Quality Assurance Applications Research Articles

Innovations into industrial technology programmes of Nigerian Universities for effective application of mobile communication technologies and quality assurance of graduates

<p>The study innovated the industrial technology programmes of Nigerian universities for effective application of mobile<br />communication technologies and quality assurance of graduates. Five research questions guided the study while three null<br />hypotheses formulated were tested at .05 level of significance. The study made use of descriptive survey design and was<br />carried out in Enugu State, Nigeria. The participants for the study were 120 comprising of 67 lecturers of<br />electrical/electronic technology and 53 technologists of industrial technical education. A 97-item questionnaire was used as<br />instrument for data collection. One hundred and eighteen copies of the questionnaire were retrieved. The data collected were<br />analyzed using mean, factor analysis, standard deviation and improvement need index (INI) to answer the four research<br />questions while analysis of variance was employed to test the hypotheses at .05 level of significance. Results revealed that<br />33 innovations for inclusion into programme of electrical/electronic technology. Furthermore, the results of the study<br />revealed that teachers need improvement in implementing the innovated contents of electrical/electronic technology aspect<br />of industrial technical education programme. Hence, there is need to package the findings of the study into training<br />programme and use it for building the capacity of teachers of electrical/electronic technology in Nigerian universities.</p>

Calibration transfer between modelled and commercial pharmaceutical tablet for API quantification using backscattering NIR, Raman and transmission Raman spectroscopy (TRS)

Backscattering NIR, Raman (BSR) and transmission Raman spectroscopy (TRS) coupled with chemometrics have shown to be rapid and non-invasive tools for the quantification of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) content in tablets. However, the developed models are generally specifically related to the measurement conditions and sample characteristics. In this study, a number of calibration transfer methods, including DS, PDS, DWPDS, GLSW and SST, were evaluated for the spectra correction between modelled tablets produced in the laboratory and commercial samples. Results showed that the NIR and BSR spectra of commercial tablet corrected by DWPDS and PDS, respectively, enabled accurate API predictions with the high ratio of prediction error to deviation (RPDP) values of 2.33 and 3.03. The most successfully approach was achieved with DS corrected TRS data and SiPLS modelling (161 variables) and yielded RMSEP of 0.72 %, R2P of 0.946 and RPDP of 4.35. The proposed calibration transfer strategy offers the opportunities to analyse samples produced in different conditions; in the future, its implication will find extensively process control and quality assurance applications and benefit all possible users in the entire pharmaceutical industry.

Cognitive Service Virtualisation: A New Machine Learning-Based Virtualisation to Generate Numeric Values.

Continuous delivery has gained increased popularity in industry as a development approach to develop, test, and deploy enhancements to software components in short development cycles. In order for continuous delivery to be effectively adopted, the services that a component depends upon must be readily available to software engineers in order to systematically apply quality assurance techniques. However, this may not always be possible as (i) these requisite services may have limited access and (ii) defects that are introduced in a component under development may cause ripple effects in real deployment environments. Service virtualisation (SV) has been introduced as an approach to address these challenges, but existing approaches to SV still fall short of delivering the required accuracy and/or ease-of-use to virtualise services for adoption in continuous delivery. In this work, we propose a novel machine learning based approach to predict numeric fields in virtualised responses, extending existing research that has provided a way to produce values for categorical fields. The SV approach introduced here uses machine learning techniques to derive values of numeric fields that are based on a variable number of pertinent historic messages. Our empirical evaluation demonstrates that the Cognitive SV approach can produce responses with the appropriate fields and accurately predict values of numeric fields across three data sets, some of them based on stateful protocols.

Integration of AI and Machine Learning in Radiotherapy QA.

The use of machine learning and other sophisticated models to aid in prediction and decision making has become widely popular across a breadth of disciplines. Within the greater diagnostic radiology, radiation oncology, and medical physics communities promising work is being performed in tissue classification and cancer staging, outcome prediction, automated segmentation, treatment planning, and quality assurance as well as other areas. In this article, machine learning approaches are explored, highlighting specific applications in machine and patient-specific quality assurance (QA). Machine learning can analyze multiple elements of a delivery system on its performance over time including the multileaf collimator (MLC), imaging system, mechanical and dosimetric parameters. Virtual Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT) QA can predict passing rates using different measurement techniques, different treatment planning systems, and different treatment delivery machines across multiple institutions. Prediction of QA passing rates and other metrics can have profound implications on the current IMRT process. Here we cover general concepts of machine learning in dosimetry and various methods used in virtual IMRT QA, as well as their clinical applications.

