Differentially Methylated Genomic Regions in Birth-Weight Discordant Twin Pairs.

Poor nutrition during critical growth phases may alter the structural and physiologic development of vital organs thus "programming" the susceptibility to adult-onset diseases and disease-related health conditions. Epigenome-wide association studies have been performed in birth-weight discordant twin pairs to find evidence for such "programming" effects, but no significant results emerged. We further investigated this issue using a new computational approach: Instead of probing single genomic sites for significant alterations in epigenetic marks, we scan for differentially methylated genomic regions. Whole genome DNA methylation levels were measured in whole blood from 150 pairs of adult identical twins discordant for birth-weight. Intrapair differential DNA methylation was associated with qualitative (large or small) and quantitative (percentage) birth-weight discordance at each genomic site using regression models adjusting for age and sex. Based on the regression results, genomic regions with consistent alteration patterns of DNA methylation were located and tested for significant robustness using computational permutation tests. This yielded an interesting genomic region on chromosome 1, which is significantly differentially methylated for quantitative birth-weight discordance. The region covers two genes (TYW3 and CRYZ) both reportedly associated with metabolism. We conclude that prenatal conditions for birth-weight discordance may result in persistent epigenetic modifications potentially affecting even adult health.

[Cuffless blood pressure acquisition system based on a novel calibration method].

Based on Moens-Korteweg model & hydrostatic principle, a simple calibration method by changing vertical distance between heart and radial artery is proposed in this paper. Using hydrostatic pressure to change arterial pressure and pulse wave transmit time, consequently obtain several sets of cardiovascular parameters and finally build up relationship between blood pressure and pulse wave transmit time. Clinical tests have been carried with different age and gender for long and short time monitoring. The comparison results with Sphygmomanometer OMRON EW3152 show its promising accuracy and coincidence feature in blood pressure measurement.

A Novel ECG Data Compression Method Using Adaptive Fourier Decomposition With Security Guarantee in e-Health Applications.

This paper presents a novel electrocardiogram (ECG) compression method for e-health applications by adapting an adaptive Fourier decomposition (AFD) algorithm hybridized with a symbol substitution (SS) technique. The compression consists of two stages: first stage AFD executes efficient lossy compression with high fidelity; second stage SS performs lossless compression enhancement and built-in data encryption, which is pivotal for e-health. Validated with 48 ECG records from MIT-BIH arrhythmia benchmark database, the proposed method achieves averaged compression ratio (CR) of 17.6-44.5 and percentage root mean square difference (PRD) of 0.8-2.0% with a highly linear and robust PRD-CR relationship, pushing forward the compression performance to an unexploited region. As such, this paper provides an attractive candidate of ECG compression method for pervasive e-health applications.

Function formula oriented construction of Bayesian inference nets for diagnosis of cardiovascular disease.

An intelligent cardiovascular disease (CVD) diagnosis system using hemodynamic parameters (HDPs) derived from sphygmogram (SPG) signal is presented to support the emerging patient-centric healthcare models. To replicate clinical approach of diagnosis through a staged decision process, the Bayesian inference nets (BIN) are adapted. New approaches to construct a hierarchical multistage BIN using defined function formulas and a method employing fuzzy logic (FL) technology to quantify inference nodes with dynamic values of statistical parameters are proposed. The suggested methodology is validated by constructing hierarchical Bayesian fuzzy inference nets (HBFIN) to diagnose various heart pathologies from the deduced HDPs. The preliminary diagnostic results show that the proposed methodology has salient validity and effectiveness in the diagnosis of cardiovascular disease.

An effective low-complexity multi-vital-signs compression technique for embedded-link e-home healthcare.

Transplanting the existing e-home healthcare system to source-limited embedded-link device for home-use health monitoring, intelligent medical diagnosis and wireless transmission is attractive. Yet, constrains of portable storage, computing and transmission promote the need of data compression for such applications. Existing compression techniques are mostly desktop-computer-based and computation-consuming, making them unsuitable for mobile device. To tackle such a bottleneck problem, this paper addresses an effective low-complexity multi-vital-signs compression technique based on orthogonal polynomial decomposition (OPD) algorithm using Hermite functions. The technique is proposed and operated on the designated healthcare system with optimized parameters. Validated and tested with cardiovascular disease (CVD) diagnosis based on sphygmogram both experimentally and clinically, the proposed technique achieves comparable good performance with distortion less than 2% and compression ratio up to 6, and preserves significant pathological features of multi-vital-signs for clinical diagnosis. The proposed technique is highly robust even for freaky and pathological signals. In addition, the compressed results reflecting morphological features can be directly adapted to the subsequent medical analysis without further decompression.

From Codabar to ISBT 128: Implementing Barcode Technology in Blood BankAutomation System.

Barcode technology has been widely employed in medicine and healthcare industry. In this paper, it firstly introduces the application of barcode technology in information automation system oriented to blood banks and other transfusion facilities. In the following, the label paradigm of Codabar in Macao Blood Transfusion Center (CTS-Macau) is examined through the comparison with ISBT 128, an international barcode and labeling standard for blood and blood products. And then, it tries to exemplify the supersedure of Codabar by ISBT 128 via the implementation of barcode labeling system at CTS-Macau. This paper is intended to serve as a reference of implementing barcode technology in blood bank automation system.