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Over time x-ray department gains more patient throughput compared to when it was established, this may lead to changes in room usage, workload and occupancy factor. Therefore, it becomes imperative to re-evaluate the shielding adequacy of the facilities to ensure the appropriate shielding design goal is accomplished. The study was aimed at assessing the shielding adequacy of conventional x-ray rooms in ten radio diagnostic centres in Kano Metropolis using RADSHIELD software. This was a prospective, cross-sectional study. RadShield software version 1.1 was used in the study, parameters such as distances of each wall from a radiation source (D), the average number of patients per week (N), occupancy factor (T), and use factor (U) were inserted into the software together with the shielding design goal (P). Once the result was generated, the design and shielding variables were saved in .xml format. The data were analyzed using Excel 2016. Ten facilities were studied involving 14 x-ray rooms. Room III had the largest room size of 49.2 m2 while room X had the least room size of 12.8 m2. Room II had the longest source image distance (SOD) of 180cm while room IV had the shortest (120cm). The design barrier thickness was thickest (47 cm) in room II and thinnest (1.5 cm) in barrier 5 of room III. All the x-ray rooms had the ideal room size except facilities G and H. The design barrier thickness in the radiology department of all the conventional x-ray rooms involved in the study was adequate.

Introduction Renal Doppler resistive index (RI) and pulsatility index (PI) values are potentially more sensitive at detecting renal abnormalities when compared to standard laboratory indices in patients with HIV/AIDS. To the best of our knowledge, there are no published research articles on renal Doppler indices and their correlation with laboratory indices of HIV sero-positive adult individuals. This study aimed to assess the renal function of HIV-sero-positive adults using RI and PI, and correlating these indices against laboratory values. Methods A prospective cross-sectional study was conducted from July 2019 to April 2020. A purposive sampling method was employed and included 396 HIV sero-positive adult individuals. Sampling for the renal RI and PI was performed at the level of the inter-lober arteries, in between the medullary pyramids. An RI value above 0.70 and a PI value above 1.56 were consider abnormal. Serum creatine and urea together with evidence of proteinuria were recorded at the time of scanning. Results Forty-three (10.9%) men had an abnormal RI, 32 (8.1%) had abnormal PI, five (2.5%) had abnormal creatinine, two (1%) abnormal urea and eight (4.1%) with proteinuria. In women, 29 (7.3%) had abnormal RI, 22 (5.6%) abnormal PI, four (2%) abnormal creatinine and urea and six (3%) had proteinuria. There was a statistically significant weak positive correlation between RI and PI and serum creatinine and urea (r > 0.2, P Conclusion The proportion of patients with abnormal RI and PI was higher than the proportion of participants with abnormal serum urea, creatinine and proteinuria. Renal Doppler indices could be used be used in the early assessment of renal function in HIV sero-positive adults individuals. Implications for practice Serum creatinine and urea are routinely used to evaluate renal function in patients with HIV/AIDS. Findings from this initial study show that RI and PI could be used detecting early renal abnormalities when compared to standard laboratory values.

In this paper, a new approach for robust speech enhancement based on improved ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EMD) using optimized log-spectral amplitude noise estimation is presented. In this approach, a noisy signal is decomposed adaptively into a sum of oscillating components that belong to intrinsic mode functions (IMFs); then, each component is enhanced separately to provide less-corrupted IMFs that are used by the Hurst exponent method to construct an estimate of a clean signal. This new framework takes advantage of adaptive noise estimation performed by improved minima-controlled recursive averaging for noise estimation and optimally modified log-spectral amplitude to enhance the noisy EMD components. Through experimental evidence, the objective evaluation of quality and intelligibility demonstrates that the proposed method performs significantly better than the baseline techniques, including the most recently developed EMD-based speech enhancement methods.

