Identification and Validation of Brazilian Chronic Pain Descriptors

Appropriate pain assessment is very important for managing chronic pain. Given the cultural differences in verbally expressing pain and in psychosocial problems, specific tools are needed. The goal of this study was to identify and validate Brazilian pain descriptors. A purposive sample of health professionals and chronic pain patients was recruited. Four studies were conducted using direct and indirect psychophysical methods: category estimation, magnitude estimation, and magnitude estimation and tine-length. Results showed the descriptors which best describe chronic pain in Brazilian culture and demonstrated that there is not a significant correlation between patients and health professionals and that the psychophysical scale of judgment of pain descriptors is valid, stable, and consistent. Results reinforced that the translations of word descriptors and research tools into another language may be inappropriate, owing to differences in perception and communication and the inadequacy of exact translations to reflect the intended meaning. Given the complexity of the chronic pain, personal suffering involved, and the need for accurate assessment of chronic pain using descriptors stemming from Brazilian culture and language, it is essential to investigate the most adequate words to describe chronic pain. Although it requires more refinement, the Brazilian chronic pain descriptors can be used further to develop a multidimensional pain assessment tool that is culturally sensitive. (C) 2009 by the American Society for Pain Management Nursing

Affective and evaluative descriptors of pain in the McGill Pain Questionnaire: reduction and reorganization

Recent reports indicate that several descriptors of pain sensations in the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) are difficult to classify within MPQ sensory subcategories because of incomprehension, underuse, or ambiguity of usage. Adopting the same methodology of recent studies, the present investigation focused on the affective and evaluative subcategories of the MPQ. A decision rule revealed that only 6 of 18 words met criteria for the affective category and 5 of 11 words met criteria for the evaluative category, thus warranting a reduced list of words in these categories. This reduction, however, led to negligible loss of information transmitted. Despite notable changes in classification, the intensity ratings of the retained words correlated very highly with those originally reported for the MPQ. In conclusion, although the intensity ratings of MPQ affective and evaluative descriptors need no revision, selective reduction and reorganization of these descriptors can enhance the efficiency of this approach to pain assessment. [copy ] 2001 by the American Pain Society

First-order molecular descriptors for molecular steric similarity

En aquest treball s'analitza la contribució estèrica de les molècules a les seves propietats químiques i físiques, mitjançant l'avaluació del seu volum i de la seva mesura de semblança, a partir d'ara definits com a descriptors moleculars de primer ordre. La difeèsncia entre aquests dos conceptes ha estat aclarida: mentre que el volum és la magnitud de l'espai que ocupa la molècula com a entitat global, la mesura de semblança ens dóna una idea de com està distribuïda la densitat electrònica al llarg d'aquest volum, i reflecteix més les diferències locals existents. L'ús de diverses aproximacions per a l'obtenció d'ambdós valors ha estat analitzat sobre diferents classes d'isòmers

Relacions estructura-propietat per un conjunt d'hidrocarburs a partir de nous descriptors tridimensionals derivats de la semblança molecular quàntica

En aquest article es defineixen uns nous índexs tridimensionals per a la descripció de les molècules a partir de paràmetres derivats de la Teoria de la Semblança Molecular i de les distàncies euclidianes entre els àtoms i les càrregues atòmiques efectives. Aquests indexs,anomenats 3D, s'han aplicat a l'estudi de les relacions estructura-propietat d'una família d'hidrocarburs, i han demostrat una capacitat de descripció de tres propietats de la família (temperatura d'ebullició, temperatura de fusió i densitat) molt més acurada que quan s'utilitzen els indexs 2D clàssics

Descriptors de forma per lesions mamogràfiques

El present Projecte Final de Carrera s’emmarca dins el projecte HRIMAC (Herramienta de Recuperación de Imágenes Mamográficas por Análisis de Contenido), iniciat l’any 2003 i subvencionat pel Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología i els fons FEDER. En el projecte HRIMAC hi participa la Universitat de Girona, la Universitat Ramon Llull i especialistes de l’Hospital de Girona Josep Trueta. Aquest PFC pretén ésser una eina per testejar diferents mètodes d’extracció de característiques útils a l’hora de recuperar casos de la base de dades de HRIMAC. S’han estudiat, discutit, analitzat i implementat la caracterització de lesions segons la seva forma. S’han avaluat diferents descriptors de forma per tal de determinar quins són els millors a l’hora de tractar amb lesions mamogràfiques

