This book assembles new methods showing the automotive engineer for the first time how hybrid vehicle configurations can be modeled as systems with discrete and continuous controls.
Background
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic progressive neurological disorder with a high psychosocial and economic burden. As part of the European Brain Council (EBC)‐led Value of Treatment ...project, this study aimed to capture the economic benefit of timely, adequate, and adherence to PD treatment.
Methods
The EBC Value of Treatment Initiative combined different stakeholders to identify unmet needs in the patients’ journey according to Rotterdam methodology. The economic evaluation focused on three major topics identified as major gaps: start of treatment; best treatment for advanced disease; and adherence to treatment. Two separate healthcare systems (Germany and the UK) were chosen. Cost‐effectiveness was determined by using decision‐analytical modelling approaches. Effectiveness was expressed as quality‐adjusted life‐years (QALYs) gained and incremental cost‐effectiveness ratio (ICER).
Results
Treatment intervention in PD was found to be cost‐effective regardless of the initial health state of the patient receiving the treatment. Cost savings were between ‐€1000 and −€5400 with 0.10 QALY gain and ‐€1800 and ‐€7600 with 0.10 QALY gain for Germany and the UK, respectively. Treatment remains cost‐effective within the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence thresholds. Availability of adequate treatment to more patients was also found to be cost‐effective, with an ICER of €15,000–€32,600 across country settings. Achieving the target adherence to treatment would generate cost‐savings of €239,000–€576,000 (Germany) and €917,000–€2,980.000 (UK) for every 1,000 patients treated adequately.
Conclusions
The analyses confirmed that timely, adequate, and adherence to PD treatment will not only improve care of the patients but is also cost‐effective across healthcare systems. Further studies with a distinct identification of gaps in care are necessary to develop better and affordable care.
As part of the European Brain Council (EBC)‐led Value of Treatment Project, this study aimed to capture the economic benefit of a timely, adequate, and adherence to PD treatment. The economic analyses confirmed the benefits of timely, adequate, and adherence to PD treatment. It will not only improve care of the patients but is also cost‐effective (when addressing gap 2: providing adequate treatment for advanced PD) and cost‐saving (when addressing gaps 1 and 3: providing early/timely treatment and improving the rates of adherence to optimal care) across healthcare systems.
The L-estimation based signal transforms and time-frequency (TF) representations are introduced by considering the corresponding minimization problems in the Huber (1981, 1998) estimation theory. The ...standard signal transforms follow as the maximum likelihood solutions for the Gaussian additive noise environment. For signals corrupted by an impulse noise, the median-based transforms produce robust estimates of the non-noisy signal transforms. When the input noise is a mixture of Gaussian and impulse noise, the L-estimation-based signal transforms can outperform other estimates. In quadratic and higher order TF analysis, the resulting noise is inherently a mixture of the Gaussian input noise and an impulse noise component. In this case, the L-estimation-based signal representations can produce the best results. These transforms and TF representations give the standard and the median-based forms as special cases. A procedure for parameter selection in the L-estimation is proposed. The theory is illustrated and checked numerically.
The performances of adaptive array algorithms are known to suffer from a strong degradation in scenarios with moving interfering sources. In this article, basic adaptive beamforming techniques are ...compared using shallow sea sonar data recorded in a towed horizontal array environment with moving interfering sources originated from shipping noise. Our experimental results show the relationship between the practical performances of adaptive and conventional beamforming techniques compared in terms of output SINR or a related measure given by the noncompensated postbeamforming interference power. These results demonstrate noticeable performance improvements that can be achieved using several robust algorithms relative to traditional adaptive beamforming schemes.
This paper is concerned with recursive estimation using augmented data. We study two recursive procedures closely linked with the well-known expectation and maximization (EM) and space alternating ...generalized EM (SAGE) algorithms. Unlike iterative methods, the recursive EM and SAGE-inspired algorithms give a quick update on estimates given new data. Under mild conditions, estimates generated by these procedures are strongly consistent and asymptotically normally distributed. These mathematical properties are valid for a broad class of problems. When applied to direction of arrival (DOA) estimation, the recursive EM and SAGE-inspired algorithms lead to a very simple and fast implementation of the maximum-likelihood (ML) method. The most complicated computation in each recursion is inversion of the augmented information matrix. Through data augmentation, this matrix is diagonal and easy to invert. More importantly, there is no search in such recursive procedures. Consequently, the computational time is much less than that associated with existing numerical methods for finding ML estimates. This feature greatly increases the potential of the ML approach in real-time processing. Numerical experiments show that both algorithms provide good results with low computational cost.
