Francesco Girardi - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Francesco Girardi

Research paper thumbnail of Supervised Computer Aided Diagnosis to Support Telemedicine in Hematology

Research paper thumbnail of A Novel Deep Learning Approach in Haematology for Classification of Leucocytes

Quantifying and Processing Biomedical and Behavioral Signals, 2018

This paper presents a comparison between two different Computer Aided Diagnosis systems for class... more This paper presents a comparison between two different Computer Aided Diagnosis systems for classification of five types of leucocytes located in the tail of a Peripheral Blood Smears: Lymphocytes, Monocytes, Neutrophils, Basophils and Eosinophils. In particular, we have evaluated and compared the performance of a previous feature-based Back Propagation Neural Network classifier with the performance of two novel classifiers both based on Deep Learning using Convolutional Neural Networks introduced in this study. All the classifiers are built considering the same dataset of images acquired in a previous study. The experimental results, reported in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and precision, show that the different strategies could be compared and discussed from both clinical and technical point of view.

Research paper thumbnail of Italian Parkinson's Voice and Speech

This dataset is associated with the paper, Giovanni Dimauro et al. 2017, which is open source, an... more This dataset is associated with the paper, Giovanni Dimauro et al. 2017, which is open source, and can be found here: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8070308The DataPort Repository contains the data used primarily for generating Figure 2,3,4,5

Research paper thumbnail of Rhino-Cyt: A System for Supporting the Rhinologist in the Analysis of Nasal Cytology

In recent years, cytological observations in the rhinological field are being increasingly utiliz... more In recent years, cytological observations in the rhinological field are being increasingly utilized. This development has taken place over the last two decades and has proven to be fundamental in defining new nosological entities and in driving changes in the previous classification of rhinopathies. The simplicity of the technique and its low invasiveness make rhinocytology a practical diagnostic tool practical for all rhinoallergology services. Furthermore, since it allows the monitoring of responses to treatment, this method plays an important role in guiding a more effective and less expensive diagnostic program. Microscopic observation requires prolonged effort by a specialist, but the modern scanning systems for cytological preparations allow scanning of an entire preparation enlarged to 400x. By means of the system presented in this paper, it is possible to automatically identify and classify cells present on a rhinocytologic preparation based on a digital image of the prepara...

Research paper thumbnail of Automatic Segmentation of Relevant Sections of the Conjunctiva for Non-Invasive Anemia Detection

2018 3rd International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Technologies (SpliTech), 2018

Anemia is diagnosed by measuring the blood concentration of hemoglobin (Hb). In the literature, m... more Anemia is diagnosed by measuring the blood concentration of hemoglobin (Hb). In the literature, many studies have aimed to diagnose anemia with non-invasive methods, for example, estimating the pallor of the conjunctiva by means of digital images. In this way, this paper aims to identify a procedure for the automatic segmentation and optimization of conjunctiva sections. Therefore, image analysis algorithms have been applied to optimize the area of interest in terms of correlation with the estimated Hb value by blood sampling. Optimization was also possible through the study of the influence of image brightness on the correct Hb estimation by means of digital images of the conjunctiva. In conclusion, interesting experimental results were reported.

Research paper thumbnail of Personal Health E-Record - Toward an Enabling Ambient Assisted Living Technology for Communication and Information Sharing Between Patients and Care Providers

In this paper, we propose the Personal Health Electronic Record (PHER), a new type of Patient Hea... more In this paper, we propose the Personal Health Electronic Record (PHER), a new type of Patient Health Record. This record aims to help physicians shift from a medical practice that is often based on their personal opinion or experience towards one of evidence based medicine, thus improving the communication among patients and their care providers and increasing the availability of personal medical information. The PHER can be considered an enabling Ambient Assisted Living technology because it allows patients and care providers to file and share all types of medical data and useful clinical information so that they can access whatever they need, whenever they need it. The development of diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms that are able to support the physician in planning treatment using the data stored in the PHER is also discussed.

Research paper thumbnail of A Dynamic Approach to Medical Data Visualization and Interaction

Modern web applications lack in flexibility when multiple medical data are shown at the same time... more Modern web applications lack in flexibility when multiple medical data are shown at the same time. This could bring users to not consider important aspects of their health status and physicians to lose critical patients situations. The ”Registro Elettronico Sanitario Personale” (RESP, in English ”Personal Sanitary Electronic Registry”) is a prototype of a web portal allowing patients and physicians to share health problems, diagnosis, prognosis, pharmaceutical therapies etc. Currently, it presents to patients a static web page. This paper proposes a prototype of a dynamic and fully customizable Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the RESP, in order to provide patients with current and historical medical data, and allow them to analyze their lifestyle. This real-time health monitoring give patients a better awareness on their overall status.

