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To develop a design concept for an easy-to-use videophone for people with dementia and to evaluate the design and need of such a product.In this project, we have used an inclusive design approach that includes the target users in the design process. In an earlier study, the need of a videophone was examined and a requirement specification was developed. In this study, a preliminary design concept was developed. Five focus groups of people with dementia, significant others and occupational therapists working with people with dementia were formed to capture their experiences, expectations and thoughts concerning the videophone and the design concept. Data were analysed using a grounded theory approach.The participants pointed out that the design of the videophone should be flexible in order to meet the needs of people with dementia, be easy-to-use and not look like assistive technology. In order to facilitate learning, the videophone should be introduced in an early stage of the disease.A videophone has potentials to enable videophone calls without assistance, add quality in communication and provide possibilities for monitoring. Further work will focus on developing a prototype to be empirically tested by people with dementia and significant others.An easy-to-use videophone was viewed as an important device that could support people with dementia in making videophone calls without assistance. It was also viewed as a product that significant others could use for monitoring the person with dementia, for example to judge the well-being of the person. But monitoring should be used with caution and not without the consent of the person with dementia. It was viewed as important that the videophone be introduced in an early stage of the disease in order to facilitate learning, so that the person can get used to the new way of making telephone calls and incorporate the new habit in his/her routines. In order to motivate people with dementia to start using a videophone, it was recommended that the videophone should be introduced as a product which is a pleasure to use, and not as a compensation for impairment or to solve a problem.

[Aims]We conducted an intervention study to clarify how effectively a telemedicine system using a multi-functional videophone could be used in lifestyle guidance, with special focus on diet for diabetic patients cared for at home. [Methods]Patients were assigned to a 3-month intervention group or to a usual care group. In the intervention group, patients and a medical professional communicated bi-directionally through a videophone-based communication system for 30 min, once a week. The participants were encouraged to send pictures of each meal online, through the videophone system, in real time. [Results]In intra-subjective comparison, the 3-month intervention program resulted in a significant decrease in body weight (BW) (p < 0.0005) and average HbA1C level (p < 0.005) compared with before the intervention program. Three months after the conclusion of the intervention program, average HbA1C levels returned to almost the same levels as before intervention (p < 0.05). In the usual care group, average HbA1C level did not change significantly for 6 months. [Conclusions]3-month intensive communication using the multimodal videophone system led to a significant decrease in BW and average HbA1C level. This novel bi-directional communication is useful for improving conditions such as diabetes, BW, and hyperglycemia for homecare diabetes patients, thus, reducing cardiovascular risk.

In order to realize eye-contact and face to face communication, videophone or virtual conversational system which takes gaze line into consideration. Although many systems have been studied and reported, there is no objective measure for evaluating the quality of conversations. In this paper, we propose two objective measures such as the eye-contact conversation ratio (ECCR) and the face to face conversation ratio (FFCR) for evaluating the communication quality. By changing the position of camera from the above to the center of display, the ECCR increases from 24.3% to 25.3% in talking and decreases from 33.1% to 25.6% in listening. It is also found that the FFCR improved from 74.7% to 88.0% by centering a camera.

The Swedish Bildtelefoni.net is a service that people who use Swedish Sign Language (SSL) through a video phone can call in order to get in touch with people who speak through a telephone, or vice versa. In relayed calls via the Swedish video relay service (FBT), the interlocutors have different access to the visual arena and the auditive space. They are also physically separated from each other. An interpreter, working in a studio, enables the interaction across the different media, and the interpreter is the only person who has direct contact with both users of the service. FBT has been provided in Sweden since 1996, and is administrated by The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS). The overall aim of the dissertation is to describe, analyse and discuss participants’ interaction and their joint construction of meaning within FBT. The theoretical and methodological frameworks for the dissertation are dialogism and Conversation Analysis (CA). The dissertation is based on twenty-five authentic calls from FBT, recorded during two periods of time: in the years 2009–2010, and in 2013. One stimulated recall is also made with one interpreter, concerning a call from the second collection. The project has been ethically approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Board. The interaction within FBT is dynamic and dependent on different media, modalities, resources, and also related to several conventions specific for the setting. All this influences the interlocutors, their actions as well as the entire activity. This kind of complexity has not previously been studied in the regular service. Analysis of the recordings focuses on the actions and activities of the participants who interact in the FBT, on a moment-to-moment basis. As results of the research, four phenomena are addressed, and presented as papers: I: the organisation of turns; II: the headset as an interactional resource; III: positioning and bimodal mediation with a focus on the interpreter; IV: the co-creation of communicative projects among the interlocutors. A main conclusion of the results is that the interaction is a joint construction of meaning among all of the interlocutors, although, the interpreter has a key function. Further research of interaction within FBT needs to be conducted, since investigations on this institutional interaction are rare despite the fact that this kind of service is widespread all over the world.