(HSG) is a special radiological procedure that is used to assess the patency and the structure of the uterus and Fallopian tubes. The main role of HSG is the study of the Fallopian tubes in infertility. Discomfort, anxiety, and pain that might result of the procedure and may vary depending on the individual’s perception. The patient’s perception of a procedure plays an important role in its acceptance. The study aims at evaluating the perception of patients undergoing HSG examination in Kano metropolis. The study design was prospective and cross-sectional conducted in the Radiology Departments of four hospitals in the Kano metropolis from December 2018 to probability sampling method was employed in the study. An ethical clearance to conduct the study was obtained from the Human Research and Ethics Committee of the Kano State Ministry of Health. A structured questionnaire was used as an instrument for data collection. The questionnaire was validated by experienced sing pilot study the reliability of the measuring tool was tested and the Chronbach reliability coefficient was found to be 0.79. Two hundred and fifty six questionnaires were administered to the selected respondents. An informed consent was obtained from all the selected respondents. The obtained data were analyzed using SPSS version 21.0. Out of the 256 (100%) administered questionnaires, 237 (92.6%) were returned, and 226 (88.3%) were properly filled. In 189 (83.63%) respondents, infertility was found to be be the indication for the procedure. 82 (36.3%) of the respondents believed the procedure was for diagnostic purpose, 78 (34.5%) for therapeutic and 28.3% for diagnostic and therapeutic. Patients undergoing HSG in Kano metropolis had a negative perception towards the procedure.

This paper investigates the ability of deep neural networks (DNNs) to improve the automatic recognition of dysarthric speech through the use of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and long short-term memory (LSTM) neural networks. Dysarthria is one of the most common speech communication disorders associated with neurological impairments that can drastically reduce the intelligibility of speech. The aim of the present study is twofold. First, it compares three different input features for training and testing dysarthric speech recognition systems. These features are the mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs), mel-frequency spectral coefficients (MFSCs), and the perceptual linear prediction features (PLPs). Second, the performance of the CNN- and LSTM-based architectures is compared against a state-of-the-art baseline system based on hidden Markov models (HMMs) and Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) to determine the best dysarthric speech recognizer. Experimental results show that the CNN-based system using perceptual linear prediction features provides a recognition rate that can reach 82%, which constitutes relative improvement of 11% and 32% when compared to the performance of LSTM- and GMM-HMM-based systems, respectively.

Background:Hysterosalpingography (HSG) is a valuable radiologicalprocedure for imaging the female reproductive tract. Structural abnormalities onhysterosalpingography (HSG) are among the important factors in the evaluationof female infertility. Objectives:The study was aimed at reviewing the available literature onhysterosalpingography findings in infertile women, identifying the missing gapin the subject area, coming up which area of further that will further enhance therole of HSG in the diagnosis of infertility. Methods:The study was a systemic review that focused on the literature on thetopic and keywords of research. The references were obtained using a database;IEEE Xplore, EBSCO, Cochrane and MEDLINE. The search terms used were;hysterosalpingography findings, HSG, detection of infertility, fluoroscopicexaminations. The inclusion criteria are articles published in the English language,non-duplicated and those that full text is available online. Result:Eleven articles were considered for the review. Four of the articles wereprospective, whereas the other seven were retrospective studies. Ten of thereviewed articles are from Africa and only one is from Asia. The most frequentfinding in the reviewed articles on the two continents was bilateral tubalblockage whereas the least frequent finding is associated with the cervix. Themajority of the reviewed articles used short study duration, retrospective, orsmall sample size. None of the reviewed articles established a relationshipbetween the HSG findings with demographic information or clinical history ofthe selected subjects. Conclusion:The findings of the published articles have proven the potentialityof HSG in detecting uterine abnormalities related to infertility. None of thereviewed articles established a relationship between theHSG findings with demographic information or clinical history of the selectedsubjects. &nbsp

Background: Human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiencysyndrome (HIV/AIDS) remains a major challenge globally, and approximately180,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses in Nigeria in 2015. HIVassociated nephropathy is the third most common cause of end-stage renalfailure. Objectives: To review published original research articles on the sonographicevaluation of kidneys in HIV seropositive patients, identifying missing gapsand coming up with an area of further study. Methodology: The study was retrospective and a secondary source of data frompublished original research articles was used. The search was performed throughGoogle search using Google Scholar, EMBASE, PubMed and Medline. All thepublished original research articles in the English language and the availability offull-text articles were included in the study. Results: An electronic search using the search terms had identified 58related published articles, but only 12 articles were reviewed. This study foundout that human immunodeficiency virus-associated nephropathy (HIVAN) to be amost predominant renal disease in HIV positive patients leaving in sub-SaharanAfrica with increased renal parenchymal echogenicity and decreasedcorticomedullary differentiation sonographically, which correlate in raised ofserum creatinine level and the degree of patients immune competence (CD4count). Few studies correlated the sonographic findings with histopathologicalfeature and none uses Doppler ultrasound. Conclusion: This study has identified a correlation of the sonographic findingswith the histopathological features and the use of Doppler ultrasound as themissing gaps from the previously published research articles in the subject area.