Research paper thumbnail of Classification of Cardiac Tones of Mechanical and Native Mitral Valves

Research paper thumbnail of Personal Heart Health Monitoring Based on 1D Convolutional Neural Network

Journal of Imaging, 2021

The automated detection of suspicious anomalies in electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings allows freq... more The automated detection of suspicious anomalies in electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings allows frequent personal heart health monitoring and can drastically reduce the number of ECGs that need to be manually examined by the cardiologists, excluding those classified as normal, facilitating healthcare decision-making and reducing a considerable amount of time and money. In this paper, we present a system able to automatically detect the suspect of cardiac pathologies in ECG signals from personal monitoring devices, with the aim to alert the patient to send the ECG to the medical specialist for a correct diagnosis and a proper therapy. The main contributes of this work are: (a) the implementation of a binary classifier based on a 1D-CNN architecture for detecting the suspect of anomalies in ECGs, regardless of the kind of cardiac pathology; (b) the analysis was carried out on 21 classes of different cardiac pathologies classified as anomalous; and (c) the possibility to classify anomalie...

Research paper thumbnail of Assessment of Speech Intelligibility in Parkinson’s Disease Using a Speech-To-Text System

IEEE Access, 2017

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) may have difficulties in speaking because of reduced coord... more Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) may have difficulties in speaking because of reduced coordination of the muscles that control breathing, phonation, articulation, and prosody. Symptoms that may occur are weakening of the volume of the voice, voice monotony, changes in the quality of the voice, the speed of speech, uncontrolled repetition of words, and difficult speech intelligibility. To date, evaluation of the speech intelligibility is performed based on the unified PD rating scale. Specifically, section 3.1 (eloquence) of the cited scale provides the specialist with some tips to evaluate the patient's speech ability. With the aim of evaluating the speech intelligibility by measuring the variation in parameters in an objective manner, we show that a speech-to-text (STT) system could help specialists to obtain an accurate and objective measure of speech, phrase, and word intelligibility in PD. STT systems are based on methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers and computerized devices. We decided to base our study on Google STT conversion. We expand Voxtester, a software system for digital assessment of voice and speech changes in PD, in order to perform this study. No previous studies have been presented to address the mentioned challenges based on STT. The experiments here presented are related with detection/classification between pathological speech from patients with PD and regular speech from healthy control group. The results are very interesting and are an important step toward assessing the intelligibility of the speech of PD patients.

Research paper thumbnail of A New Method and a Non-Invasive Device to Estimate Anemia Based on Digital Images of the Conjunctiva

IEEE Access, 2018

Medical practice for determining haemoglobin (Hb) concentration, which is important for anemic pa... more Medical practice for determining haemoglobin (Hb) concentration, which is important for anemic patients in need of blood transfusion, requires a blood sample. In this paper, we propose a non-invasive approach to Hb estimation based on the image analysis of a specific conjunctival region. Our goal is to develop a device that is not expensive and simple to use for assessing the anemic condition; this device could be used by the physician to decide whether to take a blood sample or even by a patient at home to decide whether to inform a physician; in this way, we can avoid having the patient go frequently to the laboratory to take a blood sample. This device also allows us to rapidly screen for Anemia in a large number of persons, for example, groups of girls who are at the beginning of the menses. Here, we detail the prototype of our device and the methodology for extracting key information from the color values of the acquired image. Tests conducted on 113 anemic and healthy persons show a strong correlation between the real Hb value obtained through blood sampling and the value estimated by our device. A k-nearest neighbor classification algorithm for assessing the (non)anemic condition yielded good results and helps doctors avoid a significant number of blood tests. INDEX TERMS Anemia, haemoglobin, conjunctiva, non-invasive, image analysis.