Fotoğraf, iletişimin görsel malzemesidir. Sağlık sektöründe anlatılanların ve yapılan çalışmaların görüntülenmesi ayrı bir önem taşır. Çağdaş teknolojilerle sadece bir cep telefonu kullanarak fotoğraf çekmek ve fotoğrafı aynı anda uzaktaki bir doktora göndererek görüş almak bile artık mümkündür. Bu konuya güncel bir örnek olarak, acil serviste çalışan doktorların, gelen hastalarla ilgili görüş almak için uzman doktorlara cep telefonu vasıtası ile gönderdikleri fotoğraflar gösterilebilir.Bu çalışmada fotoğrafın ve sağlık sektöründe fotoğrafçılığın tarihsel süreçte gelişimi ile sağlık sektöründe fotoğrafın kullanım alanları, bu alanda kullanılan klasik ve modern ideal fotoğraf materyalleri incelenmiştir. Araştırmada yer alan fotoğraflar, sağlık uygulamaları ile çeşitli operasyonları gösterir şekilde, gerekli izinler alınarak çekilmiş ve çalışmada sunulmuştur. Photograph is the visual instrument of communication. Monitorizing the explanation sand studies of health sector isessential. It is now possible with the modern Technologies to take photographs by using only mobile phones and to send that photographs to the farther doctors at the same time. Photographs sent by the emergency service doctors through mobile phones to the specialist doctors to learn the iropinions can be seen as a comtemporary example to this subject. In this study, the historical development of photography, photography at the health sector and some usage fields of photography in the health sector will be mentioned. Some classical and modern ideal materials of medical photography will also be discussed. All the photographs that are used in this study will show the health implements and various operations. As for all the phototographs, authorazitions are taken by. 97

A novel videophone system for the elderly-care application is proposed. Based on the detailed analysis of the elderly’s physical and psychological characteristics, a TV-based caring videophone system for the elderly is developed: an embedded multimedia device is designed to implement the interactive video and audio processing and IP-based communication, in which TV is adopted as the display terminal to achieve a low-cost but high-quality service. Considering the user’s convenience, many personalized designs, such as photo-based address book, photo-click-dialing, and touch pad based remote controller, are developed to make the proposed videophone system more intuitive and easy to use for the elderly. Based on Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithms, an evaluation model is also developed with the data collected from the embedded multimedia device. It is useful to evaluate the physical and psychological health of the elderly.

Structured abstract: Introduction: Seeing the Possibilities with Videophone Technology began as research project funded by the National Center for Technology Innovation. The project implemented a face-to-face social networking program for students with deaf-blindness to investigate the potential for increasing access and communication using videophone technology. Methods: Ten students with deaf-blindness aged 16 to 20 in four southeastern states were recruited through the network of Deaf-Blind Project offices throughout the United States. Criteria for selection to participate in the study were that the participants needed to have enough functional visual acuity to access a 22-inch videophone monitor and use manual sign language as a mode of communication. After a videophone was installed in each participant's home and school, data were collected over six months, using three primary methods of collection. The data were analyzed through a qualitative design method. Results: The primary outcomes were increased accessibility for interpersonal communication among the students with deaf-blindness, seen notably in subscales of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) and through the development of themes involving the cultivation and maintenance of friendships with peers through interaction using videophone technology. Discussion: With the role of interactive technologies in our ever-increasing digital landscapes, timing is ripe for research that aids the advancement of accessibility to information and social interaction, particularly among populations that have historically been marginalized in traditional educational systems. Implications for practitioners: Dissemination of the results of the project through the National Consortium on Deaf-Blindness and the American Association of the Deaf-Blind will encourage practitioners in the field to replicate the project's activities with videophone technology to benefit youths who are deaf-blind. ********** The term deaf-blindness does not refer to the total inability to see or hear--the range of sensory impairments included in the definition of deaf-blindness is quite broad (Miles, 2008). For example, many individuals with dual sensory impairments have some residual hearing or some residual vision or both that enable them to navigate environments, recognize familiar people, see sign language, read large-print text, recognize familiar sounds, understand the spoken word, or develop limited speech. Individuals with deaf-blindness frequently lack opportunities to develop meaningful relationships because of the challenges that combined hearing and vision loss create for connecting with other people and accessing information. Communication and mobility are often the most affected areas of life for a person with deaf-blindness, causing feelings of loneliness that result in conditions of isolation. Janssen, Riksen-Walraven, and van Dijk (2003) studied the specific qualities of interaction that are important for children who are deaf-blind, coining the term harmonious interactions to describe the basic human need to connect with other people. According to Janssen and colleagues, this connection--the experience of interacting with others--is essential for social, emotional, and communicative development among children who are deaf-blind. Seeing the Possibilities with Videophone Technology project Seeing the Possibilities with Videophone Technology was an investigative project to examine the potential to use existing technology in an innovative way to address the challenges that individuals who are deaf-blind experience in accessing communication. The study was conducted by a collaborative group of researchers led by the authors. Two other members of the project team included the director of the Mississippi Deaf-Blind Project and a special education professor at the University of Southern Mississippi. The National Center for Technology Innovation (NCTI) awarded the team a 2010 Tech in the Works Competition grant to conduct the study. …

To identify, based on the literature, people with dementia's potentials to manage an easy-to-use videophone, and to develop a videophone requirement specification for people with dementia.The study is based on the Inclusive Design method, utilising the first two of four phases. Content analyses of literature reviews were used to identify users' potentials for managing a videophone and to gather recommendations regarding communication technology design for the target group. Existing videophones in Sweden were examined regarding potential fit to users with dementia.This led to detailed identification of cognitive, physical and psychosocial challenges that people with dementia will probably have when using an ordinary telephone or videophone. A requirement specification for videophone design to fit users with dementia was formulated, with the seven principles of Universal Design as a framework.The requirement specification presented here is aimed at designing a videophone but might also facilitate design of other products for people with dementia, particularly in the field of communication technology. Based on this, further work will focus on developing a design concept and a prototype to be empirically tested by people with dementia and their significant others, i.e. the final two design process phases.

