Personalized Data Research Articles

Generation of computational meshes from MRI and CT-scan data

There are fields of engineering where accurate and personalised data are required; biomed- ical applications are one such example. We describe here a general purpose method to create com- putational meshes based on the analysis and segmentation of raw medical imaging data. The various ingredients are not new: a segmentation method based on deformable contours and a surface and vol- ume mesh adaptation method based on discrete metric specifications; but the challenge that motivated this paper is to put them together in an attempt to design an automatic, easy to use and ecient 3D code. For non-engineering (like biomedical) applications, the user interface is often a key point. In this project, we put a great deal of emphasis on the automation of the whole procedure, making then possible to envisage large scale simulations with a minimal amount of user interaction. In particular, the user knowledge is required to help segmenting the image (the user is expected to have the know- how of the body anatomy), all meshing steps rely on fully automatic algorithms depending on a few parameters (for the external surface approximation). One application example is presented and commented, for which the data preparation takes a few hours and results can be obtained overnight on a PC workstation.

Digital Technology and the Market for Political Surveillance

Many new media technologies, such as the internet, serve both as a tool for organizing public commons and as a tool for surveilling private lives. This paper addresses the manner in which such technological innovations have enabled a dramatically expanded market for public policy opinion data, and explores the potential role of that market in facilitating panoptic regimes of both private and state surveillance. Whereas information about public policy opinion used to be highly reductive, expensive to collect, and restricted to a limited number of powerful political actors, today it is much less expensive, highly nuanced, and widely available. Pollsters now also have the ability to extrapolate political information from our commercial and noncommercial activities. We investigate the work of two organizations, a public policy polling firm named Grapevine Polling, and an advocacy consulting firm named United Campaigns. We find that both the increased sophistication of these firms' methods and the reduced cost of increasingly personalized data together have the potential to undermine the very public sphere that digital media were hoped to reinvigorate. Moreover, overlapping state and private demand for the products of such pollsters reflects the extent to which politics and the marketplace are increasingly intertwined and inseparable under the current articulation of democracy in the US.

Monitoring occupational exposure to ethylene oxide by the determination of hemoglobin adducts.

In a study on workers in a chemical plant where ethylene oxide (EtO) is manufactured and partly used for ethylene glycol production, exposure to EtO was monitored during annual periodic health assessments in January 1988, December 1988, and March 1990 by the determination of the level of 2-hydroxyethylvaline (HOEtVal) in hemoglobin. The HOEtVal levels in workers corresponded with the potential EtO exposures. The highest level was found in December 1988, in blood samples collected 1-2 months after a shut-down, maintenance, and start-up program. The range of adduct levels found in the three examinations indicated that average EtO exposures during the 4 months preceding blood sampling were below 0.5 ppm. It was demonstrated that the method allows for the accurate monitoring of low levels of EtO exposure and provides personalized time-integrated exposure data with great discriminative power. In addition, the method may serve to identify unexpected personal exposures, which may lead to targeted exposure control measures.

Sports injury registration: the Fysion Blesreg system.

Fysion Blesreg is a new system on which sports assistants (trainers, masseurs, physiotherapists and physicians) can rely for quick and straightforward registration and retrieval of personalized injury data. Registration of injury data can provide a clear picture of the injury mechanism, which in turn can lead to effective preventive measures and a decline in sports injuries. The two components of the Fysion Blesreg system are registration forms and computer software. Registration forms are filled out when the competition starts (zero form), and when injuries occur (team cards and players' cards). Data are collected for the individual (zero form), the sports activity (team card), and the cause, nature and treatment of the injury (player's card). All data are entered into the computer with an MS-DOS based computer program, and can in various ways be reported or graphically reproduced.

A New System for Follow‐Up Patients with Permanent Pacemakers

The use of a new computerized system for coordinating technical and clinical data and especially for filing the parameters found during out-patient checkups enables us to rationally carry out follow-up of approximately 900 patients with pacemakers in our electrostimulation laboratory without wasting time or data. The system is composed of a personal Olivetti M240 computer, with a 20 Bbyte and 640 Kram hard disk, an analog-digital interface and a personalized data base for coordinating and filing the parameters found. The type of pacemaker implanted (monocameral, dual chamber or rate responsive) is of no consequence to the system that is based on the acquisition of the surface electrocardiogram. A comparison of the filed data on printouts or graphs allows us to note every type of misfunction or anomaly in the stimulation system in real time.