Ireland’s pre‐1940 daily rainfall records

AbstractThis article presents daily rainfall data and metadata for Ireland transcribed from historical manuscript and printed copies of rainfall registers located in Met Éireann's archives. To facilitate the transcription of rainfall observations from paper records, the historical manuscripts were scanned and integrated into Met Éireann's digital archives. The transcription from digital image to data format was undertaken in collaboration with students at Maynooth University as part of a novel crowdsourcing initiative to integrate data rescue activities into the classroom. In total, 3,616 station years of rainfall data (~1.32 million daily values) were transcribed. The data, which was double keyed, have undergone basic quality assurance to check for transcription errors and the resultant raw data and associated metadata are presented here. Ongoing work involves the application of further quality assurance and homogenization techniques to develop a long‐term, quality assured daily rainfall network for Ireland.

Situating Artificial Intelligence in Surgery: A Focus on Disease Severity.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has numerous applications in surgical quality assurance. We assessed AI accuracy in evaluating the critical view of safety (CVS) and intraoperative events during laparoscopic cholecystectomy. We hypothesized that AI accuracy and intraoperative events are associated with disease severity. One thousand fifty-one laparoscopic cholecystectomy videos were annotated by AI for disease severity (Parkland Scale), CVS achievement (Strasberg Criteria), and intraoperative events. Surgeons performed focused video review on procedures with ≥1 intraoperative events (n = 335). AI versus surgeon annotation of CVS components and intraoperative events were compared. For all cases (n = 1051), intraoperative-event association with CVS achievement and severity was examined using ordinal logistic regression. Using AI annotation, surgeons reviewed 50 videos/hr. CVS was achieved in ≤10% of cases. Hepatocystic triangle and cystic plate visualization was achieved more often in low-severity cases (P < 0.03). AI-surgeon agreement for all CVS components exceeded 75%, with higher agreement in high-severity cases (P < 0.03). Surgeons agreed with 99% of AI-annotated intraoperative events. AI-annotated intraoperative events were associated with both disease severity and number of CVS components not achieved. Intraoperative events occurred more frequently in high-severity versus low-severity cases (0.98 vs 0.40 events/case, P < 0.001). AI annotation allows for efficient video review and is a promising quality assurance tool. Disease severity may limit its use and surgeon oversight is still required, especially in complex cases. Continued refinement may improve AI applicability and allow for automated assessment.

A review of issues of quality assurance and quality accreditation for higher education institutions and the situation in Vietnam

Currently, quality assurance and quality accreditation are very important tasks and are the top concern for higher education institutions. This is because universities can achieve their goals to meet the needs of learners, the community, and society in their educational and training quality to enhance the position of the university through quality assurance activities. Standards of quality assurance and quality accreditation are the best measurement system for the level of quality of education services. Quality assurance can help detect limited issues to adjust and overcome before implementation. The application of quality assurance and quality accreditation is the secret behind the success of most higher education institutions around the world; therefore, quality assurance and quality accreditation are the concern of universities in Vietnam in general and local universities in particular, especially universities in the most disadvantaged regions of Vietnam. This study discusses some of the theoretical issues of quality assurance and quality accreditation; identifies the relationship of quality assurance and quality accreditation with the objectives, quality level, and application of higher education in Vietnam; and at the same time provides some recommendations to help increase the application of quality assurance and quality accreditation in higher education institutions in Vietnam.

Obstacles and success factors for the implementing of quality assurance system Case study - Department of Architecture, University of Al-Nahrain

Education and Higher Education in particular, are the most important millstones of knowledge economy and community; as Higher Education Institutions essentially contribute to maximize the knowledge capacity of society in research, use, and application through exercising their roles of (teaching) knowledge dissemination, scientific researches (knowledge production) and community service (Application of knowledge). However, the success of these institutions, to prepare qualified human capital for production, to develop creative capabilities for it, and to raise the level of its qualification to meet the needs of society, mainly depends on the success of applying the quality assurance system to its academic institutions. This research seeks to present and discuss concepts and ideas related to the concept of higher education’s quality assurance system, which is a recent introduction in the literature of higher education; to also explore the most important impediments of applying quality assurance system in higher education institutions, specifically in the Department of Architecture - Al-Nahrain University, in addition to diagnosing certain factors that make the application of this system successful. By adopting the opinions of the faculty members of that department, the research came out with a set of impediments, of them (...). In its conclusions, the research also contains a number of factors that serve the success of applying the quality assurance system in the department.