This study analyzes the manifestation of constructed dialogue in ASL narratives as dependent on the interface mode (i.e., face-to-face conversation, electronic conversation over videophone, and vlog monologues). Comparisons of eye gaze over three interface modes shows how aspects of constructed dialogue are altered to fit the communication mode. Research on spoken languages has presented strong evidence of language variations as dependent on the interface mode (e.g. via telephone). Our study here examines whether American Sign Language also exhibits variation in response to the interface mode. We discovered that the features of constructed dialogue—eye-gaze and body (posture) shifts—are influenced by the interface mode. Specifically, our analysis shows that eye-gaze shifts were less frequent in the video monologues and even less common in the videophone interactions. These findings reveal that American Sign Language indeed exhibits effects of electronic communication.

This paper presents an edutainment robot for young children. The edutainment robot called `Mon-e` has developed by the Central R&D Laboratory at KT. The main services of the Mon-E robot are autonomous moving service, object card and story book telling service and videophone service. The RFID technology was introduced for easy interface to young children. The face of Mon-E robot is mounted with an RFID reader. The RFID tag is pasted on story book and object card. If you approach a book or an object card to the face of Mon-E, the Mon-E robot recognizes the identified code and plays its service. In autonomous moving, if the Mon-E robot meets obstacles, it moves back and turns left or right or half rotation. In videophone service, if young children approach an RFID card to the Mon-E, the Mon-E can make a call to the specific number, which is contained in the RFID card. The developed Mon-E robot has tested in real world environment and is evaluated young children and their parents. In the result of evaluation, the feeling of satisfaction was high to main services of Mon-E robot.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” as the saying goes, and in this case, it surely was. A telecommuting faculty for a Midwest public university wanted to see a graduate student’s presentation as a guest speaker in an instructional technology course on campus. However, this faculty lives in another state, so that was impossible. As a daily user and enthusiast of Skype, she thought of using it to “attend” this presentation. Skype is a software-based Internet telephone and videophone service for making free, computerto-computer voice calls over the Internet Pcmag.com Encyclopedia (n.d.). to anyone else who is also using Skype. This article details the logistics involved in setting up and using Skype, with the assistance of an on-site faculty member, for attending a presentation in real-time at a distance.

Older adults experience the greatest burden of diabetes. Resources must be available and accessible to empower older adults to perform diabetes self-care. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a videophone motivational interviewing (MI) diabetes self-management education (DSME) intervention to improve glycemic control of rural older adults. Sixty-six participants (mean age = 64.9 years, range 60–81) with uncontrolled diabetes were enrolled in a 6-month videophone intervention. Experimental group participants (n = 34) received weekly, then monthly, videophone MI DSME calls, whereas control participants (n = 32) received monthly videophone healthy-lifestyle education calls. Although both groups experienced a decreased HbA1c, there was a statistically significant difference in experimental group mean values (p = .015), but not the control group (p = .086). The experimental group demonstrated statistically significant increases in diabetes knowledge (p = .023) and diabetes self-efficacy (p = .002). Experimental group participants with high self-efficacy in contrast to low self-efficacy had a statistically significant decrease in HbA1c (p = .043).

Multi-homed devices equipped with multiple network interfaces can transmit data over multiple access paths simultaneously for high-speed services. One major problem is that the utilization of different paths with diverse delays may cause packet reordering among packets of the same flow. In the case of TCP-like, the reordering exacerbates the problem by bringing more timeouts and unnecessary retransmissions, which eventually degrades the throughput of connections considerably. To address this issue, we propose a Sender-based Multipath Out-of-order Scheduling (SMOS) scheme, which exploits the sending time discrepancy to preserve the in-order packet arrival. The performance of the proposed SMOS is investigated and compared against other schemes. The obtained results demonstrate the outstanding performance of SMOS as it enhances the utilization of aggregate bandwidth while decreasing the probability of triggering 3 dupACKs.

HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) is a 3.5-generation asynchronous mobile communications service based on the third generation of W-CDMA. In Korea, it is mainly provided in through videophone service. Because of the diffusion of more powerful and diversified services, along with steep advances in mobile communications technology, consumers demand a wide range of choices. However, because of the variety of technologies, which tend to overflow the market regardless of consumer preferences, consumers feel increasingly confused. Therefore, we should not adopt strategies that focus only on developing new technology on the assumption that new technologies are next-generation projects. Instead, we should understand the process by which consumers accept new forms of technology and devise schemes to lower market entry barriers through strategies that enable developers to understand and provide what consumers really want.

