Gait analysis is used widely in clinical practice to evaluate abnormal gait caused by disease. Conventionally, medical professionals use motion capture systems or make visual observations to evaluate a patient's gait. Recent biomedical engineering studies have proposed easy-to-use gait analysis methods employing wearable sensors with inertial measurement units (IMUs). IMUs placed on the shanks just above the ankles allow for long-term gait monitoring because the participant can walk with or without shoes during the analysis. To the knowledge of the authors, no IMU-based gait analysis method has been reported that estimates stride length, gait speed, stride duration, stance duration, and swing duration simultaneously. In the present study, we tested a proposed gait analysis method that uses IMUs attached on the shanks to estimate foot trajectory and temporal gait parameters. Our proposed method comprises two steps: stepwise dissociation of continuous gait data into multiple steps and three-dimensional trajectory estimation from data obtained from accelerometers and gyroscopes. We evaluated this proposed method by analyzing the gait of 19 able-bodied participants (mean age 23.9 years, 9 men and 10 women). Wearable sensors were attached on the participants' shanks, and we measured three-axis acceleration and three-axis angular velocity with the sensors to estimate foot trajectory during walking. We compared gait parameters estimated from the foot trajectory obtained with the proposed method and those measured with a motion capture system. Mean accuracy (± standard deviation) was 0.054 ± 0.031 m for stride length, 0.034 ± 0.039 m/s for gait speed, 0.002 ± 0.020 s for stride duration, 0.000 ± 0.017 s for stance duration, and 0.002 ± 0.024 s for swing duration. These results suggest that the proposed method is suitable for gait analysis, whereas there is a room for improvement of its accuracy and further development of this IMU-based gait analysis method will enable us to use such systems for clinical gait analysis.
Human bocaviruses (HBoV) 1, 2, 3, and 4 (HBoV1-4) were detected in 132 (15.5%), 5 (0.6%), 3 (0.4%), and 5 (0.6%) of 850 nasopharyngeal swab samples collected from children with respiratory tract infections, respectively. Out of the 145 HBoV1-4-positive samples, 62 (42.8%) were codetected with other respiratory viruses.
BackgroundRobotic surgery is a new technique with the benefits of a three-dimensional view, the ability to use multi-degree-of-freedom forceps, the elimination of physiological tremors, and a stable camera view. The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and short-term outcomes of robotic surgery for colorectal cancer as initial cases, compared with conventional laparoscopic surgery.MethodsFrom July 2010 to June 2013, ten patients with left-sided colon and rectal cancer underwent robotic surgery, and 121 received conventional laparoscopic surgery. Both groups were balanced in terms of age, gender, American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) score, body mass index (BMI), operative history, TNM staging, and tumor location. Moreover, in order to improve objectivity and approximate a randomized controlled study, we used the propensity score matching method. The matching was successful because the ROC analysis showed a well-balanced curve (C = 0.535).ResultsFollowing propensity score matching, ten patients were included in the robotic surgery group and 20 patients were included in the conventional laparoscopic surgery group. There were no significant differences in the short-term clinicopathologic outcomes between the robotic surgery group and the conventional laparoscopic surgery group. However, the operative time was significantly longer in the robotic surgery group than in the conventional laparoscopic surgery group.ConclusionsThere were no significant differences between the robotic surgery group and the conventional laparoscopic surgery group with respect to short-term clinicopathologic outcomes, with the exception of the operative time. Our early experience indicates that robotic surgery is a promising tool, particularly in patients with rectal cancer.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12957-015-0517-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) is one of the major pathogens of respiratory illness. Reinfection with hMPV occurs frequently throughout life. We describe an infant who was infected with two different hMPV strains during a period of only 1 month
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