Real-time multidimensional temporal analysis of complex high volume physiological data streams in the neonatal intensive care unit.

The intensive care of immature preterm infants is a challenging, dynamic clinical task that is complicated because these infants frequently develop a range of comorbidities as they grow and develop after their premature birth. Earliest reliable condition onset detection is a goal within this setting and high frequency physiological analysis is showing potential new pathophysiological indicators for earlier onset detection of several conditions. To realise this, a platform for multi-stream, multi-condition, multi-feature risk scoring is required. In this paper we demonstrate our multi-stream online analytics approach for condition onset detection and demonstrate a user interface approach for patient state that can be available in real-time to support condition risk scoring.

Polymerase chain reaction-based suppression of repetitive sequences in whole chromosome painting probes for FISH.

We have developed a method to suppress the PCR amplification of repetitive sequences in whole chromosome painting probes by adding Cot-1 DNA to the amplification mixture. The repetitive sequences in the Cot-1 DNA bind to their homologous sequences in the probe library, prevent the binding of primers, and interfere with extension of the probe sequences, greatly decreasing PCR efficiency selectively across these blocked regions. A second labelling reaction is then done and this product is resuspended in FISH hybridization mixture without further addition of blocking DNA. The hybridization produces little if any non-specific binding on any other chromosomes. We have been able to successfully use this procedure with both human and rat chromosome probes. This technique should be applicable in producing probes for CGH, M-FISH and SKY, as well as reducing the presence of repetitive DNA in genomic libraries.