Hospice services care for millions of Americans at the end of their life. To improve this care, videophones have been introduced. However, the use of videophones is often not readily accepted by hospice nurses. This study used three theories, surveys, and focus groups with 25 hospice employees to investigate why there was a lack of acceptance. The survey predicted the videophones would be adopted. However, this was not the case, so focus groups were conducted to expand understanding of nonacceptance. This research demonstrates that leadership, context, and perceptions of the technology were key features effecting videophone acceptance. Future research should further examine these barriers and address the need for new survey instruments regarding nonutilization in this context.

We investigated why hospice nurses were slow to adopt videophones to care for their patients. We used the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model and the organizational readiness for change (ORC) assessment via interviews and focus groups with hospice staff. Twenty-five hospice employees participated. Eighteen (72%) were in clinical positions and seven were in non-clinical positions (28%). Thirty-nine percent of respondents reported no videophone training, despite the fact that every employee had received training. Only four staff members actually used a videophone with patients. The respondents overwhelmingly stated that they had the organizational resources necessary to use the videophone and that it was easy to operate. Despite initial enthusiasm, leaders in the hospice agency did not endorse the videophones for work, nor offer incentives for using the videophones or providing them to patients. It is important to note that videophone technology is not meant to replace face-to-face visits, but to supplement them and to provide an additional tool for the nurses.

The objective of this study is to analyze influential factors of sustainable consumption behavior in mobile videophone services using TAM(Technology Acceptance Model). The results of data analysis by SPSS 12.0 show that perceived usefulness, perceived easy of use, videophone service quality, concentration, and use of videophone service by acquaintances exert significant influence on continuous use for videophone services. But ‘the level of neighbor's videophone possession and use, videophone charge, videophone quality, and privacy’ as moderating variables haven’t significant influence on extended use.Keywords:Mobile Videophone Services, Technology Acceptance Model(TAM), Sustainable Consumption Factor 1. 서 론 1) 이동통신시장에서 음성가입자 시장이 포화상태에 직면함에 따라 이동통신사업자들의 관심은 모바일 영상통화서비스에 집중되어 왔다. SK텔레콤이 2003년 7월에 처음으로 시범적으로 서비스 하였던 모바일 영상통화서비스는 지금까지 서비스 제공지역이 지속적으로 확대되어왔고, 단말기 결함과 영상통화 기술이 개선됨과 동시에 이용 요금이 인하되어서 소비자들이 영상통화서비스를 보다 쉽게 수용할 수 있게 되었다 1) . † 정 회 원:(주) 케이티프리텔 사업기획팀 차장 †† 정 회 원:경북대학교 경영학부 초빙교수††† 종신회원:연세대학교 정보대학원 교수(교신저자)논문접수:2009년 2월 25일수 정 일:1차 2009년 3월 23일심사완료:2009년 3월 23일1) 2007년 3월 당시에는 영상통화 요금은 10초당 100∼130원이었으나, 영상통화서비스 확산에 통화요금이 장애요인으로 작용되고 있다는 판단으로 SK텔레콤은 2007년 5월 1일, KTF는 2007년 7월 1일을 기준으로 10초당 30원으로 요금인하를 단행함

When visiting patients with serious mental illness at their homes, case managers carried a portable videophone. This was used to access the hospital clinical team via the home telephone line, when an acute clinical need arose in addressing questions related to medication management and treatment planning; travel was therefore avoided. In an acceptability study lasting 12 months, 24 patients received the supplemental videophone mental health service and 19 of them completed a satisfaction survey. Only one patient was not satisfied with the videophone treatment, while 74% of them were very satisfied. Specific areas of satisfaction concerned the savings of time and travel, assistance with medication questions and increased involvement in treatment. No patient reported any difficulty in using the equipment. Staff members were enthusiastic about the decrease in travel time and there were no complaints about the videophone process or encounters. During the study, 135 h of the case manager's time was saved by using the videophone for urgent access visits, equivalent to a saving of $4000 in salary costs. In addition, the patients saved 135 h in travel time. We believe that there are other potential uses of videophones for seriously mentally ill patients, including discharge planning, intensive post-discharge monitoring and transition to community life.

A stereo microphone array developed for a high-definition videophone system is presented. The array consists of a pair of fixed beamformers to collect sounds in stereo clearly while suppressing the far-end talk emitted from the loudspeakers to decrease the undesirable influence of acoustic echo. Both the objective and subjective experimental results demonstrate that the microphone array satisfies the required specifications, which have not been achieved by several conventional schemes.

Objective This study compared differences in nurse and patient communication profiles between two telehealth modes: telephone and videophone, and evaluated longitudinal changes in communication, nurse perceptions, and patient satisfaction. Methods Subjects were enrolled in a randomized controlled clinical trial evaluating a 90-day home-based intervention for heart failure. Telephone (n = 14) and videophone (n = 14) interactions were audio taped and analyzed using the Roter Interaction Analysis System. Results Nurses were more likely to use open-ended questions, back-channel responses, friendly jokes, and checks for understanding on the telephone compared to videophone. Compliments given and partnership were more common on the videophone. Patients were more likely to give lifestyle information and approval comments on the telephone, and used more closed-ended questions on the videophone. Nurses perceptions of the interactions were not different between the telephone and videophone, nor did their perceptions change significantly over the course of the intervention. There were no significant differences in patient satisfaction between the telephone and videophone. Conclusions The results of this study did not support use of a videophone over the telephone. Practice implications It is critical to match technologies to patient needs and use the least complex technology possible. When considering use a videophone, health care providers should critically examine the trade-offs between additional complexities with the added value of the visual interaction.