Pain intensity among institutionalized elderly: a comparison between numerical scales and verbal descriptors

AbstractOBJECTIVECorrelating two unidimensional scales for measurement of self-reported pain intensity for elderly and identifying a preference for one of the scales.METHODA study conducted with 101 elderly people living in Nursing Home who reported any pain and reached ( 13 the scores on the Mini-Mental State Examination. A Numeric Rating Scale - (NRS) of 11 points and a Verbal Descriptor Scale (VDS) of five points were compared in three evaluations: overall, at rest and during movement.RESULTSWomen were more representative (61.4%) and the average age was 77.0±9.1 years. NRS was completed by 94.8% of the elderly while VDS by 100%. The association between the mean scores of NRS with the categories of VDS was significant, indicating convergent validity and a similar metric between the scales.CONCLUSIONPain measurements among institutionalized elderly can be made by NRS and VDS; however, the preferred scale for the elderly was the VDS, regardless of gender.

Selection of the most informative morphoagronomic descriptors for cassava germplasm

The objective of this work was to select the most informative morphoagronomic descriptors for cassava (Manihot esculenta) germplasm and to evaluate the ability of different methods to select the descriptors. Ninety-five accessions were characterized using 51 morphoagronomic descriptors. Data were subjected to a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), whose information was used in the following four methods of descriptor selection: reverse order of the descriptor for the pth factorial axis of the MCA (Jolliffe); sequential, multiple correspondence analysis (SMCA); mean of the contribution orders of the descriptor in the first three factorial axes (C3PA); and C3PA method weighted by the respective eigenvalues of the full analysis (C3PAWeig). The correlations between the dissimilarity matrix with all descriptors and the most informative descriptors were high and significant (0.75, 0.77, 0.83, and 0.84 for C3PAWeig, C3PA, SMCA, and Jolliffe, respectively). The less informative descriptors were discarded, considering those common among the selection methods and relevant for the breeding interests. Therefore, 32 morphoagronomic descriptors with correlation between the dissimilarity matrices (r=0.81) were selected, due to their high capacity to discriminate cassava germplasm and to their ability to maintain some preliminary agronomic traits, useful for the initial characterization of the germplasm.

GLOBAL AND LOCAL REACTIVITY DESCRIPTORS FOR PICLORAM HERBICIDE: A THEORETICAL QUANTUM STUDY

In this work, we studied the reactivity of picloram in the aqueous phase at the B3LYP/6-311++G(2d,2p) and MP2/6-311++G(2d,2p) levels of theory through global and local reactivity descriptors. The results obtained at the MP2 level indicate that the cationic form of picloram exhibits the highest hardness while the anionic form is the most nucleophilic. From the Fukui function values, the most reactive site for electrophilic and free radical attacks are on the nitrogen in the pyridine ring. The more reactive sites for nucleophilic attacks are located on the nitrogen atom of the amide group and on the carbon atoms located at positions 2 and 3 in the pyridine ring.

Comparison of Local Feature Detectors and Descriptors for Visual Object Categorization

Local features are used in many computer vision tasks including visual object categorization, content-based image retrieval and object recognition to mention a few. Local features are points, blobs or regions in images that are extracted using a local feature detector. To make use of extracted local features the localized interest points are described using a local feature descriptor. A descriptor histogram vector is a compact representation of an image and can be used for searching and matching images in databases. In this thesis the performance of local feature detectors and descriptors is evaluated for object class detection task. Features are extracted from image samples belonging to several object classes. Matching features are then searched using random image pairs of a same class. The goal of this thesis is to find out what are the best detector and descriptor methods for such task in terms of detector repeatability and descriptor matching rate.

