Mental health service user participation in Chinese culture: a model of independence or interdependence?

Background: Current models of user participation in mental health services were developed within Western culture and thus may not be applicable to Chinese communities.

Aims: To present a new model of user participation, which emerged from research within a Chinese community, for understanding the processes of and factors influencing user participation in a non-Western culture.

Method: Multiple qualitative methods, including focus groups, individual in-depth interviews, and photovoice, were applied within the framework of constructivist grounded theory and collaborative research.

Agile Methods for Open Source Safety-Critical Software.

The introduction of software technology in a life-dependent environment requires the development team to execute a process that ensures a high level of software reliability and correctness. Despite their popularity, agile methods are generally assumed to be inappropriate as a process family in these environments due to their lack of emphasis on documentation, traceability, and other formal techniques. Agile methods, notably Scrum, favor empirical process control, or small constant adjustments in a tight feedback loop.

Physiology and cell biology of acupuncture observed in calcium signaling activated by acoustic shear wave.

This article presents a novel model of acupuncture physiology based on cellular calcium activation by an acoustic shear wave (ASW) generated by the mechanical movement of the needle. An acupuncture needle was driven by a piezoelectric transducer at 100 Hz or below, and the ASW in human calf was imaged by magnetic resonance elastography. At the cell level, the ASW activated intracellular Ca(2+) transients and oscillations in fibroblasts and endothelial, ventricular myocytes and neuronal PC-12 cells along with frequency-amplitude tuning and memory capabilities.

Designing Tracking Software for Image-Guided Surgery Applications: IGSTK Experience.

OBJECTIVE: Many image-guided surgery applications require tracking devices as part of their core functionality. The Image-Guided Surgery Toolkit (IGSTK) was designed and developed to interface tracking devices with software applications incorporating medical images. METHODS: IGSTK was designed as an open source C++ library that provides the basic components needed for fast prototyping and development of image-guided surgery applications.

Radiofrequency ablation of lung tumors in swine assisted by a navigation device with preprocedural volumetric planning.

Purpose: To develop an image guidance system that incorporates volumetric planning of spherical ablations and electromagnetic tracking of radiofrequency (RF) electrodes during insertion.

Materials And Methods: Simulated tumors were created in three live swine by percutaneously injecting agar nodules into the lung. A treatment plan was devised for each tumor with optimization software to solve the planning problem.

Needle-based interventions with the image-guided surgery toolkit (IGSTK): from phantoms to clinical trials.

We present three image-guided navigation systems developed for needle-based interventional radiology procedures, using the open source image-guided surgery toolkit (IGSTK). The clinical procedures we address are vertebroplasty, RF ablation of large lung tumors, and lung biopsy. In vertebroplasty, our system replaces the use of fluoroscopy, reducing radiation exposure to patient and physician.

OpenIGTLink: an open network protocol for image-guided therapy environment.

Background: With increasing research on system integration for image-guided therapy (IGT), there has been a strong demand for standardized communication among devices and software to share data such as target positions, images and device status.

Method: We propose a new, open, simple and extensible network communication protocol for IGT, named OpenIGTLink, to transfer transform, image and status messages. We conducted performance tests and use-case evaluations in five clinical and engineering scenarios.

The image-guided surgery toolkit IGSTK: an open source C++ software toolkit.

This paper presents an overview of the image-guided surgery toolkit (IGSTK). IGSTK is an open source C++ software library that provides the basic components needed to develop image-guided surgery applications. It is intended for fast prototyping and development of image-guided surgery applications.