Abstract

Abstract
Purpose: This paper presents the Rehab@home system, a tool specifically developed for helping neurological patients performing rehabilitation exercises at home, without the presence of a physiotherapist. It is centred on the rehabilitation of balance and on the sit-to-stand (STS) movement. Method: Rehab@home is composed of two Wii balance boards, a webcam and a computer, and it has two main software applications: one for patients to perform rehabilitation exercises and another one for therapists to visualize the data of the exercises. During the exercises, data from the boards and the webcam are processed in order to automatically assess the correctness of movements. Results: Rehab@home provides exercises for the rehabilitation of balance (in sitting and in standing positions), and for the execution of the STS movement. It gives automatic feedback to the patient and data are saved for future analysis. The therapist is able to adapt the difficulty of the exercises to match with each patient's needs. A preliminary study with seven patients was conducted for evaluating their feedback. They appreciated using the system and felt the exercises more engaging than conventional therapy. Conclusions: Feedback from patients gives the hope that Rehab@home can become a great tool for complementing their rehabilitation process.

Abstract
Over the past years, volumetric cardiac imaging has matured to a modality that can be used in daily routine clinical practice. However, despite the evolution of volumetric ultrasound systems with remarkable improvement in image quality, spatio-temporal resolution of the 3D data set remains limited and inferior to what can be obtained in 2D. Further development of volumetric ultrasound is thus required. However, the development of new beam forming techniques for 3D ultrasound (US) imaging requires an open, flexible and fully programmable US platform. To date, such systems are scarce and required (custom-made) dedicated electronics. Therefore, the aim of this report is to present a novel High channel Density Programmable ULtrasound System based on consumer Electronics (HD-PULSE). © 2015 IEEE.

Abstract
Fast volumetric cardiac imaging requires to reduce the number of transmit events within a single volume. One way of achieving this is by limiting the field-of-view (FOV) of the recording to the anatomically relevant domain only (e.g. the myocardium when investigating cardiac mechanics). Although fully automatic solutions towards myocardial segmentation exist, translating that information in a fast ultrasound scan sequence is not trivial. The aim of this study was therefore to develop a methodology to automatically define the FOV from a volumetric dataset in the context of anatomical scanning. Hereto, a method is proposed where the anatomical relevant space is automatically identified as follows. First, the left ventricular myocardium is localized in the volumetric ultrasound recording using a fully automatic real-time segmentation framework (i.e. BEAS). Then, the extracted meshes are employed to define a binary mask identifying myocardial voxels only. Later, using these binary images, the percentage of pixels along a given image line that belong to the myocardium is calculated. Finally, a spatially continuous FOV that covers 'T' percentage of the myocardium is found by means of a ring-shaped template matching, giving as a result the opening angle and 'thickness' for a conical scan. This approach was tested on 27 volumetric ultrasound datasets, a T = 85% was used. The mean initial opening angle for a conical scan was of 19.67±8.53° while the mean 'thickness' of the cone was 19.01±3.35°. Therefore, a reduction of 48.99% in the number of transmit events was achieved, resulting in a frame rate gain factor of 1.96. As a conclusion, anatomical scanning in combination with new scanning sequences techniques can increase frame rate significantly while keeping information of the relevant structures for functional imaging. © 2015 IEEE.

Abstract

Abstract
Stress can negatively impact one's health and well-being, however, despite the recent evolution in stress assessment research methodologies, there is still little agreement about stress conceptualization and assessment. In an attempt to summarize and reflect on this evolution, this paper aims to systematically review research evidence of ecological approaches on psychophysiological stress assessment. Thus, a literature search of electronic databases was conducted spanning 22 years (1990-2012) and 55 studies were reviewed. Studies were considered for inclusion if they contemplated both psychological and physiological measures of stress under ecological settings. This review focuses on five themes: methodology terminology, research population, study design, measurement, and technology. Findings support the need to use a common methodology terminology in order to increase scientific rigor. Additionally, there seems to be an increasing tendency for the use of these methods by multidisciplinary teams among both clinical and nonclinical populations aiming to understand the relationship between stress and disease. Most of the studies reviewed contemplated a time-based protocol and different conceptualizations of stress were found, resulting in the use of different subjective measures. Findings reinforce the importance of combining subjective and objective measures while also controlling for possible time-or situation-dependent confounders'. Advances in technology were evident and different assessment techniques were found. The benefits and challenges of ecological protocols to assess stress are discussed and recommendations for future research are provided, aiming to overcome previous limitations and advance scientific knowledge in the area.