Diagnostic x-radiation is an essential part of present-day medical practice being the largest contributor of irradiation to the general population. Therefore, routine checking of x-ray tubes leakage is very important to ensure that leakage radiation at a one-meter distance from focus is less than 1mR/h. The measurement of background radiation was performed during normal departmental working hours: early in the morning before the machines were switched on, and after the machines were switched on. Exposures were performed using different exposure factors and the fall out radiation in both control and uncontrolled areas were also recorded. The highest equivalent dose rate was recorded in the uncontrolled area of room 2, where the mean dose rate was 26.21 μSv/h (in changing room) and 11.67 μSv/h (behind the door), respectively. It follows the dose rate measured in the uncontrolled area of room 1, where the mean dose rate was 6.33 μSv/h (behind the door), 2.96 μSv/h (in changing room B), and 1.56 μSv/h (in changing room A), respectively. The lowest radiation dose was measured in both controlled and uncontrolled areas of CT-scan, where the mean dose rate was 0.17 μSv/h and 0.16 μSv/h, respectively, simply because the room doors and wall are adequately lead-lined and protected. All values obtained in this study are within the permissible limit, except that for uncontrolled areas in x-ray rooms 1 and 2, where radiation dose rates were higher than the reference limit for public exposure.

Background: Radiology request cards are essential communication tools between physicians and radiation personnel. Clinical audit is part of quality assurance that guarantees patient care. Objective: To assess the adequacy of patient data and clinical information filled in request cards sent to Radiology Department of our facility by referring clinicians. Material and methods: Four hundred (400) radiology request cards were randomly selected from the records of the department and scrutinized for bio-data/clinical information. Result: Completely filled request cards were 2/267 (ultrasound), 1/40 (computed tomography) and 2/93 (conventional x-ray). Conclusion: Consistency in complete filliing of radiology request cards in our facility was lacking. The audit revealed actual practice, and the need for improvement.

Collimation of x-ray beam is an important factor in optimization; good collimation will both minimize the radiation dose to the patient and improve image quality because the amount of scattered radiation will increase as if a large volume of tissue is irradiated. This study aimed to assess the level of collimation for pediatric plain chest radiographs in Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital as an optimization tool. A retrospective audit was conducted on pediatric plain chest radiographs from May 2016 to May 2019 in Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (Kano, Nigeria) using a simple random sampling technique. Data were collected and recorded using self-developed data capture sheet based on the European Guidelines on quality criteria for diagnostic radiographic images in pediatrics which captures the gender, age, projection, collimation (4 ways, 3 ways, 2 ways, 1 way, no and under collimation). The results showed that the most predominant age group exposed in the study was within 0 to 1 year representing 31.7% (n=76). Also gender distribution showed that more male were exposed than female, representing 55% (n=132). Out of 240 plain chest radiographs, about 77.0% (n=175), showed inadequate collimation. In conclusion,the study revealed poor collimation practice in pediatric plain chest radiographs.

The robustness of speech classification and recognition systems can be improved by the adoption of language distinctive phonetic feature (DPF) elements that can increase the effective characterization of a speech signal. This paper presents the results of applying Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) that perform Arabic phoneme recognition in conjunction with the inclusion and classification of their DPF element classes. The research focuses on classifying Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) phonemes within isolated words without a language context. HMM-based phoneme recognition is tested using 8, 16, and 32 HMM Gaussian mixture models. The monophone configuration is designed with consideration of 2-gram language model to evaluate the inherent performance of the system. The overall correct rates for classifying DPF element classes for the three versions of HMM systems are 83.29% 88.96%, and 92.70% for 8, 16, and 32 HMM Gaussian mixture model systems, respectively.

