Design and clinical validation of a software program for automated measurement of mammographic breast density.

BACKGROUND: Mammographic breast density is an important predictor of breast cancer, but its measurement has limitations related to subjectivity of visual evaluation or to difficult access for automatic volumetric measurement methods. Herein, we describe the design and clinical validation of Aguida, a software program for automated quantification of breast density from flat mammography images. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The software program was developed in MatLab. After image segmentation separating the background from the breast image, the operator positions a cursor defining a region of interest on the pectoralis major muscle from the mediolateral oblique view. Then, in the craniocaudal view, the threshold for separation of the dense tissue is based on the optical density of the pectoral muscle, and the proportion of dense tissue is calculated by the program. Mammograms obtained from 2 different occasions in 291 women were used for clinical evaluation. RESULTS: The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) between breast density measurements by the software and by a radiologist was 0.96, with a bias of only 0.67 percentage points and a 95% limit of agreement of 13.5 percentage points; the ICC was 0.94 in the interobserver reliability assessment by two radiologists with different experience; and the ICC was 0.98 in the intraobserver reliability assessment. The distribution among the density classes was close to the values obtained with the volumetric software. CONCLUSIONS: Measurement of breast density with the Aguida program from flat mammography images showed high agreement with the visual determination by radiologists, and high inter- and intra-observer reliability.

Development of an Application for Aid in Cataract Screening.

Cataract is the main cause of reversible vision impairment in developed countries, and at the age of 70, almost all of them will have developed some degree of it. `Cataract' is the name given to any congenital or acquired opacity in the natural lens capsule or substance of the eye. In this context, this paper presents TriOft, an embedded teleophthalmology system, which uses the smartphone, for cataract screening. This application makes possible using the cell phone as a tool, considering its easiness for handling and transporting, as well as the benefits for the more remote regions, where there is no an easy access to a doctor, specialized or not.

Blood hero: An application for encouraging the blood donation by applying gamification.

There is a strong need for actions to supply the blood demand in the World. Based on this fact, it was designed an application, named `Blood Hero', by applying the `gamification' concept, which allows users to be rewarded by social acts related to the blood donation. It takes advantage of the application of mobile devices, implementing a specific social network, to attract and retain blood donators. This application makes possible an interaction between users and blood centers, and is being tested aiming at evaluating its acceptance and impact in bloodstocks.

S2DIA: a diagnostic system for Diabetes mellitus using SANA platform.

Currently, Diabetes is a very common disease around the world, and with an increase in sedentary lifestyles, obesity and an aging population the number of people with Diabetes worldwide will increase by more than 50%. In this context, the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) developed the SANA platform, which brings the benefits of information technology to the field of healthcare. It offers healthcare delivery in remote areas, improves patient access to medical specialists for faster, higher quality, and more cost effective diagnosis and intervention. For these reasons, we developed a system for diagnosis of Diabetes using the SANA platform, called S2DIA. It is the first step towards knowing the risks for type 2 Diabetes, and it will be evaluated, especially, in remote/poor areas of Brazil.

Design of an embedded PID controller applied to blood pressure control.

Some diseases, such as hypertension, require a close control of the patient's blood pressure. This is even more critical when that patient is going through--or has just underwent--a surgical procedure In such situations, reducing blood pressure to normal levels is of paramount importance. Usually, this demanding and time consuming monitoring is done manually by clinical personnel and are subject to mistakes and inconsistent practices. In this paper, we propose a solution to the manual monitoring through the design and implementation of an embedded PID controller to handle blood pressure, integrated to an automated monitoring system to assist in detecting anomalies and to optimize the process of patient care.

Mult-I/O - a middleware multi input and output for access devices: a case study applied the biomedical devices.

The great diversity in the architecture of hardware devices allied to many communication protocols, has been hindering the implementation of systems that need to access these devices. Given these differences, it appears the need of providing the access of these devices in a transparent way. In this sense, the present work proposes a middleware, mult input and output for access the devices, as a way of abstracting the writing and reading data mechanisms in hardware devices, contributing this way, for increasing systems productivity, as the developers are just focused in their functional requirements.