We investigated the frequency and pattern of blood-brain barrier as well as blood-retina barrier impairment in transient global amnesia (TGA) as demonstrated by hyperintense acute reperfusion marker ...(HARM) and gadolinium leakage in ocular structures (GLOS) respectively on fluid attenuated inversion recovery images (FLAIR).
Patients with TGA who underwent repeated MRI after intravenous contrast agent administration were identified and the presence of GLOS in the anterior chamber and vitreous body and HARM noted on FLAIR.
Overall 10 patients (IQR 64.25–71.75 years; 4 (40%) patients were male) were included. On contrast-enhanced FLAIR, GLOS was observed in 3 (30%) patients; in all of these in the anterior chamber and vitreous body as well as bilateral and symmetrical. HARM was observed in none of the patients. Frequency of hippocampal DWI lesions, as well as extent of age related white matter lesions did not differ significantly between patients with and without GLOS.
In contrast to HARM, GLOS is a relatively common finding in TGA patients. As GLOS is thought to share its pathophysiology at least to some extent with HARM and is associated with HARM in ischemic stroke, it might be used as surrogate marker for blood-brain barrier impairment in TGA.
•GLOS might be used as surrogate marker for blood-brain barrier impairment in TGA.•GLOS is a novel imaging marker on FLAIR images.•GLOS may be observed in transient global amnesia.
The performance of adaptive array algorithms is known to degrade in rapidly moving jammer environments. This degradation occurs due to the jammer motion that may bring the jammers out of the sharp ...notches of the adapted pattern. We develop the robust modifications of the sample matrix inversion (SMI) algorithm, loaded SMI (LSMI) algorithm, and eigenvector projection (EP) algorithm by means of artificial broadening of the null width in the jammer directions. For this purpose, data-dependent sidelobe derivative constraints that do not require any a priori information about the jammer directions are used.
The performance of high-resolution direction of arrival (DOA) estimation methods significantly degrades in several practical situations where the wavefronts have imperfect spatial coherence. The ...original solution to this problem was proposed by Paulraj and Kailath (1988), but their technique requires a priori knowledge of the matrix characterizing the loss of wavefront coherence along the array aperture. A novel solution to this problem is proposed, which does not require a priori knowledge of the spatial coherence matrix.
This paper presents a novel approach to detect multiple signals embedded in noisy observations from a sensor array. We formulate the detection problem as a multiple hypothesis test. To control the ...global level of the multiple test, we apply the false discovery rate (FDR) criterion proposed by Benjamini and Hochberg. Compared to the classical familywise error rate (FWE) criterion, the FDR-controling procedure leads to a significant gain in power for large size problems. In addition, we apply the bootstrap technique to estimate the observed significance level required by the FDR-controling procedure. Simulations show that the FDR-controling procedure always provides higher probability of correct detection than the FWE-controling procedure. Furthermore, the reliability of the proposed test procedure is not affected by the gain in power of the test
Background
Small punctuate lesions in the hippocampus on diffusion-weighted images are a typical finding in transient global amnesia. Consequently, it has been suggested that diffusion-weighted ...images findings might corroborate the diagnosis of transient global amnesia. However, isolated punctuate hippocampal infarction might be a differential diagnosis of transient global amnesia.
Aim
Evaluation of isolated punctuate hippocampal infarction frequency and comparison of its clinical presentation and MRI findings to transient global amnesia.
Methods
From an MRI database, we identified 10 patients with isolated punctuate hippocampal infarction and compared these to 12 patients with transient global amnesia with diffusion-weighted images lesion with regard to clinical symptoms and MRI findings.
Results
Disorientation and memory deficits were more common in transient global amnesia patients, whereas dysphasia/aphasia and vertigo were more common in hippocampal infarction patients. MRI findings in isolated punctuate hippocampal infarction and transient global amnesia did not differ significantly, neither regarding the affected hemisphere, lesion distribution, size, nor relative ADC values.
Conclusions
Differentiation of isolated punctuate hippocampal infarction and transient global amnesia based on neuroimaging findings is not possible. Thus, in the case of isolated punctuate hippocampal diffusion-weighted images lesions the final diagnosis of hippocampal infarction or transient global amnesia should be based on the clinical presentation.
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