Background Ultrasound has been in clinical use to image the human body for over half a century. An audit should be performed on professional practice aimed at taking corrective measures where errors are identified and improvement in the practice when errors are not detected. This study is aimed at evaluating the current status of ultrasound practice in Kano metropolis, Nigeria. Results Out of the 70 (100%) administered questionnaires, 68 (97.14%) were returned, and 64 (91.43%) were properly filled. Fifty-eight (90.6%) knew the exact meaning of ultrasound, and 34 (53%) considered ultrasound as a modality of choice for imaging and diagnosis of abdominal masses. None of the participants was exposed to advanced ultrasound technology. Only 3 (4.7%) and 5 (7.8%) of the respondents performed infection control, air reverberation pattern and electronic noise checks. Conclusion Ultrasound practitioners demonstrate good knowledge of ultrasound and its application. However, there was unavailability of advanced ultrasound equipment. There was also poor understanding and practice of quality assurance among practitioners. Ultrasound equipment might have been grossly underutilized and qualities of images produced by the equipment are not certain were optimal.

The presence of mind wandering states during attention-demanding activities may have negative consequences for task-related learning and success. Being able to distinguish between various levels of wandering through brain waves would be a fantastic tool in a variety of fields, including job optimization, driver vigilance monitoring, and even gaming. In this paper, we propose an approach that relies on EEG signal to deal with the issue of mind-wandering recognition as a classification challenge. Our model extracts the most important features of EEG data using a signal clipping and autocorrelation techniques then uses a deep neural network (DNN) to classify brain signal into high-level or low-level of wandering. The experiments demonstrated the effectiveness of the DNN model in detecting wandering episodes by achieving 73.5% accuracy which is 8.35% better than the best conventional neural network configuration.

Background Errors in radiographic image annotation by radiographers could potentially lead to misdiagnoses by radiologists and wrong side surgery by surgeons. Such medical negligence has dire medico-legal consequences. It was hypothesized that newer technology of computed radiography (CR) and direct digital radiography (DDR) image annotation would potentially lead to a change in practice with subsequent reduction in annotation errors. Following installation of computed radiography, a modality with electronic, post-processing image annotation, the hypothesis was investigated in our study centre. Results A total of 72,602 and 126,482 images were documented for film-screen radiography (FSR) and computed radiography (CR), respectively in the department. From these, a sample size of 9452 made up of 4726 each for FSR and CR was drawn. Anatomical side marker errors were common in every anatomy imaged, with more errors seen in FSR (4.6%) than CR (0.6%). Collectively, an error rate of 3.0% was observed. Errors noticed were as a result of marker burnout due to over-exposure as well as marker cone off due to tight beam collimation. Conclusion Error rates were considerably reduced following a change from film-screen radiography (FSR) to computed radiography (CR) at the study centre. This change was, however, influenced more by a team of quality control radiographers stationed at CR workstation than by actual practice in x-ray imaging suite. Presence of anthropomorphic phantom in the teaching laboratories in the universities for demonstrations will significantly inculcate the skill needed to completely eliminate anatomical side marker (ASM) error in practice.

Human-machine dialogue is still too difficult to set up, but remains an important issue for the Arabic language, which remains a language poorly endowed with communication systems. To this end, we have oriented our work around a control interface for an Automatic Continuous Speech Recognition System (ACSRS), which we have adapted to the Standard Arabic language. For this, a construction of an Automatic Continuous Speech Recognition System was first undertaken and a link was established with a graphic interface based on HMM (Hidden Models of Markov) and the toolbox HTK (Hidden Markov Model Toolkit). The realization of the proposed interface will avoid the dependency constraint, common in most of the ACSRS (s), and make the system independent of the speakers. On the one hand, the transcription of the sentences recognized by this system will be executed in real time; and on the other hand, the display will be on a screen independent of the system.

The aim of this work is to improve the automatic recognition of the dysarthria speech. In this context, we have compared two techniques of speech parameterization; these two techniques are based on the recently proposed coefficients Power Normalized Cepstral Coefficients and Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients. In this paper we have concatenate several variants of JITTER and SHIMMER with the techniques of speech parameterization to improve an automatic recognition of the dysarthric word system. The aim is to help the fragile persons having speech problems (dysarthric voice) and the doctor to make a first diagnosis about the patient’s disease. For this, an Automatic Acknowledgment of Continuous Pathological Speech System has been developed based on the Hidden Models of Markov and the Hidden Markov Model Toolkit. For our tests, we used the Nemours Database which contains 11 speakers representing dysarthric voices.

