Jiann-I Pan

Pilot study of deep brain stimulation in refractory obsessive-compulsive disorder ethnic Chinese patients

Aims:  Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the ventral capsule/ventral striatum (VC/VS) is a promising alternative to ablative surgery in treatment of refractory obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). A pilot study was conducted to assess 15‐month outcomes of DBS in patients with refractory OCD in Taiwan.

Verifying scenarios with time Petri-nets

Recently, a substantial amount of research activities has been focused on a user-oriented perspective to the development of software systems. One of the key elements in this perspective is the notion of scenarios: a description of what people do and experience as they try to make usage of computer systems and applications. A variety of applications of scenarios has been proposed, for example, to elicit user requirements, or to validate requirements specifications. As scenarios are useful for the lifecycle of requirements engineering, it is important to enable verification of these scenarios, especially, to detect any wrong information and missing information that are hidden in scenarios. However, scenarios are usually stated in an informal way, which impedes the easiness for verification. The focus of this paper is on the use of time Petri-nets (TPNs) to serve as the verification mechanism for the acquired scenarios. Use cases are used to elicit the user needs and to derive the scenarios. Each of the use cases is described from a users perspective and depicts a specific flow of events in the system. After specifying all possible scenarios, each of them can be transformed into its correspondent time Petri-nets model. Through the analysis of these TPNs models, wrong information and missing information in scenarios can be detected. The proposed approach is illustrated by means of a course registration problem domain.

An Intelligent Homecare Emergency Service System for Elder Falling

As aging people is growing quickly in many countries, the fall problem is formed a curial public health and clinical problem among elderly persons because fall is the prime cause for traumatic death and physical sequela of them. However, as many of the elders choose solitary life alone and because of the isolation, the emergency service model has faced two main challenges: first, how to discover the fall accident; and next, how to communicate the emergency service center. In this research, we propose an intelligent homecare emergency service system based on two intelligent technologies: artificial neural network and intelligent software agent. The fall detector that based on tri-axes accelerometer and back-propagation neural network classifier is implemented to detect the fall events automatically. On the other hand, an intelligent agent-based homecare emergency service system is developed to communicate the emergency service center and hospitals for requesting help. In the meantime, the basic and important health information related to the elder will be sent together with that request. Thus, the emergency service center can base on the elder’s information to dispatch an available ambulance that takes the necessary medicines and equipment to the elder’s house.

Acute stimulation effect of the ventral capsule/ventral striatum in patients with refractory obsessive–compulsive disorder – a double-blinded trial

Objective Deep-brain stimulation (DBS) for treating refractory obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) has shown positive results in small clinical trials. Ventral capsule/ventral striatum (VC/VS) is one of the promising targets; however, whether or not acute stimulation test can provide substantial information for chronic stimulation is not yet known. We evaluated postoperative test stimulation and examined the relationship of acute simulation-induced smile/laughter and 15-month clinical outcome. Methods Four adult patients with refractory OCD were implanted with Model 3387 leads bilaterally in an area of VC/VS. Postoperative test stimulation was performed at least 2 weeks after surgery. We performed double-blinded postoperative test stimulation with different contact and voltage. The relationship of stimulation-induced smile/laughter and chronic response was examined. Results Patients presented smile, laughter, euphoria, increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, smell, chest vibration, dizziness, nausea, heat, or increased sexual drive during acute stimulation. We found that the higher the percentage of smile/laughter (34.3%, 31.3%, 56.3%, and 12.5% for four cases), the greater the reduction in the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (30.6%, 38.9%, 58.8%, and 7.7% respectively at 15-month DBS). Conclusion This study showed that acute DBS of the VC/VS might cause mood change, cardiovascular, sensory, or motor effects. These effects were transient or habituated over six months. We suggest stimulation-induced smile/laughter may be a possible predictor for long-term DBS outcome. Larger studies, genetic studies, and imaging studies are needed to evaluate the effects of different parameters and possible predictors in the treatment of OCD.

Secure Mobile Agent for Telemedicine Based on P2P Networks

Exploring intelligent mobile agent (MA) technology for assisting medical services or transmitting personal patient-health information in telemedicine applications has been widely investigated. Conversely, peer-to-peer (P2P) networking has become one of the most popular applications used in the Internet because of its benefits for easy-to-manage resources and because it balances workloads. Therefore, constructing an agent-based telemedicine platform based on P2P networking architecture is necessary. The main purpose of this paper is to construct a safe agent-based telemedicine that based on P2P networking architecture. Two themes are addressed in this paper: (a) the P2P network architecture for an agent-based telemedicine service, and (b) the security mechanisms for the proposed telemedicine networking architecture. When an MA contains patient information and migrates from one host to another through the Internet, it can be attacked by other software agents or agent platforms that can illegally access patient information. The proposed P2P network architecture is based on the JXTA protocol and provides two types of telemedicine service models: the predictable service model and unpredictable service model. This architecture employs a two-layer safety mechanism for MAs (i.e., time-limited black boxes and RSA undetachable signature technologies), to provide a secure solution for agent-based telemedicine services.

