Radiographers and radiation protection: education, training and CPD

The increasing use of ionizing radiation for medical purposes emphasizes the concern about safety and justification of using ionizing radiation. This is linked with the use of new and high-dose X-ray technology (particularly CT). According to the UNSCEAR 2010 Report the total number of diagnostic medical examinations (both medical and dental) is estimated to have risen from 2.4 billion (period 1991–1996) to 3.6 billion (period 1997– 2008) - a marked increase in collective doses. An appropriate use of technology aiming diagnostic or therapy and respecting the ALARA principle is a mandatory requisite to safely perform any radiological procedure. Radiation protection is thus, a concern of all specialists in the radiology field ( radiologists, radiographers, medical physicists, among other professional groups). The importance of education and training of these professionals in reducing patients’ doses while maintaining the desired level of quality in medical exposures, as well as precise therapeutic treatments is well recognized. Education, training and continuing professional development (CPD) constitute a triad pointing towards the radiographers’ development of competences in the radiation protection field. This presentation excludes the radiographer role and competences in the fields of ultrasonography and MRI.

Task-oriented training and lower limb strengthening to improve balance and function after stroke: a pilot study

This study investigated the effects of task-oriented training and strengthening of the affected lower limb on balance and function in people who have suffered a stroke. Sixteen male adults, with a mean age of 58 (SD 6.3) years, undergoing outpatient physiotherapy less than 1 month after a single stroke in the territory of the middle cerebral artery were recruited. Participants were allocated to one of two groups: the strengthening group (SG) or control group (CG). The main measures used were the Berg Balance Scale (BBS), Barthel Index (BI) and Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS). After 12 weeks of intervention, both groups showed improvements in outcome measures. For BBS, there was a significant difference between groups, with an increase of 26 points in the SG and 11 points in the CG. For BI, the SG improved by 39 points and the CG improved by 22 points. After intervention, the difference between groups was not significant. For MAS, differences were not significant, showing that for both groups intervention programmes did not increase spasticity. In conclusion, physiotherapy intervention for postural control dysfunctions after stroke seems to benefit from strength training of the affected lower limb and the practising functional tasks. A large randomized controlled trial is recommended to further investigate the effects of this intervention.

Towards the detection of deception in interactive multimedia environments

A classical application of biosignal analysis has been the psychophysiological detection of deception, also known as the polygraph test, which is currently a part of standard practices of law enforcement agencies and several other institutions worldwide. Although its validity is far from gathering consensus, the underlying psychophysiological principles are still an interesting add-on for more informal applications. In this paper we present an experimental off-the-person hardware setup, propose a set of feature extraction criteria and provide a comparison of two classification approaches, targeting the detection of deception in the context of a role-playing interactive multimedia environment. Our work is primarily targeted at recreational use in the context of a science exhibition, where the main goal is to present basic concepts related with knowledge discovery, biosignal analysis and psychophysiology in an educational way, using techniques that are simple enough to be understood by children of different ages. Nonetheless, this setting will also allow us to build a significant data corpus, annotated with ground-truth information, and collected with non-intrusive sensors, enabling more advanced research on the topic. Experimental results have shown interesting findings and provided useful guidelines for future work. Pattern Recognition