Background: Stroke or cerebrovascular disease is a clinical syndrome consisting of rapidly developing clinical signs of focal or global neurological deficits lasting more than 24 h or leading to death with no apparent cause other than a vascular origin. Study Aims: This study was aimed at evaluating pattern and clinical presentation of hemorrhagic stroke on brain Computed Tomography (CT) scan in Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano, Nigeria. Materials and Methods: This was a prospective study carried out between March 2018 and August 2018 on brain computed tomographic findings of 100 patients diagnosed with hemorrhagic stroke. Ethical approval to conduct the study was obtained from the Human Research and Ethics Committee of the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital. Images were acquired using Prime Aquilion Toshiba Japan 2012 160 slice CT machine in the Department of Radiology. The patients' information and CT findings were recorded on the data capture sheet. Results: Headache was the most common clinical presentation seen in 72% of the patients, followed by dysphasia seen in 58%, followed by vomiting seen in 42%, and the least was convulsion seen in 28% of the patients. The most common site of hematoma was putamen with 54%, followed by thalamus 14%, and the least regions affected were parietal lobe, pons, and frontal lobes with 4% each. Conclusion: Headache was the most common clinical presentation of the patients with hemorrhagic stroke and the most common site of the hematoma was putamen.

In this paper, we propose a mobile spoken dialogue system with a new spoken dialogue understanding architecture (SLU). This new SLU module combines an ontology and a dependency graph to do semantic analysis. The turn analysis algorithm integrated in the SLU module uses, at each turn of the dialogue, the dependencies generated by Stanford parser and a domain ontology to analyze the sentence and to extract user's intention and slots values (i.e. user dialogue acts, concepts and their values). The SLU module maps the sentence into a structure. The dialogue manager receives this mapping structure from the SLU module and chooses the action to be taken by the system. The mobile spoken dialogue system was developed as a remote system on a mobile phone. It utilizes Google server for recognition and Google text to speech for speech synthesis provided with Android system. Dialogue understanding, dialogue managing and text generating modules reside on a remote computer. Ten users have tested the first version of our system and a score of 3.6 on Likert scale was obtained.

In this paper, the multidimensional phonological feature structure of Arabic is investigated. Our goal is to assess the performance of statistical and connectionist approaches in performing the complex mappings between distinctive phonetic features (DPF) and associated acoustic cues. The present study explores the mapping between 29 phonological voicing, place, and manner features and Mel-frequency acoustic cues. For this purpose, three machine-learning techniques are deployed: Deep Belief Networks (DBN), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), and Hidden Markov Models (HMM). The three techniques show satisfactory acoustic-phonetic mapping performance and indicate that couple of Arabic DPF elements such as affricatives, alveopalatals, labiodentals, lateral, palatal, pharyngeal, rounded, and uvular have a strong correlation with the acoustic information. The implications of these results on Arabic phonological contrasts are discussed.

Context: Human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) remains a major challenge globally. HIVassociated nephropathy is the third most common cause of endstage renal failure and more prevalent among AfricanAmericans with HIV compared with other races. Aims: This study evaluated sonographic renal changes in drugdependent and drugnaive patients with HIV/AIDS in Kano, Nigeria.Materials and Methods: A prospective and comparative study involving 190 each of drugdependent and drugnaive patients were conducted. Renal sonography was performed using digital ultrasonic diagnostic imaging system, equipped with a 3.5 MHz curvilinear transducer. Statistical analysis used: An independent ttest and Mann–Whitney Utest were used to compare the renal volume and mean rank of the renal parenchymal echogenicity between drugdependent and drugnaive patients. Statistical significance was considered at P

Background: Measurement of optic nerve sheath diameter (ONSD) and anterior chamber depth (ACD) by ultrasound is increasingly used as a marker to detect raised intracranial pressure and other eye pathologies. Knowledge of normal ONSD and ACD in a healthy population is essential in the interpretation of pathological conditions. Aim: The study aimed at evaluating the ONSD and ACD of the eye in apparently healthy adults in Kano State. Materials and Methods: This was a prospective and cross-sectional study conducted among apparently healthy adults in Kano State from April 2019 to October 2019. Using convenience sampling method, 384 adults participated in the study. An ethical approval was obtained from the Human Research and Ethics Committee of the Kano State Ministry of Health, and informed consent was obtained from all the selected participants. A portable digital ultrasound machine, Nortek CS 3 with a 7.5 MHz linear transducer, was used to obtain ACD and ONSD at 3 mm behind the globe, and the values were recorded in data capture sheet. The obtained data were analyzed using SPSS version 23.0. Results: The mean and standard deviation of the right and left ONSDs for males was 4.42 ± 1.38 mm and 4.44 ± 1.41 mm and for the females was 4.39 ± 1.31 mm and 4.41 ± 1.31, respectively. The mean and standard deviation of the right and left ACDs for males was 3.16 ± 0.37 mm and 3.14 ± 0.35 mm and for females was 3.12 ± 0.40 mm and 3.11 ± 1.39 mm, respectively. Conclusion: The study has established normative values for the ONSD and ACD of the eye in Kano State, Nigeria.