At a time of uncertainty over film and television texts being transferred online and on to portable media players, this article examines one of the few visual texts that exist comfortably on multiple screen technologies: the trailer. Adopted as an early cross-media text, the trailer now sits across cinema, television, home video, the internet, games consoles, mobile phones and iPods. Exploring the aesthetic and structural changes the trailer has undergone in its journey from the cinema to the iPod screen, the article focuses on the new mobility of these trailers, the shrinking screen size, and how audience participation with these texts has influenced both trailer production and distribution techniques. Exploring these texts, and their technological display, reveals how modern distribution techniques have created a shifting and interactive relationship between film studio and audience.

This article proposes an application of emotion recognizer system in telecommunications entitled voice driven emotion recognizer mobile phone (VDERM). The design implements a voice-to-image conversion scheme through a voice-to-image converter that extracts emotion features in the voice, recognizes them, and selects the corresponding facial expression images from image bank. Since it only requires audio transmission, it can support video communication at a much lower bit rate than the conventional videophone. The first prototype of VDERM system has been implemented into a personal computer. The coder, voice-to-image converter, image database, and system interface are preinstalled in the personal computer. In this article, we present and discuss some evaluations that have been conducted in supporting this proposed prototype. The results have shown that both voice and image are important for people to correctly recognize emotion in telecommunications and the proposed solution can provide an alternative to videophone systems. The future works list some modifications that can be done to the proposed prototype in order to make it more practical for mobile applications.

近年、メディアを介したコミュニケーションは拡大の一途を辿っており、特に、モバイル通信技術の急速な発達により、携帯電話を介したものが一般的になりつつある。携帯電話のほとんどにはカメラ機能が付いており、これを利用した画像をともなうコミュニケーションが盛んにおこなわれるようになっている。こうした状況は、画像をともなうコミュケーションである点では同じ特徴をもつテレビ電話がほとんど利用者を獲得できなかったこととは対照的である。本研究では、こうした違いの要因を検討するため、20 名の参加者を対象とした日誌法による調査結果にもとづいて、カメラ付き携帯電話による画像情報をともなった対人コミュニケーションの内容分析をおこなった。撮影対象はほとんどが事物であり、また送信相手によって送信意図が異なる傾向が示された。結果にもとづき、対人コミュニケーションにおける画像情報が視覚的共同注意を促進する機能について議論した。, In these days, mediated interpersonal communication has increased its diversity. Due to rapid development of mobile communication technology, mediated interpersonal communication with mobile phone is growing popular. Most of mobile phones are camera-equipped and e-mails with still/motion images are actively exchanged by using them. It is quite a contrast to unpopularity of fixed videophone which has similar features to mobile camera phone in terms of multimedia communication. This study intended to investigate the qualitative description of mediated interpersonal communication accompanied with some still or motion pictures by mobile camera phone. A diary survey of 25 mobile camera phone users was conducted to explore the difference of shot images in communication partners and situations. Results shows that most of shot images were not people but everyday objects and the reason of shooting and sending images was significantly different depending on their expected recipient. Based on the results, the role of image information in mediated interpersonal communication for establishing visual joint attention with their communication partner was discussed.

Videophone services over IP (Internet protocol) will become key services in the next-generation network (NGN). To provide a high-quality service for users, designing and managing the quality of experience (QoE) appropriately is extremely important. To do this, developing an objective quality assessment method that estimates subjective quality by using quality parameters of the videophone system is desirable. We propose a parametric-planning model for assessing video quality affected by coding and packet loss. The results indicated quality estimation accuracy was sufficient for practical use because the estimation errors of our model were equivalent to the statistical reliability of subjective assessment. Therefore, our model could be applied to effective design of video quality for videophone applications and networks. As an example of using our model, we show video-quality planning of videophone services.

Using computer to make face model, establish facial expression animation and exaggerate facial image processing is a hot research topic in the current, which technology has a broad application prospect and huge economic benefits. For example, remote teaching, film and television entertainment, video games and videophone could use the technology. From the current domestic and foreign research related to the subject, there still exists many problems to study because of the complexity of the facial expression.

Background The aim of this study was to evaluate feasibility and accuracy of a videophone-based system for remote cardiopulmonary examination of patients with heart failure. Methods and Results Fifty patients were examined by 2 cardiologists, 1 with a conventional stethoscope and 1 remotely with a videophone-based method, employing an electronic stethoscope and transmitting through an integrated services digital network line. During both sessions, the cardiologists filled out a 27-item questionnaire, which was then compared; concordance between standard and remote examination was evaluated. In 92% of patients, electronic and acoustic auscultation concurred. Only in 3 patients (4%) did teleauscultation not permit a correct interpretation of lung examination. In one patient, bilateral fine crepitant rales were not detected during teleauscultation. Conversely, in the second, patient bilateral fine crepitant rales were recognized during teleauscultation, which were not confirmed during real-life auscultation. In the third nonconcordant patient, moderate-degree wheezing was not detected during teleauscultation. Fine crepitant rales were present at the lungs lower fields in 12 and wheezing in 3 additional patients, and were always correctly identified during teleauscultation. Overall, sensitivity, specificity, positive, and negative predictive value of remote lung auscultation were 88%, 97%, 94%, and 94%, respectively. Conclusions Remote cardiopulmonary examination appears as a feasible method for assessing patients with heart failure. Telestethoscopy can therefore be reliably used in the context of comprehensive telecare programs.

