Use of algorithms for identifying patients in a German claims database: learnings from a lung cancer case.

Background: The analysis of statutory health insurance (SHI) data is a little-used approach for understanding treatment and care as well as resource use of lung cancer (LC) patients in Germany. The aims of this observational, retrospective, longitudinal analysis of structured data were to analyze the healthcare situation of LC patients in Germany based on routine data from SHI funds, to develop an algorithm that sheds light on LC types (non-small cell / NSCLC vs. small cell / SCLC), and to gain new knowledge to improve needs-based care.

Hock lesion epidemiology in cubicle housed dairy cows across two breeds, farming systems and countries.

This cross-sectional study examined various aspects of cubicle design and management in terms of their potential as risk factors for hock lesions, using an epidemiological approach. Cubicle dairy farms in Germany and Austria with Holstein Friesian or Simmental cows were visited during the winter housing season. 105 farms and 3691 cows were included in the analysis which consisted of three steps: bifactorial regression, regression trees and multiple linear regression.

Risk factors for lameness in cubicle housed Austrian Simmental dairy cows.

Austrian dairy farming is characterised by predominant use of Simmental cows on small-scale farms. Our aim was to identify lameness risk factors related to housing and management in cubicle housed Austrian dairy cows. Furthermore, we used animal-based parameters (ABP) as integrated measures of cubicle quality and feeding management.

Multiscale contrast enhancement for radiographies: Laplacian Pyramid versus fast wavelet transform.

Contrast enhancement of radiographies based on a multiscale decomposition of the images recently has proven to be a far more versatile and efficient method than regular unsharp-masking techniques, while containing these as a subset. In this paper, we compare the performance of two multiscale-methods, namely the Laplacian Pyramid and the fast wavelet transform (FWT). We find that enhancement based on the FWT suffers from one serious drawback-the introduction of visible artifacts when large structures are enhanced strongly.