Application of Product Quality Assurance in Manufacture, Case Study in Mechanical Engineering Department, Sriwijaya University

Product Quality Assurance (PQA) is a standard procedure to ensure product quality in practical manufacturing engineering. In this study, the PQA-procedure will be applied for academic assurance in the Mechanical Engineering Department, Sriwijaya University. The objective of this study is to generate web-based Academic Quality Assurance (AQA) in the Department, which accomplices with the National Accreditation Agency for Higher Education (BAN-PT). The development of web-based AQA was carried out using an open- source PHP, MySQL, CSS, and REST API to ensure web integration with the existing website of Sriwijaya University. The results show that this application can overcome the current problems when the Academic Quality Assurance was conducted manually. The AQA web can work smoothly.

Exploiting the optical reflectance behaviour of carbon fibre composites for low-cost inspection and orientations analysis

This work focusses on understanding and exploiting the optical reflectance behaviour of carbon fibre reinforced polymer composites for the non-destructive determination of fibre orientation and surface defects. By taking a series of images under different lighting conditions, fibre reflections have been isolated and MATLAB image analysis has been used to calculate the fibre orientations across the surface of the composite. An average peak method has been developed and validated against manual orientation measurements for two different applications: a machined scarf repair surface and a discontinuous fibre composite. The same experimental method and analysis code showed good results for both cases without modification, when at least 16 images with different directional lighting conditions are used. Hence, this low-cost approach can be applied to a diverse range of quality assurance and research applications where fibre orientations or other surface details need to be characterised.

Use of Amorphous Silicon (ASi) Electronic Portal Imaging Devices for Other applications for Linear Accelerator Quality Assurance

The success of radiation therapy depends critically on the accuracy of patient alignment in treatment position day after day. Electronic portal imaging devices (EPIDs) are widely used to monitor patient position during daily radiotherapy sessions. To verify other applications for medical linear accelerator quality assurance (linac QA), images of a 10×10 cm² and 18×18 cm² open field were acquired. The EPID was positioned at a fixed detector distance of 150 cm. The wedge profile and wedge factors with high level of accuracy were demonstrated. The profiles acquired using EPID deviated in shape and magnitude by up to 16% from the ion chamber profiles. The use of EPID for linac QA could be simplified by improving the available software analysis tools, thus making it more efficient. The study showed that the EPID aSi500 has the potential to be used as a relative dosimeter, making it a very simple and efficient tool for daily QA. All EPID measurements were performed using the linear accelerator model Varian DMX. The physical characteristics measured in this work suggest that the SLIC-EPID can be an efficient tool for daily QA.

Stroke aftercare : Treatment reality, challenges and future perspectives

Registry data demonstrate ahigh risk of recurrent stroke and rehospitalization rates after first-time stroke in Germany compared to the international level. Meanwhile, areport of the Institute for Applied Quality Assurance in the Healthcare System (aQua institute) pointed out the potential for improvement of post-stroke care in Germany. To establish perspectives for improvement of outpatient post-stroke care in Germany. Critical discussion of important aspects of post-stroke care, presentation of the current structures of healthcare provision and possibilities for improvement of post-stroke care. Post-stroke care in Germany is predominantly carried out by general practitioners. Currently, standard healthcare procedures do not provide acomprehensive supportive system of structured and cross-sectoral aftercare after ischemic stroke. Special attention must be paid to the treatment of cardiovascular risk factors according to the guidelines, a specific and rapid provision of assist devices and physiotherapy as well as prevention and treatment of stroke-associated complications. Previous investigations have revealed sometimes clear deficits in the provision of treatment. The reasons include but are not limited to sectoral barriers that are difficult to overcome. New concepts of post-stroke care for improvement of these deficits are currently undergoing clinical testing. Ischemic stroke should be considered as acomplex chronic disease and should be treated accordingly after discharge from acute inpatient treatment. Emphasis should be placed on the optimization of interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral cooperation and support for general practitioners in the outpatient post-stroke care. New concepts of post-stroke care have the potential for improvement of the current healthcare structures.

