Alnazier O. Hamza

The Design and Fabrication of a Full Field Quantitative Mammographic Phantom

Breast cancer is among the leading causes of death in women worldwide. Screen-film mammography (SFM) is still the standard method used to detect early breast cancer thus leading to early treatment. Digital mammography (DM) has recently been designated as the imaging technology with the greatest potential for improving the diagnosis of breast cancer. For successful mammography, high quality images must be achieved and maintained, and reproducible quantitative quality control (QC) testing is thus required. Assessing images of known reference phantoms is one accepted method of doing QC testing. Quantitative QC techniques are useful for the long-term follow-up of mammographic quality. Following a comprehensive critical evaluation of available mammography phantoms, it was concluded that a more suitable phantom for DM could be designed. A new relatively inexpensive Applied Physics Group (APG) phantom was designed to be fast and easy to use, to provide the user with quantitative and qualitative measures of high and low contrast resolution over the full field of view and to demonstrate any geometric distortions. It was designed to cover the entire image receptor so as to assess the heel effect, and to be suitable for both SFM and DM. The APG phantom was designed and fabricated with embedded test objects and software routines were developed to provide a complete toolkit for SFM and DM QC. The test objects were investigated before embedding them.

Software Applications in Healthcare Technology Management: A Review

Medical equipment plays a critical role in todays healthcare services. It is fundamental to be managed to quality performance. Paper-based management systems report many problems such as long turnaround time of tasks, complicated information management, and high probability of error. Computerized management system was a paradigm shift in the way of managing health technology. This article reviews the application of computer software in healthcare technology management and determines the gap for the potential future work. It has been seen that a broad range of healthcare technology management functions has been computerized through the global computerized management systems after many attempts. Modular design and department-oriented systems were the common features among these studies. Several future trends of automation have been recommended.

Benchmarking Clinical Engineering Services in Sudanese Hospitals: Survey and Assessment

Medical equipment is one of the major infrastructure components of hospitals. Their peak performance is critical to the quality of healthcare services. Clinical engineering (CE) services in Sudanese hospitals have been recently existed therefore this paper aims to evaluate the clinical engineering (CE) departments in Sudanese hospitals. Firstly a robust assessment system has been prepared under the name of clinical engineering services assessment system (CESAS). It contains a questionnaire, documentation audit, site assessment and interviews. Then a sample of CE departments is chosen with confidence of 75% and has been appreciated using CESAS. The weaknesses of CE performance, that form the 78% gap with CESAS target, have been reported. This gap tells a serious problem. Investigating and uncovering of its root causes is recommended.

A New Noninvasive Flatfoot Detector

The exact incidence of flatfoot in children is unknown; it is very common and is, in fact, one of the most common conditions seen in pediatric orthopedic practices. The early detection of flatfeet in children can prevent many serious complications and further damage to other body parts, such as the knee and the lower back, later in life. Early detection can allow for permanent correction of foot deformities. The available method to detect flatfoot in Sudan is visual inspection, and it is a poor, subjective, and inaccurate method. This research was aimed to design and implement an electronic device capable of monitoring the foot condition and early detection of flatfoot in children as to minimize the cost of the investigation and detection of flatfoot. The design consists of ultrasonic sensor, motor driver, direct current (DC) motor, and LCD. In the designed device, the ultrasonic sensor measures the distance and height of foot arch; the microcontroller was programmed to compare the measured readings with the normal foot parameters. The motor driver was used to control the DC motor. On the other hand, the DC motor drives the sensor along the foot. All the previous steps were controlled by a microcontroller. Finally, the LCD will display the obtained result. The project was tested in the group of 5- to 7-year-old children, it was found that the prevalence of flatfoot decreased significantly with age; in the group of 5-year-old children, 71% showed a flatfoot, whereas in the group of 7-year-old children, only 67% had a flatfoot. Boys had a significantly greater tendency for flatfoot than girls: the prevalence of flatfoot in boys was 85% and 29% in girls. Nineteen percent of the children were overweight or obese. Significant differences in prevalence of flatfoot between overweight, obese, and normal-weight children were observed. The result of the designed flatfoot detector was compared with diagnosis of the cases by specialized physicians; the diagnosis results were perfectly matching the designed device ones. It can be concluded that the designed flatfoot detector has the ability to detect flatfoot in children as well as adults.

