Purpose. To evaluate the effect of nanosilica and nanoalumina addition in Tech-sil25 maxillofacial silicone before and after exposure to artificial weathering conditions. Materials and Methods. A ...total of 144 samples were divided into four groups, a control group (n = 12) and three test groups, nanosilica (NS) (n = 36), nanoalumina (NA) (n = 36), and a hybrid nanoparticle (HySA) (n = 60) at different weight percentages (1, 2, and 3 wt. %) was added to Tech-sil25. Samples were exposed to artificial weathering for 100 hours, and subjected to characterizations involving tear strength, shore A hardness, roughness, and tensile strength tests. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics using a one-way ANOVA test to determine the level of significance between the groups. Results. After 100 hours of artificial weathering, the one-way ANOVA result shows a highly significant increase in tensile and tear strengths with a minimal increase in hardness and roughness observed in samples containing 2% nanosilica (NS) followed by hybrid nanoparticle (HySA) of 1% nanoalumina (NA) + 1% nanosilica (NS) compared with a control group and other groups. Conclusions. The addition of nanosilica (NS), nanoalumina (NA), and a hybrid nanoparticle (HySA) to the Tech-sil25 maxillofacial silicone improved its mechanical properties. The combination of several filler reinforcements is essential for enhancing silicone’s antiaging properties of silicone and maintaining some of its mechanical properties to prolong the service life.
The tongue and hard palate play an essential role in the production of sound during continuous speech. Appropriate tongue and hard palate contacts will ensure proper sound production. ...Electropalatography, also known as EPG, is a device that can be used to identify the location of the tongue and hard palate contact. It can also be used by a speech therapist to help patients who have a speech disorder. Among the group with the disease are cleft palate, Down syndrome, glossectomy, and autism patients. Besides identifying the contact location, EPG is a useful medical device that has been continuously developed based on the patient's needs and treatment advancement. This article reviews the technology of electropalatography since the early introduction of the device. It also discusses the development process and the drawbacks of the previous EPG systems, resulting in the EPG's upgraded system and technology. This review suggests additional features that can be useful for the future development of the EPG. The latest technology can be incorporated into the EPG system to provide a more convenient method. There are some elements to be considered in the development of EPG's new technology that were discussed in this study. The elements are essential to provide more convenience for the patient during speech therapy. New technology can accelerate the growth of medical devices, particularly on the development of speech therapy equipment that should be based on the latest technological advancements available. Thus, the advanced EPG system suggested in this article may expand the usage of the EPG and serve as a tool to provide speech therapy treatment services and not limited to monitoring only.
Introduction
A standardised testing protocol for evaluation of a wide range of dental cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) performance and image quality (IQ) parameters is still limited and ...commercially available testing tool is unaffordable by some centres. This study aims to assess the performance of a low‐cost fabricated phantom for image quality assessment (IQA) of digital CBCT unit.
Methods
A customised polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) cylindrical phantom was developed for performance evaluation of Planmeca ProMax 3D Mid digital dental CBCT unit. The fabricated phantom consists of four different layers for testing specific IQ parameters such as CT number accuracy and uniformity, noise and CT number linearity. The phantom was scanned using common scanning protocols in clinical routine (90.0 kV, 8.0 mA and 13.6 s). In region‐of‐interest (ROI) analysis, the mean CT numbers (in Hounsfield unit, HU) and noise for water and air were determined and compared with the reference values (0 HU for water and −1000 HU for air). For linearity test, the correlation between the measured HU of different inserts with their density was studied.
Results
The average CT number were −994.1 HU and −2.4 HU, for air and water, respectively and the differences were within the recommended acceptable limit. The linearity test showed a strong positive correlation (R2 = 0.9693) between the measured HU and their densities.
Conclusion
The fabricated IQ phantom serves as a simple and affordable testing tool for digital dental CBCT imaging.