Context: Quality control (QC) tests for computed tomography (CT) scanners are primarily concerned with the maintenance of CT scanner at the optimum operational conditions for providing the required diagnostic information at the least possible exposure to ionising radiation. Aims: The study was aimed at evaluating a CT number for water, field uniformity, image noise and contrast resolutions in Kano metropolis using phantom and assuring optimum operational condition of the equipment. Materials and Methods: A prospective, crosssectional design was employed. Four scanners tagged CT scanner I–IV were included in the study. CT number for water, field uniformity, noise, as well as highcontrast resolution (HCR) and lowcontrast resolution were tested using head CT water phantom. Results: CT scanner I, III and IV have passed a CT number for water and field uniformity tests (0.3, −0.48 and − 1.36), but scanner II failed the test (−4.38). However, the entire scanners failed noise (4.5, 8.75, 4.90 and 4.93); while only scanner III passed the HCR QC test (bars were countable at the 3rd bar pattern), scanners I, II and IV failed HCR test (bars were countable at 5th, 6th and 4th bar patterns). All the studied scanners failed lowcontrast resolution test (margins appear sharp at the 4th hole) in scanners I, II and IV and the hole was not demonstrated in the phantom image of scanner III. Conclusion: Majority of the CT scanners in Kano metropolis passed the tests for the CT number for water and field uniformity but revealed some inadequate levels of noise, HCR and lowcontrast resolution tests.

This paper presents a phonetic analysis and recognition of classical and recited Arabic speech phonemes, mainly vowels, using hidden Markov model (HMM) classifiers. For this purpose, a new classical Arabic speech corpus was planned and designed. The corpus is based on recitations extracted from The Holy Quran of specific scripts. For modeling long vowels, we carry out extensive experiments that aim at finding the best way to capture the vowel durations that are semantically relevant in the Arabic language. Our approach consists of adapting the HMM topology to the type of vowels. This method can be applied to other Semitic languages or for the modeling of the geminated phonemes. The proposed method outperforms the baselines systems by achieving an overall correct rate of 87.60% with no specified language model.

Background: Radiation dose depends on the total workload (Wtot) which is affected by the number of patients, tube potential, and tube current. Despite the increment in patients visiting the X-ray units under study and X-ray tube revolutions, changes have not been made in the shielding material to suit the current situation. Aims: This study aims to evaluate the thickness of X-ray shielding barriers in two tertiary hospitals in Kano Metropolis using XRAYBAR software. Materials and Methods: This was a prospective, cross-sectional study and was undertaken from March 2017 to October 2017. A purposive sampling technique was employed to select two hospitals out of five. The two were named A and B, respectively. The minimum required thickness in each barrier was determined by XRAYBAR software. Results: The Wtot (workload) for room I, II and III was found to be 199.9, 146, and 149.1 mA-min per week. The shielding barrier thickness required to reduce the unshielded radiation dose to the design dose limit for wall 1, 2, 3, 4, and operating console of the Room I was found to be 17.5, 5.5, 0.2, 0.00, 3.3 cm, that of wall 1, 2, 3, and 4 of room II was found to be 9.1, 3.4, 0.02, 2.3 cm, while for the wall 1, 2, 3, 4, and operating console of room III was found to be 12.3, 4.8, 3.8, 3.2, and 26.5 cm, respectively. Conclusion: The calculated shielding barrier thickness from XRAYBARR code when compared to the design barrier thickness was found to be adequate.