Research paper thumbnail of Detecting Clinical Signs of Anaemia From Digital Images of the Palpebral Conjunctiva

Research paper thumbnail of Nasal cytology with deep learning techniques

International Journal of Medical Informatics, 2018

Background: In recent years, cytological observations in the Rhinology field are being increasing... more Background: In recent years, cytological observations in the Rhinology field are being increasingly utilized. This development has taken place over the last two decades and has proven to be fundamental in defining new nosological entities and in driving changes in the previous classification of rhinitis. The simplicity of the technique and its low invasiveness make nasal cytology a practical diagnostic tool for all rhino-allergology services. Furthermore, since it allows the monitoring of responses to treatment, this method plays an important role in guiding a more effective and less expensive diagnostic program. Microscopic observation requires prolonged effort by a specialist, but the modern scanning systems for cytological preparations and the new affordable digital microscopes allow to design a software support system, based on deep learning techniques, to relieve specialist's tiring activity. Basic procedure: By means of the system presented in this paper, it is possible to automatically identify and classify cells present on a nasal cytological preparation based on a digital image of the preparation itself. Thus, an interesting diagnostic support has been made available to the rhino-cytologist, who can quickly verify that the cells have been correctly classified by the software system: any few unclassified or incorrectly classified cells can be quickly sorted by the specialist itself, then one or more diagnosis can be suggested by this system, taking into consideration also the anamnesis of each patient. The final diagnosis can be defined by the specialist, also based on the result of the prick test and the observation of the nasal cavity. Findings: In the system presented herein, image processing and image segmentation techniques have been used to find images of cellular elements within the preparation. Cell classification is based on a convolutional neural network composed of three blocks of main layers. Cell identification (first step, image segmentation) exhibits sensitivity greater than 97%, while cell classification (second step, seven cytotypes) attained a mean accuracy of approximately 99% on the test set and 94% on the validation set. Conclusions: This complete system supports clinicians in the preparation of a rhino-cytogram report.

Research paper thumbnail of A novel approach to evaluate blood parameters using computer vision techniques

2016 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA), 2016

Current medical practice for determining hemoglobin concentration (which is especially important ... more Current medical practice for determining hemoglobin concentration (which is especially important for anemic patients in need of blood transfusion) involves frequent blood tests. In this work, we propose an alternative, non-invasive approach to hemoglobin estimation, based on image analysis of a specific conjunctival region. Our ultimate goal is to develop an easy-to-use wearable device that patients themselves can employ at home to autonomously assess their need of blood transfusion. In this paper, we detail the prototype of our device and the methodology for extracting key information from the color values of the acquired image. Tests conducted on 77 anemic and healthy patients show significant correlation between the real hemoglobin value obtained through blood sampling and the value estimated by our algorithm. A prototypical binary classification algorithm for assessing the need of blood transfusion yielded good results in terms of accuracy, specificity and sensitivity, thus making it possible to avoid a significant number of blood tests.

Research paper thumbnail of Estimate of Anemia with New Non-Invasive Systems—A Moment of Reflection

Electronics, 2020

Anemia is a global public health problem with major consequences for human health. About a quarte... more Anemia is a global public health problem with major consequences for human health. About a quarter of the world population shows a hemoglobin concentration that is below the recommended thresholds. Non-invasive methods for monitoring and identifying potential risk of anemia and smartphone-based devices to perform this task are promising in addressing this pathology. We have considered some well-known studies carried out on this topic since the main purpose of this work was not to produce a review. The first group of papers describes the approaches for the clinical evaluation of anemia focused on different human exposed tissues, while we used a second group to overview some technologies, basic methods, and principles of operation of some devices and highlight some technical problems. Results extracted from the second group of papers examined were aggregated in two comparison tables. A growing interest in this topic is demonstrated by the increasing number of papers published recently...

Research paper thumbnail of Piperacillin plus amikacin versus cefotaxime plus amikacin in neutropenic and feverish patients with malignant hemopathies

Chemioterapia : international journal of the Mediterranean Society of Chemotherapy, 1988

Seventy-one neutropenic patients under cytostatic treatment for malignant hemopathies (neutrophil... more Seventy-one neutropenic patients under cytostatic treatment for malignant hemopathies (neutrophil granulocytes less than or equal to/mm3 with feverish episodes in progress (T greater than or equal to 38.5 degrees C) which were probably of an infectious nature were treated according to two antibiotic protocols (piperacillin + amikacin [P + A] or cefotaxime + amikacin [C + A] in a randomized, comparative, prospective study. Of the 71 patients enrolled, 65 could in the end be evaluated for the purposes of this study (36 treated according to the P + A protocol, 29 according to the C + A protocol). In 16 patients the infection was documented bacteriologically. In these cases the percentages of response were, respectively, 77.7% with the P + A and 71.4% with the C + A protocol. The positive clinical results of the two protocols being studied were, considering the entire survey (bacteriologically documented, clinically documented and FUO infections), respectively, 69.4% in the patients tre...