Sensory descriptors of cocoa beans from cultivated trees of Soconusco, Chiapas, Mexico

The odor and taste profile of cocoa bean samples obtained from trees cultivated in southern Mexico were evaluated by trained panelists. Seven representative samples (groups) of a total of 45 were analyzed. Four attributes of taste (sweetness, bitterness, acidity and astringency), and nine of odor (chocolate, nutty, hazelnut, sweet, acidity, roasted, spicy, musty and off-odor) were evaluated. A sample (G7) with higher scores in sweet taste and sweet and nutty odors was detected, as well as a high association between these descriptors and the sample, analyzed through principal component analysis (PCA). Similarly, samples that showed high scores for non-desired odors in cocoas such as off-odor and musty were identified and related by PCA to roasted odor and astringent taste (G2 and G4). Based on this scores, the samples were listed in descending order by their sensory quality as G7> G5> G6> G3> G1> G4> G2.

Development of Shape Descriptors Based on Legendre Polynomials and Content-Based Retrieval of Scoliosis Images

The wealth of information available freely on the web and medical image databases poses a major problem for the end users: how to find the information needed? Content –Based Image Retrieval is the obvious solution.A standard called MPEG-7 was evolved to address the interoperability issues of content-based search.The work presented in this thesis mainly concentrates on developing new shape descriptors and a framework for content – based retrieval of scoliosis images.New region-based and contour based shape descriptor is developed based on orthogonal Legendre polymomials.A novel system for indexing and retrieval of digital spine radiographs with scoliosis is presented.

Automatic Image Annotation Using SURF Descriptors

In recent years there is an apparent shift in research from content based image retrieval (CBIR) to automatic image annotation in order to bridge the gap between low level features and high level semantics of images. Automatic Image Annotation (AIA) techniques facilitate extraction of high level semantic concepts from images by machine learning techniques. Many AIA techniques use feature analysis as the first step to identify the objects in the image. However, the high dimensional image features make the performance of the system worse. This paper describes and evaluates an automatic image annotation framework which uses SURF descriptors to select right number of features and right features for annotation. The proposed framework uses a hybrid approach in which k-means clustering is used in the training phase and fuzzy K-NN classification in the annotation phase. The performance of the system is evaluated using standard metrics.

The Effect of SIFT Features as Content Descriptors in the Context of Automatic Writer Identification in Malayalam Language

The span of writer identification extends to broad domes like digital rights administration, forensic expert decisionmaking systems, and document analysis systems and so on. As the success rate of a writer identification scheme is highly dependent on the features extracted from the documents, the phase of feature extraction and therefore selection is highly significant for writer identification schemes. In this paper, the writer identification in Malayalam language is sought for by utilizing feature extraction technique such as Scale Invariant Features Transform (SIFT).The schemes are tested on a test bed of 280 writers and performance evaluated

State-of-the-Art: Transformation Invariant Descriptors

As the popularity of digital videos increases, a large number illegal videos are being generated and getting published. Video copies are generated by performing various sorts of transformations on the original video data. For effectively identifying such illegal videos, the image features that are invariant to various transformations must be extracted for performing similarity matching. An image feature can be its local feature or global feature. Among them, local features are powerful and have been applied in a wide variety of computer vision aplications .This paper focuses on various recently proposed local detectors and descriptors that are invariant to a number of image transformations.

Evaluation of sets of oriented and non-oriented receptive fields as local descriptors

Local descriptors are increasingly used for the task of object recognition because of their perceived robustness with respect to occlusions and to global geometrical deformations. We propose a performance criterion for a local descriptor based on the tradeoff between selectivity and invariance. In this paper, we evaluate several local descriptors with respect to selectivity and invariance. The descriptors that we evaluated are Gaussian derivatives up to the third order, gray image patches, and Laplacian-based descriptors with either three scales or one scale filters. We compare selectivity and invariance to several affine changes such as rotation, scale, brightness, and viewpoint. Comparisons have been made keeping the dimensionality of the descriptors roughly constant. The overall results indicate a good performance by the descriptor based on a set of oriented Gaussian filters. It is interesting that oriented receptive fields similar to the Gaussian derivatives as well as receptive fields similar to the Laplacian are found in primate visual cortex.