt region in a group of rhythmic gymnastics due to the need for studies in the field of biomechanics and structural evaluation of human being. The methodology for this study used a tool called Biophotogrammetry. This technique has analyzed, through scanned images, the structural pelvic girdle bone profile of 64 practitioners of rhythmic gymnastics. The results of this study have presented weighted averages of 45.07±9.78° between the right pelvic slope (RPS) and left pelvic slope (LPS) and 91.74±2.50° for flattening of the pelvis (FP). Therefore, it is concluded that the Biophotogrammetry technique provides data related to the gold standard radiography test, used as reference for the pelvic girdle measurements.

Comparison between body fat measurements obtained by portable ultrasound and caliper in young adults.

The objective of this study was to compare and correlate the Portable Ultra Sound (US) measuring technique to the skinfold measuring technique (SF) to estimate body fat percentage (%F) in young adults. Sixty military were evaluated, all males, divided in two groups: Group 1 (normal) composed by 30 military with Body Mass Index (BMI) until 24.99 kg/m(2) and Group 2 (overweight) composed by 30 military with BMI > 25 kg/m(2). Weight, height, skinfolds and ultrasound were measured in 9 points (triceps, subscapular, biceps, chest, medium axillary, abdominal, suprailiac, thigh and calf). Body fat average values obtained by skinfold thickness and ultrasound measurements were 13.25 ± 6.32 % and 12.73 ± 5.95 % respectively. Despite significant differences in measurements of each anatomical site, it was possible to verify that the total final body fat percentage calculated by both techniques did not present significant differences and that overweight group presented greater similarity between the values obtained using caliper and ultrasound equipment.

Biophotogrammetry model of respiratory motion analysis applied to children.

This study aimed to test a protocol of measurements based on Biophotogrammetry to Analysis of Respiratory Mechanics (BARM) in healthy children. Seventeen normal spirometric children (six male and 11 female) were tested. Their performed maneuvers of forced inspiratory vital capacity were recorded in the supine position. The images were acquired by a digital camera, laterally placed to the trunk. Surface markers allowed that the files, exported to CorelDraw® software, were processed by irregular trapezoids paths. Compartments were defined in the thoracic (TX), abdominal (AB) and the chest wall (CW). They were defined at the end of an inspiration and expiration, both maximum, controlled by a digital spirometer. The result showed that the measured areas at the inspiratory and expiratory periods were statistically different (p<0.05). It reflects the mobility of CW and compartments. In conclusion, the proposed method can identify the breathing pattern of the measured subject using images in two dimensions (2D).