This study highlights the designation and fabrication of a simple and affordable phantom for quality assurance (QA) test suitable for digital dental CBCT system.
Blood glucose variability is common in healthcare and it is not related or influenced by diabetes mellitus. To minimise the risk of high blood glucose in critically ill patients, Stochastic Targeted ...Blood Glucose Control Protocol is used in intensive care unit at hospitals worldwide. Thus, this study focuses on the performance of stochastic modelling protocol in comparison to the current blood glucose management protocols in the Malaysian intensive care unit. Also, this study is to assess the effectiveness of Stochastic Targeted Blood Glucose Control Protocol when it is applied to a cohort of diabetic patients.
Retrospective data from 210 patients were obtained from a general hospital in Malaysia from May 2014 until June 2015, where 123 patients were having comorbid diabetes mellitus. The comparison of blood glucose control protocol performance between both protocol simulations was conducted through blood glucose fitted with physiological modelling on top of virtual trial simulations, mean calculation of simulation error and several graphical comparisons using stochastic modelling.
Stochastic Targeted Blood Glucose Control Protocol reduces hyperglycaemia by 16% in diabetic and 9% in nondiabetic cohorts. The protocol helps to control blood glucose level in the targeted range of 4.0–10.0 mmol/L for 71.8% in diabetic and 82.7% in nondiabetic cohorts, besides minimising the treatment hour up to 71 h for 123 diabetic patients and 39 h for 87 nondiabetic patients.
It is concluded that Stochastic Targeted Blood Glucose Control Protocol is good in reducing hyperglycaemia as compared to the current blood glucose management protocol in the Malaysian intensive care unit. Hence, the current Malaysian intensive care unit protocols need to be modified to enhance their performance, especially in the integration of insulin and nutrition intervention in decreasing the hyperglycaemia incidences. Improvement in Stochastic Targeted Blood Glucose Control Protocol in terms of uen model is also a must to adapt with the diabetic cohort.
Respiratory dysfunction and failure are common in the intensive care unit (ICU); they are often the primary reasons for ICU admission and affect length of stay, mortality, and cost. However, ...diagnosing respiratory dysfunction requires arterial blood gas values to calculate the partial pressure of arterial oxygen (PaO2) to a fraction of inspired oxygen (FiO2) or P/F ratio. These intermittent blood gas values may be difficult to obtain in some patients or where financial resources are limited. Its varying etiologies and lack of other specific biomarkers make diagnosing difficult without this measurement. Thus, in this study, we investigate commonly available parameters in the ICU for the classification of respiratory dysfunction without arterial blood gas values using a Bayesian network, an unsupervised structural learning method. Clinical data from selected patients in the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care (MIMIC) III v1.4 database is used to create and validate these models. Bayesian network generated using the taboo order algorithm showed a satisfying performance in the classification of respiratory dysfunction. Results are compared to standard diagnosis with P/F ratio. The predictor variables selected could stratify respiratory dysfunction with 80% accuracy and 94% sensitivity. Hence, without using arterial blood gas values, these parameters could identify respiratory dysfunction in 90% of cases using Bayesian networks.
Laser cleaning has been identified as an ideal technology to replace conventional chemical techniques in the motorcar coating removal process to maintain the sustainability of our environment. This ...is due to the unique characteristics of this cleaning technique, such as being versatile, precise, controllable, lack of waste generation, and environmental friendly process. This laser technique can remove the coating layers without using chemical products and prevents the metal substrate surfaces from defect. This paper reviews the potential of incorporating pulsed Nd:YAG laser and its principals in coating removal for automotive industry with respect to these characteristics.