Radiological, dosimetric and mechanical properties of a deformable breast phantom for radiation therapy and surgical applications

The displacement of tumor bed walls during oncoplastic breast surgery (OBS) decreases the accuracy of using surgical clips as the sole surrogate for tumor bed location. This highlights the need for better communication of OBS techniques to radiation oncologists. To facilitate OBS practice and investigate clip placement reliability, a realistic silicone-based breast phantom was constructed with components emulating a breast parenchyma, epidermis, areola, nipple, chest wall, and a tumor. OBS was performed on the phantom and surgical clips were placed to mark the tumor bed. The phantom was imaged with CT, MRI, and ultrasound (US). The parenchyma’s signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and clips to parenchyma’s contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) were measured. The phantom’s CT Hounsfield Unit (HU), relative electron density (RED), and mass density were determined. 6 and 10 MV photon beam attenuation measurements were performed in phantom material. The Young’s Modulus and ultimate tensile strength (UTS) of the phantom parenchyma and epidermis were measured. Results showed that the breast phantom components were visible on all imaging modalities with adequate SNR and CNR. The phantom’s HU is 130 ± 10. The RED is 0.983. Its mass density is 1.01 ± 0.01 g cm−3. Photon attenuation measurements in phantom material were within 1% of those in water. The Young’s Moduli were 13.4 ± 4.2 kPa (mechanical) and 30.2 ± 4.1 kPa (US elastography) for the phantom parenchyma. The UTS’ were 0.05 ± 0.01 MPa (parenchyma) and 0.23 ± 0.12 MPa (epidermis). We conclude that the phantom’s imaging characteristics resemble a fibroglandular breast’s and allow clear visualization of high-density markers used in radiation therapy. The phantom material is suitable for dose measurements in MV photon beams. Mechanical results confirmed the phantom’s similarity to breast tissue. The phantom enables investigation of surgical clip displacements pre- and post-OBS, and is useful for radiation therapy quality assurance applications.

Accuracy Analysis of Alignment Methods based on Reference Features for Robot-Based Optical Inspection Systems

In recent years, optical 3D sensors have reached a high level of accuracy suitable for many applications involved in the geometric quality assurance in modern production sites. In order to circumvent the tradeoff between the size of the field of view and the accuracy, a fusion of multiple point clouds is often performed by means of data-driven registration algorithms, such as the well-known ICP. These methods require a coarse alignment of point clouds, which also influences the accuracy and robustness of the actual 3D matching process. In the context of robot-based inspection systems, additional reference features are often applied. The references are well detectable and provide key points. This gives rise to the question of whether or not better initial alignments are obtainable from the measurement data, in contrast to the alignment obtained by the robot kinematic. Therefore, we investigated the accuracy of calculated transformations for translational and rotational modifications based on measured data. The results indicate that for mainly translational relative transformations high accuracies are obtainable. An improvement of the coarse alignment for subsequent fine registration processes promises a contribution towards having more accurate and robust alignments of point clouds, and therefore benefits geometric quality assurance applications in manufacturing industries.

Patient safety smartphone application for quality Assurance in primary healthcare facilities

Patient safety smartphone application for quality Assurance in primary healthcare facilities

Foreword from Handling Editor – 6th Edition

We are delighted to present the 6th edition of AJCE, published in December 2019. We have selected eight of the best articles for this edition, consisted of five Research Articles, one Review Article, and two Case-Based Articles. These articles presented the valuable and interesting information with the broad ranges covering three sub-themes, i.e. education (parenting, urban community housing, assessment training, revolution 4.0-related teaching method, climate change), Economy (entrepreneurship capacity building), and Health (smartphone application for quality assurance).

Assessing Guidelines for Quality Assurance and Clinical Application of Metal Artifact Reduction (O-MAR) Software in Radiation Therapy

Assessing Guidelines for Quality Assurance and Clinical Application of Metal Artifact Reduction (O-MAR) Software in Radiation Therapy

