Publications by authors named "P Hendrik Pretorius"
Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has placed the psychological functioning of mental healthcare practitioners under severe strain. Coping methods may affect mental health outcomes.
Aim: The study examined the relationship between depression, anxiety, stress, and coping styles utilised by mental healthcare practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Article Synopsis
- The study explores the use of a deep-learning network to correct motion blur in myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) with SPECT, aiming to improve the detection of perfusion defects.
- Researchers trained the network on 197 ECG-gated SPECT-MPI images and tested its effectiveness on a separate dataset of 194 subjects with simulated lesions, analyzing results through receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves.
- Results indicated that deep-learning motion correction significantly enhances detectability of perfusion defects, achieving higher accuracy in specific cardiac phases versus traditional ungated studies, especially in reduced-count scenarios.
Deep learning (DL) is becoming increasingly important in generating attenuation maps for accurate attenuation correction (AC) in cardiac perfusion SPECT imaging. Typically, DL models take inputs from initial reconstructed SPECT images, which are performed on the photopeak window and often also on scatter windows. While prior studies have demonstrated improvements in DL performance when scatter window images are incorporated into the DL input, the comprehensive analysis of the impact of employing different scatter windows remains unassessed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: During the COVID-19 pandemic, South African psychologists started to use telepsychology to continue providing services. However, diverse factors may influence psychologists' decisions regarding the use of telepsychology.
Aim: To investigate South African psychologists' experiences with using telepsychology during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Background: Contextual relevance is an important consideration for evidence-based practice, especially in low- and middle-income countries where the nature of practice may differ from high-income countries. Resources and access to rehabilitation are constrained, and service-users face a range of intersecting challenges to activity and participation.
Aim: To evaluate the body of evidence for the effectiveness of occupational therapy in Africa, and to determine if systematic reviews with meta-analysis and/or meta-synthesis are feasible.