Mark D. Wiederhold

ECG to identify individuals

The electrocardiogram (ECG also called EKG) trace expresses cardiac features that are unique to an individual. The ECG processing followed a logical series of experiments with quantifiable metrics. Data filters were designed based upon the observed noise sources. Fiducial points were identified on the filtered data and extracted digitally for each heartbeat. From the fiducial points, stable features were computed that characterize the uniqueness of an individual. The tests show that the extracted features are independent of sensor location, invariant to the individuals state of anxiety, and unique to an individual.

Augmenting Behavioral Healthcare: Mobilizing Services with Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

From tools for hunting and harvesting and monumental inventions of the industrial revolution that have propelled us into today’s ubiquitous information-age, innovative technologies and technological applications have transformed human-based experience. Abounding seemingly overnight, advanced technological applications have revolutionized the healthcare industry by mobilizing treatment and intervention services. While the advent of technologically driven mobile healthcare may appear to some as an emerging field, researchers, clinicians, and practitioners have been implementing contemporary technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), into their mental healthcare practices for over two decades. Clinically validated treatments for anxiety, phobias, pain distraction, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), stress management and prevention, and rehabilitation are only a handful of ways that this immersive technology transforms behavioral healthcare. Via immersive environments, clinicians are better able to expose patients to feared stimuli than traditional imaginal techniques, providing greater effectiveness in treatments and significant improvements in patients’ overall wellbeing. Additionally, the mobilization of healthcare to smartphones and other devices facilitates the migration of services beyond the walls of the traditional doctor’s office and into the homes and everyday lives of those who need it most. Ultimately, innovative applications by researchers, clinicians, and practitioners prove VR and augmented reality (AR) technologies as effective, efficient, and widely accessible tools in mental healthcare interventions.

Mental Health Consequences of War Conflicts

Modern war conflicts, evolutionizing from large-scale collisions of armed forces to local, low-intensity, surrogate, terroristic and information wars, are associated with less direct mortality but with growing and long-lasting mental health consequences. These consequences can be traced in not only combatants and other military contingents and veterans but even to greater extent in the civilian populations, given that many modern war conflicts have signs of civil wars or religious conflicts. While active duty military undergo preliminary selection and resilience training, civilians in the war zone or as refugees and asylum-seeking victims are even at higher risk with the greater probability of transgenerational transmission, which implies long-lasting (decades) effects. Both military and civilians suffer from a similar set of disorders and psychological consequences caused by extreme trauma, including PTSD, depression, anxiety, addictions, somatization with chronic pain, dissociation, psychosocial dysfunctions, suicidal behavior, etc. War conflicts, terroristic acts, and information wars, amplified by technologically developing mass media, the internet and social networks, seem to add to a general feeling of instability and promote more anxiety, covering even wider contingents worldwide. Military psychiatry has accumulated knowledge and practical experience that, though not always can be applied directly, are useful for identification, management, prevention, and treatment of mental health consequences of war in wider contingents. This knowledge is a one more relevant and strong reason for advocating lowering of international tension and reducing the probability of war conflicts worldwide for the sake of preserving mental health of the humanity. It also has a potential of lowering the burden of this type of diseases worldwide.

Cybertherapy in Medicine – Experience at the Universidad Panamericana, IMSS and ISSSTE Mexico

© 2012 Mosso et al., licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Cybertherapy in Medicine – Experience at the Universidad Panamericana, IMSS and ISSSTE Mexico

Identification Based On Fusion of Cardiovascular Function Measurements

Recent investigations indicate cardiovascular function is a viable biometric. This paper explores biometric techniques based on multiple modalities for sensing cardiovascular function. Analysis of data acquired with an electrocardiogram (ECG) combined with corresponding data from pulse oximetry and blood pressure indicates that features can be extracted from the signals, which correspond to individuals. While a persons heart rate can vary with mental and emotional state, certain features corresponding to the heartbeat appear to be unique to the individual. Our protocol induced a range of mental and emotional states in the subject and the analysis identifies features of the cardiovascular signals that are invariant to mental and emotional state. Furthermore, the three measures of cardiovascular function provide independent information, which can be fused to achieve robust performance compared to a single modality.