Spectral characteristics of subthalamic nucleus local field potentials in Parkinson's disease: Phenotype and movement matter.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is clinically heterogeneous across patients and may be classified in three motor phenotypes: tremor dominant (TD), postural instability and gait disorder (PIGD), and undetermined. Despite the significant clinical characterization of motor phenotypes, little is known about how electrophysiological data, particularly subthalamic nucleus local field potentials (STN-LFP), differ between TD and PIGD patients. This is relevant since increased STN-LFP bandpower at α-β range (8-35 Hz) is considered a potential PD biomarker and, therefore, a critical setpoint to drive adaptive deep brain stimulation.

Unsupervised Classification of Atrial Electrograms for Electroanatomic Mapping of Human Persistent Atrial Fibrillation.

Objective: Ablation treatment for persistent atrial fibrillation (persAF) remains challenging due to the absence of a 'ground truth' for atrial substrate characterization and the presence of multiple mechanisms driving the arrhythmia. We implemented an unsupervised classification to identify clusters of atrial electrograms (AEGs) with similar patterns, which were then validated by AEG-derived markers.

Methods: 956 bipolar AEGs were collected from 11 persAF patients.

Dynamic repair priority rule based on remaining useful life predictions.

In this paper, we propose a novel repair priority rule for spare parts in a repair station with limited repair capacity to minimize total inventory cost per time unit. Inventory cost is composed of holding costs and backorder costs. The proposed rule uses Remaining Useful Life (RUL) predictions of functioning machines obtained from a Prognostics and Health Monitoring (PHM) system.

Recurrence Quantification Analysis for Investigating Atrial Fibrillation Dynamics in a Heterogeneous Simulation Setup.

The outcomes of ablation targeting either reentry activations or fractionated activity during persistent atrial fibrillation (AF) therapy remain suboptimal due to, among others, the intricate underlying AF dynamics. In the present work, we sought to investigate such AF dynamics in a heterogeneous simulation setup using recurrence quantification analysis (RQA). AF was simulated in a spherical model of the left atrium, from which 412 unipolar atrial electrograms (AEGs) were extracted (2 s duration; 5 mm spacing).

State estimation and optimal long period clinical treatment of HIV seropositive patients.

Optimal control theory provides a very interesting quantitative method that can be used to assist the decision making process in several areas of application, such as engineering, biology, economics and sociology. The main idea is to determine the values of the manipulated variables, such as drug doses, so that some cost function is minimized, subject to physical constraints. In this work, the cost function reflects the number of CD4+T cells, viral particles and the drug doses.

Pro-oxidative effect of alpha-tocopherol in the oxidation of LDL isolated from co-antioxidant-depleted non-diabetic hemodialysis patients.

The association between the antioxidants in LDL and the oxidizability of LDL assessed by the oxidation lag time during copper ion-catalyzed oxidation was investigated in 69 non-diabetic hemodialysis patients and 23 healthy volunteers. The concentrations of co-antioxidants, including ubiquinol-10, lycopene and beta-carotene, in LDL were significantly lower in the hemodialysis patients than in the healthy volunteers, while there was no difference in the alpha-tocopherol concentration between the groups. The lag time showed a significantly positive correlation with the alpha-tocopherol level (r = 0.

A competitive wavelet network for signal clustering.

This correspondence proposes a novel signal clustering method based on the unsupervised training of a wavelet network. The synaptic weights are parameterized by wavelet basis functions, which are adjusted by a competitive algorithm that makes use of the neighborhood concept proposed by Kohonen. The robustness of the wavelet network with respect to noise is illustrated in a simulated problem, in which dynamic systems are grouped on the basis of their step responses.

Short and long period optimization of drug doses in the treatment of AIDS.

Numerical optimization techniques are useful in solving problems of computing the best inputs for systems described by mathematical models and when the objectives can be stated in a quantitative form. This work concerns the problem of optimizing the drug doses in the treatment of AIDS in terms of achieving a balance between the therapeutic response and the side effects. A mathematical model describing the dynamics of HIV viruses and CD4 cells is used to compute the short term optimal drug doses in the treatments of patients with AIDS by a direct method of optimization using a cost function of Bolza type.