Assessment of the quality of postherpetic neuralgia treatment information on the Internet.

Unlabelled: The objective of this study was to assess the quality of websites presenting treatment information for postherpetic neuralgia. The term "postherpetic neuralgia treatment" was searched using the Google and Yahoo search engines. Fifty websites from each were evaluated using the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) benchmarks, the Health on the Net (HON) seal, and the DISCERN instrument.

Examining a CT scan of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Part II: Locating the aneurysm using the Hough transform.

When analyzing CT scan images for the diagnosis of an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms the aorta must be located and cropped from the whole image. Given that there are so many images to be analyzed, it is wise to automate this cropping process so further image-processing techniques can be applied. By using the Hough transform the process of finding and cropping the aorta from the image in a consistent method is important.

Examining a CT scan of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Part 1: Measuring the thrombus to aneurysm ratio using MatLab.

Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms are a relatively common medical condition that occurs when the wall of the aorta expands to an above average diameter somewhere in the abdominal region of the body. Since an abdominal aortic aneurysm has a good chance of rupturing, which usually results in death, it must be detected and treated before rupture occurs. The current method of determining whether surgery is necessary depends on factors such as size and expansion rate of the aneurysm as well as the age and health of the patient.