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Introduction: Long-term teletherapy program is not suitable for old and working patients and those living in areas where little access to primary health care is available. Accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) using high dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy is an appropriate alternative for these patients due to its limited number of fractions. The AccuBoost is a system for delivering APBI. The brachytherapy dose is delivered from parallel-opposed beams from 192Ir sources in circle applicators. This study was conducted to investigate the effects of breast phantom material on the dose distribution in AccuBoost brachytherapy using Monte Carlo N-Particle method. Material and Methods: In this study,different inhomogeneous breast phantoms composed of various materials were simulated. Dosimetric evaluations including a comparison of dose distribution between different breast phantom materials and water phantom was performed. Results: There was no significant difference between the breast and water phantoms in terms of mean dose values in different positions of each phantom. The most significant differences between the doses of different compositions and water were found to be about 6% near the skin. Conclusion: No significant differences were observed between the breast phantoms composed of diverse materials and water phantoms considering the dose distributions. Therefore, it is not necessary to replace the current treatment planning systems using Task Group No. 43 formalism with combined model-based and patient-specific dosimetry methods.

The use of peripheral devices could be a good alternative to interact with Virtual Environment in addition to native controllers. Using combination of Concept-II peripheral device with VR mobile will cause latency issues due to different data transmission rates between those components. This latency issue leads to two major problems, such as micro-stutter in Virtual Environment (VE) and distance inaccuracy in time between the Concept-II peripheral device and VR mobile. In this paper, the authors present three algorithms based on interpolation and extrapolation methods, which aim to provide immersive VR experience by ensuring stutter-free and accurate rowing sessions for the user. This is relevance when considering the adoption of peripheral devices (i.e. the Concept-II peripheral device) as an alternative to interact with Virtual Environment in addition to native controllers. Predicting virtual rowing shell's position using interpolation by position method gives accurate time results but introduces high amount of micro-stutter. Using extrapolation method by taking speed parameter to predict rowing shell's position has very high time error but gives pleasant, stutter-free virtual rowing experience. Finally, adding this speed parameter a correction constant value for predicting virtual rowing shell's position provides stutter-free and very accurate in time rowing session for the user. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Long-term teletherapy program is not suitable for old and working patients and those living in areas where little access to primary health care is available. Accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) using high dose rate (HDR) brachytherapy is an appropriate alternative for these patients due to its limited number of fractions. The AccuBoost is a system for delivering APBI. The brachytherapy dose is delivered from parallel-opposed beams from 192Ir sources in circle applicators. This study was conducted to investigate the effects of breast phantom material on the dose distribution in AccuBoost brachytherapy using Monte Carlo N-Particle method. Material and Methods: In this study, different inhomogeneous breast phantoms composed of various materials were simulated. Dosimetric evaluations including a comparison of dose distribution between different breast phantom materials and water phantom was performed. Results: There was no significant difference between the breast and water phantoms in terms of mean dose values in different positions of each phantom. The most significant differences between the doses of different compositions and water were found to be about 6% near the skin. Conclusion: No significant differences were observed between the breast phantoms composed of diverse materials and water phantoms considering the dose distributions. Therefore, it is not necessary to replace the current treatment planning systems using Task Group No. 43 formalism with combined model-based and patient-specific dosimetry methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The double fetch problem occurs when the data is maliciously changed between two kernel reads of the supposedly same data, which can cause serious security problems in the kernel. Previous research focused on the double fetches between the kernel and user applications. In this paper, we present the first dedicated study of the double fetch problem between the kernel and peripheral devices (aka. the hardware double fetch). Operating systems communicate with peripheral devices by reading from and writing to the device mapped I/O (input and output) memory. Owing to the lack of effective validation of the attached hardware, compromised hardware could flip the data between two reads of the same I/O memory address, causing a double fetch problem. We propose a static pattern-matching approach to identify the hardware double fetches from the Linux kernel. Our approach can analyze the entire kernel without relying on the corresponding hardware. The results are categorized and each category is analyzed using case studies to discuss the possibility of causing bugs. We also find four previously unknown double-fetch vulnerabilities, which have been confirmed and fixed after reporting them to the maintainers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined the long-term effects of the use of telecare (e-Health) on the residents of Nishi-aizu Town, Fukushima, Japan, between 2002 and 2010. We compared medical expenditure and days of treatment between telecare users (treatment group) and non-users (control group) based on receipt data obtained from the National Health Insurance, which is operated by the government. In previous studies, we used receipt data obtained for the years 2002 to 2006; this study expands the analysis period four more years with respect to respondents who were included in previous analyses. Ninety users and 118 non-users were included in both analyses. Using rigorous statistical methods, including system generalized method of moments (GMM), this paper demonstrates that telecare users require fewer days of treatment and lower medical expenditure than non-users with respect to the chronic diseases of stroke, hypertension, heart failure, and diabetes. To date, there have been no publications examining the long-term economic effects of the use of telemedicine, so the current study presents a new facet to the research in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The occurrence of physiological artifacts generated by eye movements in electrical brain activity (electroencephalography, EEG) is a well-known problem in clinical practice. In order to increase the accuracy of the detection of eye movements during EEG examination, additional electrooculogram channels (electrooculography, EOG) with a standard PC keyboard are used. The EOG technique is not always comfortable for patients. Another issue is that the use of EOG channels in the EEG examination leads to the prolongation of time required for patient preparation. To solve these problems, we developed a new peripheral device suitable for the indication of common ocular artifacts in EEG. The obtained differences between the recommended methods (i.e., EOG, PC keyboard) and our new device have been presented using RMSE (root mean square error). The presented equipment can be used either during EEG examination or after registration of EEG signals in order to indicate the ocular artifacts. Furthermore, this device is compatible with the EEG software used in clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]