Early discharge of children following surgery shifts the burden of care from professionals in hospital to family care-givers at home. We evaluated the relative effectiveness of telephone and videophone follow-up for children and families after a child's scoliosis surgery. Fourty-three patients and their families were enrolled in the study with 21 dyads receiving videophone and 22 dyads telephone support. At discharge, those in the intervention arm were provided with a videophone operating on the ordinary telephone network (PSTN). Data were gathered during telehealth contact on post-discharge day 3 and during extra calls with the clinic nurse, and during sessions with a research assistant comprising a follow-up call and an interview at the six-week post-surgical visit. Calls and interviews were recorded and transcribed. Data were analysed using constant comparative analysis. The results showed that videophone and telephone use provided care continuity for patients and their families following a child's back surgery. The relative effect of the videophone and telephone technology depended on the fit between the characteristics of the patients and families and the capacities of the technology. When implementing telehealth for follow-up care, a participatory process is recommended to ensure a fit between user characteristics and technology.

Introduction We performed a comparative study of a health education programme that was delivered either through one-way communication with printed media, or through interactive videophone interviews. We aimed to ascertain which mode of counselling, when used in combination with telemonitoring, is more effective at lifestyle modification intended to improve health status. Methods Participants, who were residents of Kurihara city in Miyagi prefecture, Japan, were randomized into two groups: one group received individualized monthly documented reports ( n = 33; 22 females; average age: 67.2 years), and the other received interactive videophone communication ( n = 35; 22 females; average age: 65.1 years) for three months. Telemonitoring was conducted on both groups, using a pedometer, weighing scale and a sphygmomanometer. Pre- and post-intervention, anthropometric measurements and blood tests were performed; the participants also completed self-administered questionnaires. Results and discussion The two groups showed similar degrees of health status improvement and satisfaction levels. However, the participants in the videophone group were more aware of improvements in their lifestyles than were the participants in the document group. The individualized printed communication programme was less time-consuming compared to videophone communication. Further studies are needed to formulate a balanced protocol for a counselling-cum-telemonitoring programme that provides optimal health improvement and cost performance with the available human resources.

Video interpreting1 enables a flow of information between people through a chain of technological and human resources. Video interpreting always includes a (qualified) sign language interpreter, who relays a conversation between a Deaf person using sign language and a hearing non-signer by way of a videophone, a studio and eventually a regular telephone if the parties communicating are at different locations. These entities are also part of an entanglement of legal regulations, political motivations and financial resources that are shaped by as well as shape the organisation of the video interpreting services and the definitions, understandings and roles of the technologies and the involved persons.

In Japan, approximately 12,000,000 cellular phones with a videophone function have been distributed and are becoming an important part of the telemedicine infrastructure. By eye movement analysis, we investigated the effectiveness of eye contact using cellular videophones during medical interviews. Three male volunteers acted as first-time patients and were filmed using a high-resolution camera. The video of each of these volunteers was converted into pictures of three different sizes-70 cm x 40 cm (large picture), 26 cm x 20 cm (medium picture), and 14 cm x 12 cm (small picture)-and viewed on a 32-inch video monitor. The large, medium, and small pictures were considered to represent an actual medical interview, an interview via a television conference system, and an interview via a cellular videophone, respectively. Nine doctors watched these pictures, and their eye movements were recorded with a gaze-point recorder. After watching the videos, the doctors evaluated quality of three size pictures. Standard deviation values of the gaze point coordinates decreased with the picture size. However, a very low decrease was observed in the time ratio, during which the gaze point was on the face (eye contact rate); the rate was 92.2% (large picture), 91.8% (medium picture), and 85.1% (small picture). No statistical difference was observed between the values of the medium and small pictures. Subjective evaluations yielded low scores in the small pictures. The relatively high rate of eye contact rate in the small pictures suggests that a cellular videophone will be a good tool for telemedicine, although the usage by which the subjective evaluations can be improved should be determined by doctors.

Low bandwidth makes real-time video over wireless and mobile networks expensive and limits transmission length. An architecture that substitutes a person's face with a text-based facial vector description transmitted over a network in tandem with a voice stream requires minimal bandwidth, enabling real-time videophony over various wireless networks

In this letter, we derive an efficient audio/video synchronization method for video telephony. For synchronization, this method does not require any further RTCP packet processing except for the first one. The derived decision rule is far more compact than the conventional method. This decision rule is incorporated in an actual video telephony system adopting Texas Instruments (TI) OMAP 1510 processor and Qualcomm MSM 5500. The computational requirement was compared with the conventional method and through simulations the superiority of the proposed method is proved.

