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Health and Technology OnlineFirst articles

Open Access 24.05.2024 | Original Paper

New accelerator designs: NIMMS

The Next Ion Medical Machine Study (NIMMS) is an international collaboration based at CERN, established in 2018 with the support of the CERN Knowledge Transfer for Medical Applications (KT-MA), with the goal of developing new technologies for the …

verfasst von:
Maurizio Vretenar, Elena Benedetto

24.05.2024 | Original Paper

IBCBML: interpreting breast cancer biomarker using machine learning

Breast cancer (BC) is a diverse group of diseases that can be treated as a single entity through highly modifiable medical behaviour [ 1 ]. This multiplicity, which is replicated in multiple special histological grades (HG) of different types with …

verfasst von:
Monika Lamba, Geetika Munjal, Yogita Gigras

24.05.2024 | Original Paper

Development and validation of a symbolic regression-based machine learning method to predict COVID-19 in-hospital mortality among vaccinated patients

The detection and isolation of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative agent of COVID-19 was reported on January, 2020 [ 1 ]. Globally, as of 2 August 2023, there have been 768.983.095 confirmed cases of …

verfasst von:
Filippos Sofos, Erasmia Rouka, Vasiliki Triantafyllia, Evangelos Andreakos, Konstantinos I. Gourgoulianis, Efstathios Karakasidis, Theodoros Karakasidis

Open Access 22.05.2024 | Original Paper

Development of a software-tool to evaluate the tolerability of different VR-movement types

Virtual-reality (VR) describes technologies trying to accurately simulate a virtual environment with the use of Virtual-Reality-Headsets or Virtual-Reality-Head-Mounted-Displays (VRHMDs). These devices typically consist of a screen with lenses …

verfasst von:
Kaus Bernhard, Schneider Henning

22.05.2024 | Original Paper

Cancer data analysis using competitive ensemble machine learning techniques

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in recent years [ 1 ]. It is necessary to consider the increase in the [ 2 ] mortality rate. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), several million women are affected by breast cancer. Cancer …

verfasst von:
V. Diviya Prabha, R. Rathipriya, Jyotir Moy Chatterjee

Open Access 21.05.2024 | Original Paper

Organization and operation of multi particle therapy facilities: the Marburg Ion-Beam Therapy Center, Germany (MIT)

Charged particle therapy is regarded as cutting-edge technology in oncology. Worldwide 125 particle therapy centers are in operation and almost 370.000 patients had been treated by the end of 2022 [ 1 ]. In more than 90% of these centers, only …

verfasst von:
Klemens Zink, Kilian Simon Baumann, Ulrike Theiss, Florentine Subtil, Sonja Lahrmann, Fabian Eberle, Sebastian Adeberg

Open Access 18.05.2024 | Original Paper

Exploring energy selection methods for robust biologically optimized carbon ion arc for head&neck cancer patients

For many years, the ability of particle therapy to produce highly conformal target doses with just few treatment fields has been pointed out as a key advantage over conventional photon therapy [ 1 ]. This approach, denoted intensity modulated …

verfasst von:
Lennart Volz, Yinxiangzi Sheng, Lin Kong, Marco Durante, Christian Graeff

16.05.2024 | Review Paper

Advancements and integration: a comprehensive review of health informatics and its diverse subdomains with a focus on technological trends

Health informatics has evolved as a multidisciplinary professional field that focuses on the effective use of biomedical data, information, and knowledge to improve human health. The objective of the Health informatics discipline is to enhance the …

verfasst von:
Muhammet Damar, İbrahim Yüksel, Ali Emre Çetinkol, Ömer Aydın, Tuncay Küme

Open Access 15.05.2024 | Original Paper

Digital transitions in healthcare: the need for transdisciplinary research to overcome barriers of privacy enhancing technologies uptake

The healthcare sector faces a multitude of challenges such as, among others, an aging population, increasing demand for personalised care, a shortage of health professionals, suboptimal task allocation, and rising operational costs. While not a …

verfasst von:
Sarah van Drumpt, Tjerk Timan, Soukaina Talie, Thijs Veugen, Linda van de Burgwal

14.05.2024 | Original Paper

Unsupervised generative learning-based decision-making system for COVID-19 detection

In 2019, the world witnessed the emergence of a novel coronavirus disease, commonly referred to as COVID-19. It originated in the Wuhan city of China in 2019 and then turned into a pandemic by February 2020, reaching 229 million confirmed cases …

verfasst von:
Neeraj Menon, Pooja Yadav, Vinayakumar Ravi, Vasundhara Acharya, V Sowmya

Open Access 06.05.2024 | Original Paper

“Particle therapy - future for the Baltic states?” – synthesis of the expert workshop report

