Dimitris K. Lymberopoulos

FPGA implementation of artificial neural networks: an application on medical expert systems

In this paper, the FPGA implementation of an Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) composition for a Medical Expert System (MES) focused on pulmonary diseases is discussed. Using a specially designed neuron based on pipelined bit-serial arithmetic and a successful approximation of its determinant sigmoid function, a computation module has been structured that can accommodate eight (8) neurons in one FPGA. The use of memory elements allows for up to 256 K synapses to be mapped with high speed and great accuracy performances. Also, due to the FPGA reconfigurability, new structures and training patterns can be used to update this MES, in order to fit in more pulmonary or other diseases, with minimal effort.

OTE-TS - a new value-added telematics service for telemedicine applications

A new telemedicine service, called the Hellenic Telecommunication Organization Telemedicine Service (OTE-TS), which addresses an open multidisciplinary group of medical care providers (users), is presented in this paper. OTE-TS is supported by the Hellenic Telecommunication Organization (OTE) and is the result of the close collaboration of engineers, medical doctors and market analysts. Its architecture provides the user with an integrated electronic working domain handling diverse types of conversational audiovisual information and medical records. It includes a stack of functions, protocols and interfaces for data acquisition, processing and display, and for the composition of dial-up multi-party cooperation schemes (synchronous or asynchronous) that are suitable for the coordination and management of high-level consulting, reporting and reviewing activities. The service provider (i.e. OTE) performs the central administration and maintenance of the service, as well as the management of medical cases and reports that are exchanged among the users. The service has been extensively tested in real-world conditions.

An homogeneous medical tele‐working domain supported by a new remote expert consultation conferencing service

This paper proposes a new multimode communication service, denoted as Remote Ex- pert Consultation Service (REC-Service) which determines the way group teleworking is realized among distributed entities (workstations, data bases, etc) during a conference for medical diagno- sis. The REC-Service organizes the involved operations into five different types, called Confer- encing Modes (CM), where each CM yields a traffic with variable attributes and requires of the network a special quality of service. Moreover, the structure of a Broadband user-Network Inter- face Unit (BNIU) is defined. BNIU statistically multiplexes the traffic of the entities working in different CMs into an Integrated Broadband Communication (IBC) network. The maximum num- ber of entities served per BNIU and the bandwidth usability have been calculated for several oper- ating modes by modelling the BNIU as a queueing system and by applying special quality criteria, delay demands and traffic assumptions.

Structuring Expertise-Led Medical Protocols for tele-medicine systems

The structuring of standardized medical protocols (ELMP) that can be used in distributed tele-medicine systems (TS) is dealt with. The protocols are needed to handle the medical data exchange between TS; TS can be considered as an aggregation of medical data sources and communication servers. The medical protocols have been integrated in an already presented TS tested in the field by means of a pilot project consisting of twenty-two (22) medical nodes.

Experiences accumulated working towards medical decision support systems

This pioneer work aims to emphasize the milestones that need to be set for a proper cooperation to be met between teams of different expertise. Its archetype has sources on the collaboration of a team of Medical Doctors (MDs) and a team of Systems Engineers that fruited and was presented recently. On the other hand, it stretches out to every domain of interest where the correct Knowledge Transfer and the building either of Medical Decision Support Systems (Medical DSS) or more universal systems dealing with human experience, is sought. Apart from being only a general survey, precise guidelines based on real facts are determined.

Premises and application of a commercial tele-working platform

The explosive growth of tele-communication markets make clear to PTT (post telephone telegraph) enterprises the need to provide for novel value-added integrated services, in order to supply their customers with enough means to reap the full advantages of new technology and survive (Kurland and Bailey (2000), IEEE Eng. Man. Rev., 28 (2), 49-60). The market trends that favored the birth of many dot com companies, asked for Service Providers (SPs) that lead PTTs to gradually extend their services and become x-Service Providers (x-SPs), among others they consist of Application SPs (ASPs), e-MAIL/Messaging SPs (eMSPs), Network SPs (NSPs), Management SPs (MSPs), Storage SPs (SSPs), Data Center SPs (DCSPs), Hosting SPs (HSPs), e-Commerce SPs (eCSPs). This paper presents the premises, the implementation, and the evaluation performance of a Tele-Working Platform (TWP) that supplied those services to the citizens of the Public Bureaus of Thessalys rural county (Hellas). This platform complies with the ITU specifications for providing x-SPs and is built on a distributed computing system basis.