In order to determine whether videophones are appropriate communication tools for psychometric assessments, we need to determine whether the quality of videophones is adequate to enable this type of assessment or whether it places a burden on the communication. The purpose of this study is to measure the subjective quality of video and audio features of commercially available videophones in the context of a psychometric assessment session. We recruited 52 subjects who used the videophone to participate in a psychometric assessment using the Perceived Stress Scale. After each session, participants filled out the ITU-T P.920 that assesses the context-specific quality of the video-call. Findings indicate that the overall audio and image quality of the video-call was satisfactory and participants perceived the videophones as useful in the context of psychometric assessment. These findings strengthen the call for use of video mediated communication in home and hospice settings and disease management.

This project reports on the experience of two hospice caregivers using videophone technology to enhance communication with their care providers. The data show the overall satisfaction and technical feasibility with videophone technology in home hospice. The case studies have great implication for future research because they reveal many unexpected issues relevant for future large-scale interventions.

In general, a large number of the memory accesses are required to decode the CAVLC in H.264/AVC. This is a serious problem for applications such as a DMB and videophone services because of the considerable amount of power that is consumed in accessing the memory. In order to overcome this problem, we propose an efficient coeff/spl I.bar/token VLD and a new run/spl I.bar/before VLD based on arithmetic operations. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves an approximate 65-88% savings in memory access without degrading video quality as compared to the conventional CAVLC decoding.

We present a method for extracting local visual perceptual cues and its application for rate control of videophone, in order to ensure the scarce bits to be assigned for maximum perceptual coding quality. The optimum quantization step is determined with the rate-distortion model considering the local perceptual cues in the visual signal. For extraction of the perceptual cues, luminance adaptation and texture masking are used as the stimulus-driven factors, while skin color serves as the cognition-driven factor in the current implementation. Both objective and subjective quality evaluations are given by evaluating the proposed perceptual rate control (PRC) scheme in the H.263 platform, and the evaluations show that the proposed PRC scheme achieves significant quality improvement in block-based coding for bandwidth-hungry applications.

The purpose of this study was to examine changes in student's attitudes toward the use of low-cost videophone equipment as a tool for interacting with elderly residents. Students enrolled in four undergraduate social work courses were asked to observe and participate in a social history interview with a resident volunteer from an assisted-living facility located in north Mississippi. In order to measure changes in participants' attitudes toward technology, students completed the Student Telecommunication Satisfaction Questionnaire prior to and immediately after observing the interview. It was hypothesized that students would demonstrate a positive increase in their attitude toward the use of technology to deliver health care services after being exposed to such technology. The results of this study provide partial support for the hypothesis. In general, students responded positively to the use of video phone technology as a means of augmenting more traditional forms of communication.

A method to limit the effect of error propagation in low bit-rate error resilient video coding has been proposed and implemented on a 3G prototype videophone. In conventional methods, the effect of the bit-stream error does not vanish rapidly since the refreshed macroblocks are affected by the errors in the unrefreshed macroblocks. To overcome this ineffectiveness, two techniques are used; one is motion vector restriction that limits the error propagation, and the other is the spiral intra macroblock refresh that minimizes coding efficiency degradation caused by the motion vector restriction. Further, the latter technique concentrates on the center area in the screen, where the subjective preference is closely related. Experiments show that the proposed method removes the effect of the error more rapidly than the conventional methods.

The rapid spread of broadband always-on Internet is expected to change the way people will communicate and share content and experiences in the near future. This broadband connection can enhance the communication among family members and friends. It can also make it easy to share content and activities such as watching a movie together or listening to the same music while having a videophone chat. While using all these functions people want to be able to move freely through their home. The advance of portable devices fulfils this need for mobility. These portable devices can be used either in isolation or in co-operation with the stationary devices in the house. This paper describes the development and evaluation of two novel interaction concepts that support sociability and mobility for people inhabiting the connected home.

The aim of the study was to compare text telephone relay service and videophone relay service. The target group was people borne deaf. The following aspects were investigated: (1) socioeconomic cos ...

The Swedish National Post and Telecom Agency provides services in the postal and telecommunication area for disabled persons. The text telephone relay service, videophone relay service, free direct ...

A key problem for videophony, that is telephony including the processing of images of the speaker's face in addition to acoustic speech, concerns signal compression for transmission. In such systems, audio and video compression are separately achieved by using both audio and video coders. In this paper, an audio-visual approach to this problem is considered, since we claim that the fundamental property of coherence (redundancy) between the two modalities of speech should be exploited by coding systems. We consider the framework of parametric analysis, modeling and synthesis of talking faces, which allows efficient representation of video information. Thus, we propose to jointly encode several face parameters, namely lip shape geometric descriptors, together with sets of audio coefficients, namely quite usual LPC parameters. The definition of an audiovisual distance between vectors of concatenated audio and video parameters allows to generate audiovisual single stage vector and matrix quantizers by using the generalized Lloyd algorithm. Calculation of video and audio mean distortion measures shows a significant gain in quantization accuracy and/or resolution compared to separate video and audio quantization. An alternative sub-optimal tree-like structure for audiovisual joint coding is also tested and yields interesting results while decreasing the computational complexity of the quantization process.