Research paper thumbnail of Improving the Healthcare Effectiveness: The Possible Role of EHR, IoMT and Blockchain

Electronics

New types of patient health records aim to help physicians shift from a medical practice, often b... more New types of patient health records aim to help physicians shift from a medical practice, often based on their personal experience, towards one of evidence based medicine, thus improving the communication among patients and care providers and increasing the availability of personal medical information. These new records, allowing patients and care providers to share medical data and clinical information, and access them whenever they need, can be considered enabling Ambient Assisted Living technologies. Furthermore, new personal disease monitoring tools support specialists in their tasks, as an example allowing acquisition, transmission and analysis of medical images. The growing interest around these new technologies poses serious questions regarding data integrity and transaction security. The huge amount of sensitive data stored in these new records surely attracts the interest of malicious hackers, therefore it is necessary to guarantee the integrity and the maximum security of ...

Research paper thumbnail of The patient centered Electronic Multimedia Health Fascicle - EMHF

2014 Ieee Workshop on Biometric Measurements and Systems For Security and Medical Applications Proceedings, Oct 1, 2014

ABSTRACT

Research paper thumbnail of VoxTester, software for digital evaluation of speech changes in Parkinson disease

2016 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA), 2016

Patients with Parkinson's disease may have difficulty speaking because of reduced coordin... more Patients with Parkinson's disease may have difficulty speaking because of reduced coordination of the muscles that control breathing, phonation, articulation and prosody. Symptoms that may occur because of changes are weakening the volume and weakening of the voice, the voice monotonous, the change in the quality of the voice, speed of speech, repetition uncontrolled words. The evaluation of some of the disorders mentioned can be accomplished by measuring the variation of parameters in an objective manner as in response to the treatments, even with daily intra-frequency pre / post-treatment, as in the long term. Software systems allow these measurements also by recording patient’s voice and this allows to carry out a large number of tests, both in terms of number of patients and the frequency of the measurements.

Research paper thumbnail of A novel approach to evaluate blood parameters using computer vision techniques

2016 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA), 2016

Research paper thumbnail of Supervised Computer Aided Diagnosis to Support Telemedicine in Hematology

Research paper thumbnail of A Novel Deep Learning Approach in Haematology for Classification of Leucocytes

Quantifying and Processing Biomedical and Behavioral Signals, 2018

This paper presents a comparison between two different Computer Aided Diagnosis systems for class... more This paper presents a comparison between two different Computer Aided Diagnosis systems for classification of five types of leucocytes located in the tail of a Peripheral Blood Smears: Lymphocytes, Monocytes, Neutrophils, Basophils and Eosinophils. In particular, we have evaluated and compared the performance of a previous feature-based Back Propagation Neural Network classifier with the performance of two novel classifiers both based on Deep Learning using Convolutional Neural Networks introduced in this study. All the classifiers are built considering the same dataset of images acquired in a previous study. The experimental results, reported in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and precision, show that the different strategies could be compared and discussed from both clinical and technical point of view.

Research paper thumbnail of Italian Parkinson's Voice and Speech

This dataset is associated with the paper, Giovanni Dimauro et al. 2017, which is open source, an... more This dataset is associated with the paper, Giovanni Dimauro et al. 2017, which is open source, and can be found here: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8070308The DataPort Repository contains the data used primarily for generating Figure 2,3,4,5

Research paper thumbnail of Rhino-Cyt: A System for Supporting the Rhinologist in the Analysis of Nasal Cytology

In recent years, cytological observations in the rhinological field are being increasingly utiliz... more In recent years, cytological observations in the rhinological field are being increasingly utilized. This development has taken place over the last two decades and has proven to be fundamental in defining new nosological entities and in driving changes in the previous classification of rhinopathies. The simplicity of the technique and its low invasiveness make rhinocytology a practical diagnostic tool practical for all rhinoallergology services. Furthermore, since it allows the monitoring of responses to treatment, this method plays an important role in guiding a more effective and less expensive diagnostic program. Microscopic observation requires prolonged effort by a specialist, but the modern scanning systems for cytological preparations allow scanning of an entire preparation enlarged to 400x. By means of the system presented in this paper, it is possible to automatically identify and classify cells present on a rhinocytologic preparation based on a digital image of the prepara...