Objective: To describe the computerized tomographic findings in children with head trauma who presented at the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano, Nigeria. Methods: It is a retrospective review of patients aged 9 month to 12 years with suspected head injury following head trauma, who presented for CT scan at Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano, Nigeria from January 2016 to December, 2017. Results: Sixty eight cases were reviewed retrospectively. They ranged from 9 months to 12 years with the mean age of 5 years. Fifty four (79.4%) were males. Fourteen were females (20.6%). Thirty five (51.5%) had head injury secondary to RTA. Twenty four (35.3%) had a history of fall from height. Four (5.9%) had a history of fall into a well. Four (5.9%) had a history of assault. Only one had a history of gun shot (1.5%). Twenty one patients (30.9%) had normal findings. Five (7.4%) of them had a frontal bone fracture. Seven (10.3%) had a parietal bone fracture. Two (2.9%) had fracture of base of the skull. Seventeen (25%) had intracerebral haematoma. Three had brain oedema (4.4%). One had epidural haematoma (1.5%). Eight (11.8%) had subdural haematoma. Six (8%) had combined fracture with cerebral contusion. Conclusion: RTA is a major cause of head injury in the most paediatric age group in our environment with CT scan as a valuable imaging tool in the investigation and management of these patients.

Background: Community Health Workers (CHWs) can facilitate access to primary health care services among isolated rural communities. This study examines how Nigeria’s Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Program on Maternal and Child Health (SURE-P MCH) Village Health Worker (VHW) programme provides a model for the Nigerian Road Map for VHWs. Methods: We used pre-post with comparison model design, comparing two successive VHW cohorts, recruited in 2013 (n=109) and in 2014 (n=147) in Jigawa, Katsina and Zamfara states, northern Nigeria. We collected performance statistics and conducted interviews with the VHWs, and focus group discussions with the VHWs, their CHEW mentors, the in-charges at the facilities, and the village health/ ward development committees overseeing the recruitment and support of the VHWs. Significant differences between the 2013 and 2014 cohort were assessed using bi-variate statistics. Results: All VHWs were female. The VHWs worked 20.8 hours/week, and averaged 34.3 home visits/month. After their training, 90% were comfortable with their primary tasks of encouraging antenatal care (ANC) visits and teaching about a healthy pregnancy. They identified 11.7 newly pregnant women per month, of whom 9.0 went to ANC. The pictorial guides were the most useful tools for encouraging ANC and facility deliveries. Compared to before the VHWs began work, clinics recorded 84.8% more women making 4+ ANC visits and 119.9% more skilled birth deliveries. Clinical consultations at the PHC referral sites for the VHWs increased significantly after the introduction of the VHWs and again from 2013 to 2014 (p < 0.010). Qualitative feedback identified the following factors supporting their effectiveness: linkage to support systems within and in the peripheral health facility, pictorial materials and a thank-you stipend for services. Conclusion: The SURE-P MCH VHWs were associated with significant increases in maternal health service uptake at the rural PHCs to which they were affiliated. The factors associated with their effectiveness should be incorporated into the Nigerian Road Map for VHWs: training in coaching health promotion topics, pictorial guides to assist in coaching, mentoring and support from the CHEWs and the community, and a nominal stipend.

In this paper, we propose a mobile spoken dialogue system (MOBILE SDS) based on parser dependencies and ontology. The turn (semantic) analysis algorithm integrated in the spoken dialogue understanding (SLU) module uses, at each turn of the dialogue, the dependencies generated by Stanford parser and a domain ontology to analyze the sentence and extract user's intention and slots values (i.e. user dialogue acts, concepts and their values). The SLU maps the sentence into a structure. The dialogue manager receives this mapping structure from the SLU module and chooses the action to be taken by the system. The MOBILE SDS was developed as a remote system on a mobile phone. It uses Google server for recognition and Google text to speech for speech synthesis provided with Android system. Dialogue understanding, dialogue managing and text generating modules reside on a remote computer. Ten volunteers' users have tested our system and a score of 3.6 on Likert scale was obtained.