Evaluation of Mechanical and Electrical Faults in Dialysis Machines

This research is aimed to study the mechanical and electrical faults in dialysis machines, depending on four types of dialysis machines (Fresenius - B. Braun - Gambro - NIPRO). The objectives of this research are to determine the causes of these faults, their best solutions and how to prevent them in future. To verify these faults visual inspection and maintenance reports were taken into account in 80 dialysis machines in 11 dialysis centres in Khartoum state, Sudan. It was found out that these faults were due to five causes. These causes were machine pumps, power supply, conductivity, transducers, sensors and pressure failures. The mean of all faults is 21.80 and standard deviation is 3.96. The maximum mean of causes was found in power supply failure and minimum mean was found in pressure causes. The maximum standard deviation of causes was found in power failures and minimum was found in transducers and sensors failures, so the impact of the values was found homogeneous in transducers and sensors failures.

Brain Tumor Segmentation From Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scans

The segmentation of brain tumor from magnetic resonance imaging scans is a vital process for treatment planning and for studying the differences of healthy subjects and subjects with tumor. A computer-aided diagnosis algorithm has been designed so as to increase the accuracy of brain tumor detection and classification and thereby replace conventional invasive and time-consuming techniques. This article introduces an efficient method of brain tumor segmentation that is a combination of 3 existing techniques: threshold, watershed segmentation, and morphological operation. Detection and extraction of tumors from magnetic resonance imaging scans of the brain are done by using MATLAB 2015a software.

Chemical Analysis of Water Treatment in Sudan

Dialysis machines are artificial kidneys that perform some kidney functions for patients who have renal failure and are used to clean the blood and balance its constituents. The machine maintenance and calibration are extremely important in the evaluation of adequacy of hemodialysis and in assessing dialysis session performance. The objectives of this study are to change the degree of concentration of chemical elements in water treatment during a year time in the Kassala state, to decrease the risk of water contamination with respect to the kidney failure of patients in water treatment unit, and to find the best effective solutions in case of any changes in the chemical concentration of the water. The study has been done during the period from January 2014 to March 2015 in Kassala Hospital’s Department of Renal Diseases. The study author concluded that water element concentration rates changed significantly during the year. This conclusion requires an attention to investigate the reasons behind these changes and the effects of these changes on the dialysis treatments. One way to do so is to monitor the contents of water treatment unit periodically and to make sure that each part is efficiently working. This will be done by taking samples to check it regularly for accuracy, corresponding to the required needs.

Application of Solar Energy in Medical Instrumentation: Microscope

The renewable energy sources has a vast potential in Sudan. Solar energy with excellent sunshine of over 3,000 hours per year is of paramount importance, the applications of which is already quite significant and is growing at a steady rate. Medical services cannot be reached by people in rural areas and war zones, which are remotely isolated because of poor road links with the urban centers and remoteness from the national electrical transmission grid, which had the most need. So, the aim of this project is to deliver medical services for them. A photovoltaic encapsulation and manufacturing solar system was used to generate an electric supply to operate a medical device, and expected results were obtained.

Design of An Infrared Physiotherapy Monitor

The aim of this project is to design an infrared (IR) monitor to detect and measure the amount of infrared radiation, to control the treatment time of the IR physiotherapy, and to provide a tool to determine standard doses for different cases. The problem was the absence of the quality control tools of the infrared physiotherapy devices in Sudan that led to inappropriate treatment, complains and decrease in patient satisfaction. The patient safety is human-dependent; it can lead to severe burns when the patient exposes to IR radiation more than the required treatment time. The proposed solution for this issue is a design of a monitor of IR physiotherapy, which was done by using both software (BASCOM) and hardware (microcontroller atmega 8) tools, a control system which enables and controls the input power that inters the IR lamp is implemented, and an IR sensor which provide feedback from the IR lamp to monitor the amount of IR radiation. The result of the project was an IR physiotherapy monitor, which has the ability to monitor 80 percent of the lamp’s chosen intensities and control the infrared radiation intensity, dose, and time to ensure the patient safety. KeywordsHeat physiotherapy; Infrared Physiotherapy; Monitors

Computer-Aided Detection of Benign Tumors of the Female Breast

Breast cancer is considered one of the leading causes of women mortality in the world. The key to improving breast cancer is the early diagnosis of tumors through the use of mammography. Screen-film mammography (SFM) is the most commonly used method in Sudan for the detection of breast cancer. However, SFM has limitations due to the variability among screening radiologists in interpreting mammographic images. In order to overcome these limitations, digital mammography (DM) was introduced. An intelligent computer-aided detection (CAD) system can be very helpful for radiologist in detecting and diagnosing benign tumors earlier and faster than typical screening programs. In this study, a data set of 10 digital mammograms containing benign tumors was presented to four radiologists for diagnosis in order to prove the variability between them. Then, we investigated several statistical features and their combinations in order to determine the best combination for diagnosis. We found that a combination of the mean and median in a MATLAB algorithm is the best combination for mammographic benign tumor detection. Results demonstrate that the CAD algorithms showed more sensitivity than the radiologists in terms of diagnosing benign tumors in digital mammograms.