The effect of Er,Cr:YSGG laser for ablation of commercialized adhesive dental materials were studied using 12 sets of tooth samples. The surface morphology and composition of the tooth samples was ...observed before and after irradiation using FESEM and EDX. Time dependency of exposure is observed in the tooth sample. Adhesive material Grēngloo produced better ablation on long exposure compared to adhesive material Blūgloo. The ablation effect was also compared between presence and absence of water. The enamel surface produced is highly dependent on the technique used to ablate the adhesive material. Without water, enamel surface appeared roughed and depth of crater was also created. In particular, both materials produce different quality of ablation and reacted differently under different laser parameter and setting.
The study of the effects of low-level laser (LLL) radiation on blood is important for elucidating the mechanisms behind the interaction of LLL radiation and biologic tissues. Different therapy ...methods that involve blood irradiation have been developed and used for clinical purposes with beneficial effects. The aim of this study was to compare the effects of different irradiation protocols using a diode-pumped solid-state LLL (
λ
= 405 nm) on samples of human blood by measuring the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR). Human blood samples were obtained through venipuncture into tubes containing EDTA as an anticoagulant. Every sample was divided into two equal aliquots to be used as an irradiated sample and a non-irradiated control sample. The irradiated aliquot was subjected to a laser beam with a wavelength of 405 nm and an energy density of 72 J/cm
2
. The radiation source had a fixed irradiance of 30 mW/cm
2
. The ESR change was observed for three different experimental protocols: irradiated whole blood, irradiated red blood cells (RBCs) samples re-suspended in non-irradiated blood plasma, and non-irradiated RBCs re-suspended in irradiated blood plasma. The ESR values were measured after laser irradiation and compared with the non-irradiated control samples. Irradiated blood plasma in which non-radiated RBCs were re-suspended was found to result in the largest ESR decrease for healthy human RBCs, 51%, when compared with RBCs re-suspended in non-irradiated blood plasma. The decrease in ESR induced by LLL irradiation of the plasma alone was likely related to changes in the plasma composition and an increase in the erythrocyte zeta potential upon re-suspension of the RBCs in the irradiated blood plasma.
In-silico virtual patients and trials offer significant advantages in cost, time and safety for designing effective tight glycemic control (TGC) protocols. However, no such method has fully validated ...the independence of virtual patients (or resulting clinical trial predictions) from the data used to create them. This study uses matched cohorts from a TGC clinical trial to validate virtual patients and in-silico virtual trial models and methods.
Data from a 211 patient subset of the Glucontrol trial in Liege, Belgium. Glucontrol-A (N = 142) targeted 4.4-6.1 mmol/L and Glucontrol-B (N = 69) targeted 7.8-10.0 mmol/L. Cohorts were matched by APACHE II score, initial BG, age, weight, BMI and sex (p > 0.25). Virtual patients are created by fitting a clinically validated model to clinical data, yielding time varying insulin sensitivity profiles (SI(t)) that drives in-silico patients.Model fit and intra-patient (forward) prediction errors are used to validate individual in-silico virtual patients. Self-validation (tests A protocol on Group-A virtual patients; and B protocol on B virtual patients) and cross-validation (tests A protocol on Group-B virtual patients; and B protocol on A virtual patients) are used in comparison to clinical data to assess ability to predict clinical trial results.
Model fit errors were small (<0.25%) for all patients, indicating model fitness. Median forward prediction errors were: 4.3, 2.8 and 3.5% for Group-A, Group-B and Overall (A+B), indicating individual virtual patients were accurate representations of real patients. SI and its variability were similar between cohorts indicating they were metabolically similar.Self and cross validation results were within 1-10% of the clinical data for both Group-A and Group-B. Self-validation indicated clinically insignificant errors due to model and/or clinical compliance. Cross-validation clearly showed that virtual patients enabled by identified patient-specific SI(t) profiles can accurately predict the performance of independent and different TGC protocols.
This study fully validates these virtual patients and in silico virtual trial methods, and clearly shows they can accurately simulate, in advance, the clinical results of a TGC protocol, enabling rapid in silico protocol design and optimization. These outcomes provide the first rigorous validation of a virtual in-silico patient and virtual trials methodology.
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