Research paper thumbnail of Automatic Segmentation of Relevant Sections of the Conjunctiva for Non-Invasive Anemia Detection

2018 3rd International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Technologies (SpliTech), 2018

Anemia is diagnosed by measuring the blood concentration of hemoglobin (Hb). In the literature, m... more Anemia is diagnosed by measuring the blood concentration of hemoglobin (Hb). In the literature, many studies have aimed to diagnose anemia with non-invasive methods, for example, estimating the pallor of the conjunctiva by means of digital images. In this way, this paper aims to identify a procedure for the automatic segmentation and optimization of conjunctiva sections. Therefore, image analysis algorithms have been applied to optimize the area of interest in terms of correlation with the estimated Hb value by blood sampling. Optimization was also possible through the study of the influence of image brightness on the correct Hb estimation by means of digital images of the conjunctiva. In conclusion, interesting experimental results were reported.

Research paper thumbnail of Personal Health E-Record - Toward an Enabling Ambient Assisted Living Technology for Communication and Information Sharing Between Patients and Care Providers

In this paper, we propose the Personal Health Electronic Record (PHER), a new type of Patient Hea... more In this paper, we propose the Personal Health Electronic Record (PHER), a new type of Patient Health Record. This record aims to help physicians shift from a medical practice that is often based on their personal opinion or experience towards one of evidence based medicine, thus improving the communication among patients and their care providers and increasing the availability of personal medical information. The PHER can be considered an enabling Ambient Assisted Living technology because it allows patients and care providers to file and share all types of medical data and useful clinical information so that they can access whatever they need, whenever they need it. The development of diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms that are able to support the physician in planning treatment using the data stored in the PHER is also discussed.

Research paper thumbnail of A Dynamic Approach to Medical Data Visualization and Interaction

Modern web applications lack in flexibility when multiple medical data are shown at the same time... more Modern web applications lack in flexibility when multiple medical data are shown at the same time. This could bring users to not consider important aspects of their health status and physicians to lose critical patients situations. The ”Registro Elettronico Sanitario Personale” (RESP, in English ”Personal Sanitary Electronic Registry”) is a prototype of a web portal allowing patients and physicians to share health problems, diagnosis, prognosis, pharmaceutical therapies etc. Currently, it presents to patients a static web page. This paper proposes a prototype of a dynamic and fully customizable Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the RESP, in order to provide patients with current and historical medical data, and allow them to analyze their lifestyle. This real-time health monitoring give patients a better awareness on their overall status.

Research paper thumbnail of Classification of Cardiac Tones of Mechanical and Native Mitral Valves

Research paper thumbnail of Personal Heart Health Monitoring Based on 1D Convolutional Neural Network

Journal of Imaging, 2021

The automated detection of suspicious anomalies in electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings allows freq... more The automated detection of suspicious anomalies in electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings allows frequent personal heart health monitoring and can drastically reduce the number of ECGs that need to be manually examined by the cardiologists, excluding those classified as normal, facilitating healthcare decision-making and reducing a considerable amount of time and money. In this paper, we present a system able to automatically detect the suspect of cardiac pathologies in ECG signals from personal monitoring devices, with the aim to alert the patient to send the ECG to the medical specialist for a correct diagnosis and a proper therapy. The main contributes of this work are: (a) the implementation of a binary classifier based on a 1D-CNN architecture for detecting the suspect of anomalies in ECGs, regardless of the kind of cardiac pathology; (b) the analysis was carried out on 21 classes of different cardiac pathologies classified as anomalous; and (c) the possibility to classify anomalie...

Research paper thumbnail of Assessment of Speech Intelligibility in Parkinson’s Disease Using a Speech-To-Text System

IEEE Access, 2017

Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) may have difficulties in speaking because of reduced coord... more Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) may have difficulties in speaking because of reduced coordination of the muscles that control breathing, phonation, articulation, and prosody. Symptoms that may occur are weakening of the volume of the voice, voice monotony, changes in the quality of the voice, the speed of speech, uncontrolled repetition of words, and difficult speech intelligibility. To date, evaluation of the speech intelligibility is performed based on the unified PD rating scale. Specifically, section 3.1 (eloquence) of the cited scale provides the specialist with some tips to evaluate the patient's speech ability. With the aim of evaluating the speech intelligibility by measuring the variation in parameters in an objective manner, we show that a speech-to-text (STT) system could help specialists to obtain an accurate and objective measure of speech, phrase, and word intelligibility in PD. STT systems are based on methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers and computerized devices. We decided to base our study on Google STT conversion. We expand Voxtester, a software system for digital assessment of voice and speech changes in PD, in order to perform this study. No previous studies have been presented to address the mentioned challenges based on STT. The experiments here presented are related with detection/classification between pathological speech from patients with PD and regular speech from healthy control group. The results are very interesting and are an important step toward assessing the intelligibility of the speech of PD patients.

