Abstract
Emergency department crowding has been steadily increasing, with a significant part due to non-emergent pathologies. We developed a self-service kiosk to be used by patients while waiting from triage to treatment room allocation, which collects clinical history, usual medication, main complaint and, also collects vital signs. This information is processed and presented in a comprehensive way to the medical staff in order to accelerate diagnostics and treatment selection. This work describes and analyzes the results of the usability evaluation of this kiosk, taking into account the average time per screen, the average time of a complete kiosk session, the application design and the user interaction with devices and the system. The kiosk was tested in several environments with different types of users, allowing the identification of causes of problems and difficulties experienced, as well as solutions to improve the solution.

Abstract
Pectus carinatum (PC) is a chest deformity caused by a disproportionate growth of the costal cartilages compared to the bony thoracic skeleton, pulling the sternum towards, which leads to its protrusion. There has been a growing interest on using the 'reversed Nuss' technique as a minimally invasive procedure for PC surgical correction. A corrective bar is introduced between the skin and the thoracic cage and positioned on top of the sternum highest protrusion area for continuous pressure. Then, it is fixed to the ribs and kept implanted for about 2-3years. The purpose of this work was to (a) assess the stresses distribution on the thoracic cage that arise from the procedure, and (b) investigate the impact of different positioning of the corrective bar along the sternum. The higher stresses were generated on the 4th, 5th and 6th ribs backend, supporting the hypothesis of pectus deformities correction-induced scoliosis. The different bar positioning originated different stresses on the ribs' backend. The bar position that led to lower stresses generated on the ribs backend was the one that also led to the smallest sternum displacement. However, this may be preferred, as the risk of induced scoliosis is lowered.

Abstract
This work reports on preliminary findings about the learning process of a diverse set of users playing an immersive Virtual Reality serious game based on hand tracking to complement conventional occupational therapy in hand rehabilitation. Two test sessions with a one-day break between them were carried out with seven able-bodied participants. Participants went through twenty minutes guided functional task practice followed by a Semi-structured interview. The System Usability Scale (SUS) scores obtained for the first (75.36) and second (76.43) test sessions positioned the serious game above the average in terms of usability. Insights about the learning process., SUS and the obtained trial results., confirm the potential of the developed solution as a viable complement to conventional hand rehabilitation and highlight possible points for improvement. © 2021 IEEE.

Abstract
While fluoroscopy is still the most widely used imaging modality to guide cardiac interventions, the fusion of pre-operative Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) with real-time intra-operative ultrasound (US) is rapidly gaining clinical acceptance as a viable, radiation-free alternative. In order to improve the detection of the left ventricular (LV) surface in 4D ultrasound, we propose to take advantage of the pre-operative MRI scans to extract a realistic geometrical model representing the patients cardiac anatomy. This could serve as prior information in the interventional setting, allowing to increase the accuracy of the anatomy extraction step in US data. We have made use of a real-time 3D segmentation framework used in the recent past to solve the LV segmentation problem in MR and US data independently and we take advantage of this common link to introduce the prior information as a soft penalty term in the ultrasound segmentation algorithm. We tested the proposed algorithm in a clinical dataset of 38 patients undergoing both MR and US scans. The introduction of the personalized shape prior improves the accuracy and robustness of the LV segmentation, as supported by the error reduction when compared to core lab manual segmentation of the same US sequences.

Abstract
Hand and finger tracking has a major importance in healthcare, for rehabilitation of hand function required due to a neurological disorder, and in virtual environment applications, like characters animation for on-line games or movies. Current solutions consist mostly of motion tracking gloves with embedded resistive bend sensors that most often suffer from signal drift, sensor saturation, sensor displacement and complex calibration procedures. More advanced solutions provide better tracking stability, but at the expense of a higher cost. The proposed solution aims to provide the required precision, stability and feasibility through the combination of eleven inertial measurements units (IMUs). Each unit captures the spatial orientation of the attached body. To fully capture the hand movement, each finger encompasses two units (at the proximal and distal phalanges), plus one unit at the back of the hand. The proposed glove was validated in two distinct steps: a) evaluation of the sensors' accuracy and stability over time; b) evaluation of the bending trajectories during usual finger flexion tasks based on the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). Results revealed that the glove was sensitive mainly to magnetic field distortions and sensors tuning. The inclusion of a hard and soft iron correction algorithm and accelerometer and gyro drift and temperature compensation methods provided increased stability and precision. Finger trajectories evaluation yielded high ICC values with an overall reliability within application's satisfying limits. The developed low cost system provides a straightforward calibration and usability, qualifying the device for hand and finger tracking in healthcare and animation industries.

Abstract
Given the dynamic nature of cardiac function, correct temporal alignment of pre-operative models and intra-operative images is crucial for augmented reality in cardiac image-guided interventions. As such, the current study focuses on the development of an image-based strategy for temporal alignment of multimodal cardiac imaging sequences, such as cine Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) or 3D Ultrasound (US). First, we derive a robust, modality-independent signal from the image sequences, estimated by computing the normalized cross-correlation between each frame in the temporal sequence and the end-diastolic frame. This signal is a resembler for the left-ventricle (LV) volume curve over time, whose variation indicates different temporal landmarks of the cardiac cycle. We then perform the temporal alignment of these surrogate signals derived from MRI and US sequences of the same patient through Dynamic Time Warping (DTW), allowing to synchronize both sequences. The proposed framework was evaluated in 98 patients, which have undergone both 3D +t MRI and US scans. The end-systolic frame could be accurately estimated as the minimum of the image-derived surrogate signal, presenting a relative error of 1 : 6 +/- 1 : 9% and 4 : 0 +/- 4 : 2% for the MRI and US sequences, respectively, thus supporting its association with key temporal instants of the cardiac cycle. The use of DTW reduces the desynchronization of the cardiac events in MRI and US sequences, allowing to temporally align multimodal cardiac imaging sequences. Overall, a generic, fast and accurate method for temporal synchronization of MRI and US sequences of the same patient was introduced. This approach could be straightforwardly used for the correct temporal alignment of pre-operative MRI information and intra-operative US images.