Validation of an ambulatory cough detection and counting application using voluntary cough under different conditions.

Background: While cough is an important defence mechanism of the respiratory system, its chronic presence is bothersome and may indicate the presence of a serious disease. We hereby describe the validation process of a novel cough detection and counting technology (PulmoTrack-CC, KarmelSonix, Haifa, Israel).

Methods: Tracheal and chest wall sounds, ambient sounds and chest motion were digitally recorded, using the PulmoTrack(R) hardware, from healthy volunteers coughing voluntarily while (a) laying supine, (b) sitting, (c) sitting with strong ambient noise, (d) walking, and (e) climbing stairs, a total of 25 minutes per subject.

Brain tissue mapping and segmentation by MRI-based blind-source-separation techniques.

Brain or any other tissue signatures are considered to be linear combinations of tissue components. Mixtures of such tissue components are "blindly" separated by means of geometrical sparse component analysis. The original set of at least two MR images, acquired by using the spin-echo or spoiled FLASH techniques with specific set of Tr and Te, are sparsified by using multiple wavelets and curvelets.

[Evaluation of the efficiency of various treatment regimens for patients with newly-detected sarcoidosis in the Republic of Tatarstan].

The natural history of sarcoidosis was analyzed in 279 patients with its history of as long as 2 years among the 832 with this disease registered in the Republic of Tatarstan in 1999 to 2002. The patients were divided into 3 groups: (1) 79 (28.3%) receiving systemic glucocorticosteroids (SGS); (2) 146 (52.

[Comparison of acute bronchodilator tests in patients with chronic obstructive lung disease and bronchial asthma].

Three hundred and thirty-five patients with bronchial asthma (BA) and 534 patients with chronic obstructive lung disease (COLD) were examined. Before and after tests using salbutamol, phenoterol, ipratropium bromide and a fixed combination of phenoterol and ipratropium bromide, the forced expiratory flow-volume curve was recorded in the patients on each visit (1008 and 1398 visits of patients with BA and COLD, respectively). The study was controlled open-labeled, and prospective.