Strategi Pengembangan Agribisnis Peternakan Sapi Perah Di Kabupaten Kediri

Dairy Cattle Raising livestock in Kediri as a dairy farm development areas in East Java is still a small-scale businesses. The level of production, the level of consumption, the origin of milk protein needs can not be fulfilled optimally, although natural resources support. Therefore, a dairy farm in Kediri is still possible to develop the necessary strategy and development of effective and efficient. &#x0D; The purpose of this study, among others, is to establish the region as an area representative dairy farm agribusiness development, establish appropriate strategies for the development of agribusiness dairy farm as well as to arrange alternative agribusiness development strategy dairy farm in Kediri. Research using primary and secondary data types. Primary data collection techniques for interviews, direct interviews and questionnaires with respondents specialists/experts and entrepreneurs (dairy farmers). Analytical techniques used include the analysis of LQ (Location quation), AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) and SWOT analysis.&#x0D; LQ analysis results showed the District of Ngancar adequate as agribusiness development area dairy farm with a second buffer area in District Kandangan. The appropriate strategy is growth stability (stability of growth) through horizontal integration strategy for improved economies of scale. Alternative strategies for the development of agribusiness dairy farm are: 1). S-O Strategies (Strength-Opportunity) which is to increase the number of dairy cow population through the conclusion of joint venture or partner with another party patterns, expand markets, improve production facilities and technology, optimize land and increase the types of dairy products; 2). Strategy W-O (Weakness- Opportunity) that creates unity and container farmer groups, improve product processing, making the central areas of quality dairy cows, the increase in feed processing and increase sales promotion; 3). Strategy S-T (Strength-Treath) that increased adoption of technological innovation, empowerment of farm credit by farmers, community empowerment in the dairy cattle business, enhance the competitiveness of milk products and the application of quality assurance and food safety at pengohahan livestock products; 4). Strategy W-T (Weakness -Treaths), namely recruitment, upgrading and development of the role of technical facilitator breeding and selecting distribution channels marketing of primary products fresh milk dairy cows. To improve the effectiveness of the strategy has been formulated needed prioritized intervention to these strategies is a priority. In addition, institutional management for the development of agribusiness dairy farm systems need to be identified and carefully engineered so that the strategy adopted to encourage the achievement of the goal of developing agribusiness dairy farm in Kediri.

2D reader for dose mapping in radiotherapy using radiophotoluminescent films

A 2D radiophotoluminescence (RPL) acquisition system was developed in the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK•CEN) for advanced 2D dosimetry, which is particularly important during quality assurance (QA) in external beam radiotherapy. The system is characterized by testing its various dosimetric properties using Al2O3:C,Mg films.In this study, we characterize the system according to its stability, repeatability, readout speed and spatial resolution. Furthermore, the dose response for the Al2O3:C,Mg films was verified as well as its feasibility to visualize clinical beam profiles (6 MV photons) compared to the treatment planning system (TPS) and to profiles obtained with Gafchromic films (EBT3) and BaFBr films (Optically stimulated luminescence, OSL).The average RPL counts (2 × 2 cm2 readout area) showed a repeatability of 3.3% (0 Gy), 2.7% (1 Gy) and 0.4% (60 Gy), for 10 measurements. When verifying variation in individual pixel counts within the readout area, this variation is 5.0% (0 Gy), 4.2% (1 Gy) and 2.2% (60 Gy). The dose response study showed a linear behavior in the most prominent range for RT (1–10 Gy) above which a supralinear behavior is observed between 10 and 70 Gy followed by a sublinear behavior. The system has sub-millimeter spatial resolution of (0.86 ± 0.10) mm. Finally, the Al2O3:C,Mg films are able to visualize clinical beam profiles with a good agreement (within 1%) of the films compared to EBT3 and TPS.The 2D RPL system presented in this work is a stable reader with good reproducibility that requires few corrections related to the image reconstruction with potentials for the future application in QA during radiotherapy.

An easily reproducible, hand-held, single-sided, MRI sensor.

Single-sided MRI sensors allow the imaging of samples that are larger than the magnet. Thus, they enable truly portable imagers with potential applications in medicine, quality assurance (QA), agriculture, material science, and other fields. However, despite recent advancements, single-sided MRI systems are relatively uncommon. This is partially due to the limited number of commercial products. Also, current implementations often require large and/or complex magnet arrays which require machining techniques such as milling or drilling. These techniques must be performed to tight tolerances to ensure accuracy of the B0 field. Furthermore, these systems generally have hand-wound RF or gradient coils that are not trivial to construct. The main goals of this work are to reduce the size of single-sided MRI sensors while simultaneously making them more accessible for others to build. To this end, we present a hand-held, single-sided, MRI sensor that is constructed using an easy-to-assemble magnet array, a 3D-printed housing, and printed circuit boards (PCBs) that contain the RF coil, gradient coils, and matching network. By implementing all coils directly on PCBs, the geometry can be easily optimized and then manufactured at low cost. Both spin density-weighted and T1-weighted images of various samples are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed sensor.