According to data of the World Health Organization (WHO), cancer remains one of the most significant causes of death globally – accounting for nearly one in every six deaths globally in 2020 [ 1 ]. In 2022 alone, 19.98 million new cancer cases and …

verfasst von:
Kristaps Paļskis, Erika Korobeinikova, Dace Bogorada-Saukuma, Anna Maria Camarda, Rebecca Taylor, Elena Benedetto, Edgars Mamis, Maija Radziņa, Andrejs Ērglis, Diana Adliene, Manjit Dosanjh, Maurizio Vretenar, Toms Torims

Open Access 04.05.2024 | Original Paper

Artificial Intelligence, data protection and medical device regulations: squaring the circle with a historical perspective in Europe

The European regulatory framework for Medical Devices (MD) and In Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) has been going through consecutive changes since the 1970s, moving from a substantially national, subjective, and prescriptive approach towards a more …

verfasst von:
Leandro Pecchia, A. Maccaro, M. A. G. Matarrese, F. Folkvord, G. Fico

Open Access 04.05.2024 | Original Paper

Digital contact tracing technology in the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, is a respiratory illness outbreak unlike the world had seen in recent history, and led to over 760 million cases and 6.9 million deaths between 2019 and 2023 [ 1 , 2 ]. Public health teams …

verfasst von:
Nicole Irwin, Dewi Nur Aisyah, Fauziah Mauly Rahman, Logan Manikam

03.05.2024 | Original Paper

Biomedical engineering point of view on the implementation of rehabilitation technology: a qualitative study

It is estimated that one third of the world's population will need rehabilitation at some point in their lives [ 1 ]. This implies the development of health policies that prioritize rehabilitation services. Outcome measures (OM), understood as a …

verfasst von:
Eloísa García-Añino, Juan Pedro Alonso, Paola Catalfamo-Formento

02.05.2024 | Original Paper

Considerations for a dosimetry code of practice for BNCT

Codes of practice in radiotherapy dosimetry are important to standardise the delivered dose across multiple institutes and countries, ensuring consistency and enabling better understanding and comparison of patient outcomes. For BNCT there is no …

verfasst von:
Stuart Green, Hanna Koivunoro, Hiroaki Kumada

Open Access 02.05.2024 | Original Paper

Hadron therapy in radiation oncology and why BNCT is a paradigm shift

In daily clinical practice, external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) is performed using photons with energies ranging from X-rays to high mega-voltage photons up to 15 MV (even higher in some places) and electrons up to 18 MeV. Over the last 6 decades …

verfasst von:
Wolfgang A. G. Sauerwein, Kazuyo Igawa, Joël Herault, Piero Fossati, Saverio Altieri, Raymond L. Moss, Andrea Wittig

Open Access 01.05.2024 | Original Paper

Enabling reliable usability assessment and comparative analysis of medical software: a comprehensive framework for multimodal biomedical imaging platforms

In healthcare systems, new technologies and medical devices (MDs) have become more significant during the latter part of the last century [ 1 ]. The increasing use of MDs contributed to the improvement of health care and its quality, leading to new …

verfasst von:
Elena Denisova, Eleonora Tiribilli, Alessio Luschi, Piergiorgio Francia, Leonardo Manetti, Leonardo Bocchi, Ernesto Iadanza

Open Access 01.05.2024 | Original Paper

Carbon ion radiotherapy in gynaecological oncology: where we are and where we are headed

Due to the favourable dose profile and the advantageous radiobiological effects over photon beam radiotherapy (X-RT), carbon ion radiotherapy (CIRT) has gained increasing oncological favour for the treatment of radioresistant histologies and …

verfasst von:
Amelia Barcellini, Alexandra Charalampopoulou, Jessica Franzetti, Laura Deborah Locati, Ester Orlandi

01.05.2024 | Original Paper

Optimization of the number of post-therapeutic planar imaging time points for the most reliable organ and tumour dosimetry in peptide receptor radionuclide therapy

Neuroendocrine tumours (NET) are a heterogeneous group of malignancies that shows a prevalence of 0.5% among all primary diagnosed cancers in the general population [ 1 ]. Various treatment approaches have been employed for the treatment of NETs …

verfasst von:
Acsah Konuparamban, Amit Nautiyal, Ashish Kumar Jha, Sneha Mithun, Tusharkanta Srichandan, Ameya Puranik, Venkatesh Rangarajan

Open Access 26.04.2024 | Original Paper

Women in engineering, science and technology in sub-Saharan Africa: cultural attitudes, challenges, and gaps affecting clinical engineering and medical devices maintenance practices

Biomedical engineers provide meticulous care for MDs, procure high-end equipment, manage maintenance contracts, and oversee the overall structure of the hospital, including floor plan design. Observations from field studies carried out in SSA [ 1 – …4

verfasst von:
Alessia Maccaro, Iyabosola Busola Oronti, Eugenio Zito, Davide Piaggio, Leandro Pecchia