Research paper thumbnail of A New Method and a Non-Invasive Device to Estimate Anemia Based on Digital Images of the Conjunctiva

IEEE Access, 2018

Medical practice for determining haemoglobin (Hb) concentration, which is important for anemic pa... more Medical practice for determining haemoglobin (Hb) concentration, which is important for anemic patients in need of blood transfusion, requires a blood sample. In this paper, we propose a non-invasive approach to Hb estimation based on the image analysis of a specific conjunctival region. Our goal is to develop a device that is not expensive and simple to use for assessing the anemic condition; this device could be used by the physician to decide whether to take a blood sample or even by a patient at home to decide whether to inform a physician; in this way, we can avoid having the patient go frequently to the laboratory to take a blood sample. This device also allows us to rapidly screen for Anemia in a large number of persons, for example, groups of girls who are at the beginning of the menses. Here, we detail the prototype of our device and the methodology for extracting key information from the color values of the acquired image. Tests conducted on 113 anemic and healthy persons show a strong correlation between the real Hb value obtained through blood sampling and the value estimated by our device. A k-nearest neighbor classification algorithm for assessing the (non)anemic condition yielded good results and helps doctors avoid a significant number of blood tests. INDEX TERMS Anemia, haemoglobin, conjunctiva, non-invasive, image analysis.

Research paper thumbnail of Detecting Clinical Signs of Anaemia From Digital Images of the Palpebral Conjunctiva

Research paper thumbnail of Nasal cytology with deep learning techniques

International Journal of Medical Informatics, 2018

Background: In recent years, cytological observations in the Rhinology field are being increasing... more Background: In recent years, cytological observations in the Rhinology field are being increasingly utilized. This development has taken place over the last two decades and has proven to be fundamental in defining new nosological entities and in driving changes in the previous classification of rhinitis. The simplicity of the technique and its low invasiveness make nasal cytology a practical diagnostic tool for all rhino-allergology services. Furthermore, since it allows the monitoring of responses to treatment, this method plays an important role in guiding a more effective and less expensive diagnostic program. Microscopic observation requires prolonged effort by a specialist, but the modern scanning systems for cytological preparations and the new affordable digital microscopes allow to design a software support system, based on deep learning techniques, to relieve specialist's tiring activity. Basic procedure: By means of the system presented in this paper, it is possible to automatically identify and classify cells present on a nasal cytological preparation based on a digital image of the preparation itself. Thus, an interesting diagnostic support has been made available to the rhino-cytologist, who can quickly verify that the cells have been correctly classified by the software system: any few unclassified or incorrectly classified cells can be quickly sorted by the specialist itself, then one or more diagnosis can be suggested by this system, taking into consideration also the anamnesis of each patient. The final diagnosis can be defined by the specialist, also based on the result of the prick test and the observation of the nasal cavity. Findings: In the system presented herein, image processing and image segmentation techniques have been used to find images of cellular elements within the preparation. Cell classification is based on a convolutional neural network composed of three blocks of main layers. Cell identification (first step, image segmentation) exhibits sensitivity greater than 97%, while cell classification (second step, seven cytotypes) attained a mean accuracy of approximately 99% on the test set and 94% on the validation set. Conclusions: This complete system supports clinicians in the preparation of a rhino-cytogram report.

Research paper thumbnail of A novel approach to evaluate blood parameters using computer vision techniques

2016 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA), 2016

Current medical practice for determining hemoglobin concentration (which is especially important ... more Current medical practice for determining hemoglobin concentration (which is especially important for anemic patients in need of blood transfusion) involves frequent blood tests. In this work, we propose an alternative, non-invasive approach to hemoglobin estimation, based on image analysis of a specific conjunctival region. Our ultimate goal is to develop an easy-to-use wearable device that patients themselves can employ at home to autonomously assess their need of blood transfusion. In this paper, we detail the prototype of our device and the methodology for extracting key information from the color values of the acquired image. Tests conducted on 77 anemic and healthy patients show significant correlation between the real hemoglobin value obtained through blood sampling and the value estimated by our algorithm. A prototypical binary classification algorithm for assessing the need of blood transfusion yielded good results in terms of accuracy, specificity and sensitivity, thus making it possible to avoid a significant number of blood tests.