Support vector machines (SVM) were originally developed for binary classification and extended for multi-class classification. Due to their powerfulness and adaptation to hard classification problems, we have chosen them for automatic speech recognition (ASR). The aim of this paper is to investigate the use of SVM multi-class classification coupled with HMM for TIMIT phones. SVM requires that all data samples for training and test to have the same features vector size. Due to the variability in length of phone signals even for the same phone, we have used a normalization technique: zero padding and resampling on all data samples to get them have features vector with the same size. After mapping the 61 TIMIT phones in 46 phones and conducting tests using LibSVM and HTK, we have obtained a classification accuracy rate of 91.26% with the hybrid HMM/SVM system and 71.41% with the HMM-based system. These results show that the hybrid HMM/SVM system using the normalization technique overcomes an HMM-based system and improves the recognition accuracy by 19.8%. Therefore, our experiments result encouraged us to use this hybrid system and normalization technique for the next work in the context of spoken dialogue system.

Background: There is a need for every radiological facility to have an effective method of waste management for environmental protection and cost-effectiveness. Most of the waste produced by the facilities could be reclaimed and recycled for medical and industrial purposes. Study Aim: This study aims at investigating radiological waste management in some selected centers in Kano metropolis. Materials and Methods: The study design is descriptive in nature. Using purposive sampling method, eleven centers were selected. These are the hospitals and private centers that use automatic, manual, or both processing methods in their units. An unstructured interview was conducted with the technician in-charge of the various processor units. The audio-taped interview was converted to text notes for content analysis. The data were analyzed using standardized, open-ended content approach. Samples of spent solutions were analyzed for silver concentration using quantitative analysis. Results: Film processing units of radiological facilities in Kano metropolis drained their spent radiographic films processing solutions directly into general drainage system without being treated. The waste radiographic films and X-ray film packages were being discarded into dustbins. Quantitative analysis shows a high concentration of silver in the spent solutions; the average concentration of silver in spent developer, rinse, fixer, and wash solutions was found to be 1.4 mg/L, 0.9 mg/L, 5.2 g/L and 2.8 mg/L, respectively. Conclusion: There is no systematic system of waste disposal in Kano metropolis of Nigeria.

Assistive speech-enabled systems are proposed to help both French and English speaking persons with various speech disorders. The proposed assistive systems use automatic speech recognition (ASR) and speech synthesis in order to enhance the quality of communication. These systems aim at improving the intelligibility of pathologic speech making it as natural as possible and close to the original voice of the speaker. The resynthesized utterances use new basic units, a new concatenating algorithm and a grafting technique to correct the poorly pronounced phonemes. The ASR responses are uttered by the new speech synthesis system in order to convey an intelligible message to listeners. Experiments involving four American speakers with severe dysarthria and two Acadian French speakers with sound substitution disorders (SSDs) are carried out to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed methods. An improvement of the Perceptual Evaluation of the Speech Quality (PESQ) value of 5% and more than 20% is achieved by the speech synthesis systems that deal with SSD and dysarthria, respectively.

In this paper, an assistive speech-enabled system is proposed to help dysarthric speakers. This system aims at improving the intelligibility of dysarthric speech making it as natural as possible and close to the original voice of the dysarthric speaker. The resynthesized utterances use new basic units, a new concatenating algorithm and a grafting technique to correct the bad pronounced phonemes. The Nemours database is used to evaluate the proposed assistive communication system. The results of subjective evaluations show that the proposed technique reaches the very satisfactory MOS (mean opinion score) of 4.

The fluidity state was analyzed on sarcoplasmic reticulum membranes and phospholipid vesicles prepared from normal and malignant hyperthermia susceptible pig muscle. Electron spin resonance studies were performed to determine the fluidity state at the region near the polar headgroups and in the central core of the bilayer using 5-nitroxide (5-NS) and 16-nitroxide stearic acid (16-NS), respectively. With the 5-NS label, no differences were found between normal and malignant hyperthermia sarcoplasmic reticulum (MH SR) membranes whereas with the 16-NS label, a significant increase of the activation energy was shown with MH membranes. Lower values of fluorescence anisotropy observed with DPH-labeled MH membranes as compared with normal ones, confirmed the higher abnormal fluidity state of these membranes. The fluidizing effect of halothane, a triggering agent of malignant hyperthermia syndrome, was also studied in these membranes. We show that a relatively low concentration of the drug destabilized not only the diseased sarcoplasmic reticulum membranes but also the vesicles made of total phospholipids extracted from MH skeletal muscle. Together, these findings strongly suggest that an overall increase in membrane fluidity may be implied in the MH disease, improving the general membrane defect hypothesis for this syndrome.