The Secure Authorization Model for Healthcare Information System

Exploring healthcare system for assisting medical services or transmitting patients’ personal health information in web application has been widely investigated. Information and communication technologies have been applied to the medical services and healthcare area for a number of years to resolve problems in medical management. In the healthcare system, not all users are allowed to access all the information. Several authorization models for restricting users to access specific information at specific permissions have been proposed. However, as the number of users and the amount of information grows, the difficulties for administrating user authorization will increase. The critical problem limits the widespread usage of the healthcare system. This paper proposes an approach for role-based and extends it to deal with the information for authorizations in the healthcare system. We propose the role-based authorization model which supports authorizations for different kinds of objects, and a new authorization domain. Based on this model, we discuss the issues and requirements of security in the healthcare systems. The security issues for services shared between different healthcare industries will also be discussed.

Towards the verification of scenarios with time Petri-nets

The focus of the paper is on the use of time Petri nets to serve as the verification mechanism for acquired scenarios. Use cases are used to elicit the user needs and to derive the scenarios. After specifying all possible scenarios, each of them can be transformed into its corresponding time Petri nets model (TPN). Through the analysis of these TPN models, wrong information and missing information in scenarios can be detected. The proposed approach is illustrated by a course registration problem domain.

Intelligent Fall Prevention for Parkinson's Disease Patients based on Detecting Posture Instabilily and Freezing of Gait

Parkinsons disease (PD) is a disorder that affects nerve cells in a part of the brain, and results from a progressive loss of dopaminergic and other sub-cortical neurons. Symptoms of Parkinsons disease may include resting tremor, bradykinesia, rigidity, a forward stooped posture, postural instability, and freezing of gait. As reported by several researchers, the forward stooped posture and freezing of gait are the most critical reasons to make the Parkinsons disease patients fall. The main objective of this research is to develop a fall prevention system for Parkinsons disease patients. There are two phases in the fall prevention protocol. The first phase is to detect and recognize the stooped posture and freezing of gait symptoms from the patients movement activities. The next phase is to alarm an audio cue to break the block of freezing. An accelerometer based sensor network is designed to sense the movement information. The recorded data are transferred to the smartphone, which served as the core calculator unit, by Bluetooth communication protocol. The input signals are recognized and classified into the target symptoms. The main advantages of this proposed approach includes: (1) the safety: to detect the stooped posture and freezing of gait and to produce audio cue to help the patients to break the block; (2) the portability: not limited at specific locations; and (3) the expendability: easy to update or upgrade by using app install online.

A rule-based approach to producing Z specifications from Jackson system development

In this paper, we propose a rule‐based approach (called JSDZ) to producing Z specifications from Jackson system development (JSD) specifications automatically. In JSDZ, JSP is to serve as the structuring mechanism to help the analysis of problem domains, and Z is to express the formal specifications of JSD artifacts. Several criteria are identified for comparing specifications generated from JSDZ and Z. The bringing together of diagrammatical and text elements of JSD specifications in Z notations offers two major benefits. First, JSD can be seen both as a structuring mechanism that helps in deriving Z specifications, and as a preliminary that assists in ascertaining the clients requirements. Second, Z specifications make it easier to identify omissions or errors.

Integrating object-oriented requirements specifications with formal notations

We propose an integration of an extension of Bailins object-oriented requirements specification (OOS) (1989) with a formal notation (Z), called OOSZ. The OOS is used to guide the derivation of Z specifications. In OOSZ a function process is converted into an operation schema. An entity process is manifested through a state schema, an instance creation operation schema and an abstract operation schema. Correctness conjectures are generated for verifying the consistency of intralevel and interlevel specifications. These are illustrated using the problem domain of Auto Banking Systems. The bringing together of diagrammatical and text elements of OOS specifications in Z notations offers three major benefits. First, the relationship, between ERD and EDFD is tightly coupled compared with Yourdons SA approach. Second, OOS specifications can be seen both as a structuring mechanism that helps in deriving Z specifications, and as a preliminary that assists in ascertaining the clients requirements. Third, Z specifications make it easier to identify omissions or errors.