Research paper thumbnail of Estimate of Anemia with New Non-Invasive Systems—A Moment of Reflection

Electronics, 2020

Anemia is a global public health problem with major consequences for human health. About a quarte... more Anemia is a global public health problem with major consequences for human health. About a quarter of the world population shows a hemoglobin concentration that is below the recommended thresholds. Non-invasive methods for monitoring and identifying potential risk of anemia and smartphone-based devices to perform this task are promising in addressing this pathology. We have considered some well-known studies carried out on this topic since the main purpose of this work was not to produce a review. The first group of papers describes the approaches for the clinical evaluation of anemia focused on different human exposed tissues, while we used a second group to overview some technologies, basic methods, and principles of operation of some devices and highlight some technical problems. Results extracted from the second group of papers examined were aggregated in two comparison tables. A growing interest in this topic is demonstrated by the increasing number of papers published recently...

Research paper thumbnail of Piperacillin plus amikacin versus cefotaxime plus amikacin in neutropenic and feverish patients with malignant hemopathies

Chemioterapia : international journal of the Mediterranean Society of Chemotherapy, 1988

Seventy-one neutropenic patients under cytostatic treatment for malignant hemopathies (neutrophil... more Seventy-one neutropenic patients under cytostatic treatment for malignant hemopathies (neutrophil granulocytes less than or equal to/mm3 with feverish episodes in progress (T greater than or equal to 38.5 degrees C) which were probably of an infectious nature were treated according to two antibiotic protocols (piperacillin + amikacin [P + A] or cefotaxime + amikacin [C + A] in a randomized, comparative, prospective study. Of the 71 patients enrolled, 65 could in the end be evaluated for the purposes of this study (36 treated according to the P + A protocol, 29 according to the C + A protocol). In 16 patients the infection was documented bacteriologically. In these cases the percentages of response were, respectively, 77.7% with the P + A and 71.4% with the C + A protocol. The positive clinical results of the two protocols being studied were, considering the entire survey (bacteriologically documented, clinically documented and FUO infections), respectively, 69.4% in the patients tre...

Research paper thumbnail of Improving the Healthcare Effectiveness: The Possible Role of EHR, IoMT and Blockchain

Electronics

New types of patient health records aim to help physicians shift from a medical practice, often b... more New types of patient health records aim to help physicians shift from a medical practice, often based on their personal experience, towards one of evidence based medicine, thus improving the communication among patients and care providers and increasing the availability of personal medical information. These new records, allowing patients and care providers to share medical data and clinical information, and access them whenever they need, can be considered enabling Ambient Assisted Living technologies. Furthermore, new personal disease monitoring tools support specialists in their tasks, as an example allowing acquisition, transmission and analysis of medical images. The growing interest around these new technologies poses serious questions regarding data integrity and transaction security. The huge amount of sensitive data stored in these new records surely attracts the interest of malicious hackers, therefore it is necessary to guarantee the integrity and the maximum security of ...

Research paper thumbnail of The patient centered Electronic Multimedia Health Fascicle - EMHF

2014 Ieee Workshop on Biometric Measurements and Systems For Security and Medical Applications Proceedings, Oct 1, 2014

ABSTRACT

Research paper thumbnail of VoxTester, software for digital evaluation of speech changes in Parkinson disease

2016 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA), 2016

Patients with Parkinson's disease may have difficulty speaking because of reduced coordin... more Patients with Parkinson's disease may have difficulty speaking because of reduced coordination of the muscles that control breathing, phonation, articulation and prosody. Symptoms that may occur because of changes are weakening the volume and weakening of the voice, the voice monotonous, the change in the quality of the voice, speed of speech, repetition uncontrolled words. The evaluation of some of the disorders mentioned can be accomplished by measuring the variation of parameters in an objective manner as in response to the treatments, even with daily intra-frequency pre / post-treatment, as in the long term. Software systems allow these measurements also by recording patient’s voice and this allows to carry out a large number of tests, both in terms of number of patients and the frequency of the measurements.

Research paper thumbnail of A novel approach to evaluate blood parameters using computer vision techniques

2016 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA), 2016