This paper addresses the issue of face detection and tracking in the context of a mobile videoconferencing application. While the integration of such technology into a mobile videophone is advantageous, allowing face stabilization, reduced bandwidth requirements and smaller display sizes, its deployment in such an environment may not be straightforward, since most face detection methods reported in the literature assume at least modest processing capabilities and memory and, usually, floating-point capabilities. The face detection and tracking method which is presented here achieves high performance, robustness to illumination variations and geometric changes, such as viewpoint and scale changes, and at the same time entails a significantly reduced computational complexity. Our method requires only integer operations and very small amounts of memory, of the order of a few hundred bytes, facilitating a real-time implementation on small microprocessors or custom hardware. In this context, this paper will also examine an FPGA implementation of the proposed algorithmic framework which, as will be seen, achieves extremely high frame processing rates at low clock speeds.

Some radically new, technological products soar smoothly from introduction to stunning market growth, just as textbooks say they should. However, that is not always the case, nor is it even the most likely outcome. The case of the videophone is an extreme one to be sure but it offers six important lessons that apply to many other radically new technological products: (1) not every new technology leads to stunning market success; (2) just because the press says it will, does not mean it will; (3) growth often takes longer than expected; (4) growth often reaches lower levels than expected; (5) technological convergence is not a certainty; and (6) innovations involving complex systems face more hurdles to market acceptance than “stand-alone” innovations.

Extensive researches have been conducted to enhance robustness for Internet video transmission. It has been found that feedback channel is an effective tool to provide error recovery ability and it is most suitable for interactive and conversational environments. Multiframe is another useful approach to enhance both coding efficiency and robustness. In this paper, we propose an algorithm which combines feedback channel and multiframe to achieve rapid error recovery ability for H.264 video. Simulation results show that our scheme can best utilize the feedback information. At the end of this paper, its application in conversational services such as Internet videophone is discussed.

This paper presents an MPEG-4 video codec, called MoVa, for video coding applications that adopts 3G-324M. We designed MoVa to be optimal by embedding a cost-effective ARM7TDMI core and partitioning it into hardwired blocks and firmware blocks to provide a reasonable tradeoff between computational requirements, power consumption, and programmability. Typical hardwired blocks are motion estimation and motion compensation, discrete cosine transform and quantization, and variable length coding and decoding, while intra refresh, rate control, error resilience, error concealment, etc. are implemented by software. MoVa has a pipeline structure and its operation is performed in four stages at encoding and in three stages at decoding. It meets the requirements of MPEG-4 SP@L2 and can perform either 30 frames/s (fps) of QCIF or SQCIF, or 7.5 fps (in codec mode) to 15 fps (in encode/decode mode) of CIF at a maximum clock rate of 27 MHz for 128 kbps or 144 kbps. MoVa can be applied to many video systems requiring a high bit rate and various video formats, such as videophone, videoconferencing, surveillance, news, and entertainment.

A statistical model-based video segmentation algorithm is presented for head-and-shoulder type video. This algorithm uses domain knowledge by abstracting the head-and-shoulder object with a blob-based statistical region model and a shape model. The object segmentation problem is then converted into a model detection and tracking problem. At the system level, a hierarchical structure is designed and spatial and temporal filters are used to improve segmentation quality. This algorithm runs in real time over a QCIF size video, and segments it into background, head and shoulder three video objects on average Pentium PC platforms. Due to its real time feature, this algorithm is appropriate for real time multimedia services such as videophone and web chat. Simulation results are offered to compare MPEG-4 performance with H.263 on segmented video objects with respects to compression efficiency, bit rate adaptation and functionality.

The present study examined the efficacy of videophone conversations for enhancing conversation partner situational awareness and mitigating cell phone distraction during intersection drives. Younger and older drivers drove through simulated intersections in four conditions: undistracted, with an in-car passenger, with a remote partner who could see the driver and a subset of the driving scene via a videophone, and with a remote partner on a cell phone. Relative to the cell phone condition, passenger and videophone conversations enhanced situational awareness and mitigated distraction. Younger and older drivers showed similar benefits, although there were age-related costs to driving performance overall. Videophone information offers a simple and promising potential strategy to enhance partner situational awareness during cell phone conversations, even when the conversation partner can see only a subset of the driving scene.

The proliferation of video and audio media on the Internet has created a distinct disadvantage for deaf Internet users. Despite technological and legislative milestones in recent decades in making television and movies more accessible, there has been less progress with online access. A major obstacle to providing captions for Internet media is the high cost of captioning and transcribing services. This paper reports on two studies that focused on multimedia accessibility for Internet users who were born deaf or became deaf at an early age. An initial study attempted to identify priorities for deaf accessibility improvement. A total of 20 deaf and hard-of-hearing participants were interviewed via videophone about their Internet usage and the issues that were the most frustrating. The most common theme was concern over a lack of accessibility for online news. In the second study, a total of 95 deaf and hard-of-hearing participants evaluated different caption styles, some of which were generated through automatic speech recognition.Results from the second study confirm that captioning online videos makes the Internet more accessible to the deaf users, even when the captions are automatically generated. However color-coded captions used to highlight confidence levels were found neither to be beneficial nor detrimental; yet when asked directly about the benefit of color-coding, participants strongly favored the concept.