Quantitative estimation of temperature variations in plantar angiosomes: a study case for diabetic foot.

Thermography is a useful tool since it provides information that may help in the diagnostic of several diseases in a noninvasive and fast way. Particularly, thermography has been applied in the study of the diabetic foot. However, most of these studies report only qualitative information making it difficult to measure significant parameters such as temperature variations. These variations are important in the analysis of the diabetic foot since they could bring knowledge, for instance, regarding ulceration risks. The early detection of ulceration risks is considered an important research topic in the medicine field, as its objective is to avoid major complications that might lead to a limb amputation. The absence of symptoms in the early phase of the ulceration is conceived as the main disadvantage to provide an opportune diagnostic in subjects with neuropathy. Since the relation between temperature and ulceration risks is well established in the literature, a methodology that obtains quantitative temperature differences in the plantar area of the diabetic foot to detect ulceration risks is proposed in this work. Such methodology is based on the angiosome concept and image processing.

Análisis de señales electroencefalográficas para la clasificación de habla imaginada / Electroencephalographic Signals Analysis for Imagined Speech Classification

El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo interpretar las señales de EEG registradas durante la pronunciación imaginada de palabras de un vocabulario reducido, sin emitir sonidos ni articular movimientos (habla imaginada o no pronunciada) con la intención de controlar un dispositivo. Específicamente, el vocabulario permitiría controlar el cursor de la computadora, y consta de las palabras del lenguaje español: "arriba", "abajo", "izquierda", "derecha", y "seleccionar". Para ello, se registraron las señales de EEG de 27 individuos utilizando un protocolo básico para saber a priori en qué segmentos de la señal la persona imagina la pronunciación de la palabra indicada. Posteriormente, se utiliza la transformada wavelet discreta (DWT) para extraer características de los segmentos que son usados para calcular la energía relativa wavelet (RWE) en cada una de los niveles en los que la señal es descompuesta, y se selecciona un subconjunto de valores RWE provenientes de los rangos de frecuencia menores a 32 Hz. Enseguida, éstas se concatenan en dos configuraciones distintas: 14 canales (completa) y 4 canales (los más cercanos a las áreas de Broca y Wernicke). Para ambas configuraciones se entrenan tres clasificadores: Naive Bayes (NB), Random Forest (RF) y Máquina de vectores de soporte (SVM). Los mejores porcentajes de exactitud se obtuvieron con RF cuyos promedios fueron 60.11% y 47.93% usando las configuraciones de 14 canales y 4 canales, respectivamente. A pesar de que los resultados aún son preliminares, éstos están arriba del 20%, es decir, arriba del azar para cinco clases. Con lo que se puede conjeturar que las señales de EEG podrían contener información que hace posible la clasificación de las pronunciaciones imaginadas de las palabras del vocabulario reducido.

This work aims to interpret the EEG signals associated with actions to imagine the pronunciation of words that belong to a reduced vocabulary without moving the articulatory muscles and without uttering any audible sound (imagined or unspoken speech). Specifically, the vocabulary reflects movements to control the cursor on the computer, and consists of the Spanish language words: "arriba", "abajo", "izquierda", "derecha", and "seleccionar". To do this, we have recorded EEG signals from 27 subjects using a basic protocol to know a priori in what segments of the signal a subject imagines the pronunciation of the indicated word. Subsequently, discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is used to extract features from the segments. These are used to compute relative wavelet energy (RWE) in each of the levels in that EEG signal is decomposed and, it is selected a RWE values subset with the frequencies smaller than 32 Hz. Then, these are concatenated in two different configurations: 14 channels (full) and 4 channels (the channels nearest to the brain areas of Wernicke and Broca). The following three classifiers were trained using both configurations: Naive Bayes (NB), Random Forest (RF) and support vector machines (SVM). The best accuracies were obtained by RF whose averages were 60.11% and 47.93% using both configurations, respectively. Even though, the results are still preliminary, these are above 20%, this means they are more accurate than chance for five classes. Based on them, we can conjecture that the EEG signals could contain information needed for the classification of the imagined pronunciations of the words belonging to a reduced vocabulary.