Browsing by Subject "pulmonary function"

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    Co-effects of Transportation Means and Air Quality on Neurological, Pulmonary, and Cardiovascular Function
    (2021-04-15) Ong, Gui Xian; Zhang, Yang; Wang, Huaping
    The guidelines on outdoor activities in the presence of air pollution vary. We aim to find out the effects of walking and air pollution among young adults. We conducted a randomized, 3-session cross-over trial, with 28 healthy Duke Kunshan University (DKU) students. Between October 2020 and February 2021 on days with varying air quality levels, students walked or took the bus from DKU to Scholars Hotel in Kunshan, China. Indicators of neurological function (reaction speed, visual memory, verbal memory, and numerical memory), pulmonary function (PEF, FEV1 , FVC, and FEV1 / FVC), and cardiovascular function (systolic pressure, diastolic pressure, and heart rate) were tested before and after the interventions. The paired t-test findings revealed that walking was beneficial for pulmonary function, with an average PEF increase of 40.29 ± 84.87 L/min (p<0.05). On the other hand, air pollution decreased diastolic pressure by an average of -3.85 ± 5.30 mmHg (p<0.05) and numerical memory by an average of -2.27 ± 2.37 points (p<0.01). The regressions results showed that air pollution was associated with statistically significant decreases in cognitive and pulmonary function. An increase in PM 2.5 (1 µg/m3 ) was associated with decreased numerical memory (-2.32 points; p<0.05) and a unit increase in AQI was correlated with decreased FEV 1 (-6.71 L; p<0.05). On the co-effects of walking and air pollution, our evidence was inconclusive. Walking outdoors during air polluted days may negatively affect pulmonary functions and neurological functions, while its effect on cardiovascular functions is not clear. Being cautious, individuals may refrain from exercising in air polluted environments to avoid potential negative health impacts. Nonetheless, we are unable to make strong inferences towards such behavioral recommendations due to the limited effect size.
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    ItemOpen Access
    Development of a Voxel-Based RadiomicsCalculation Platform for Medical Image Analysis
    (2020) Yang, Zhenyu

    Purpose: To develop a novel voxel-based radiomics extraction technique, and to investigate the potential association between spatially-encoded radiomics features of the lungs and pulmonary function.

    Methods: We developed a voxel-based radiomics feature extraction platform to generate radiomics filtered images. Specifically, for each voxel in the image, 62 radiomics features were calculated in a rotationally-invariant 3D neighbourhood to capture spatially-encoded information. In general, such an approach results in an image tensor object, i.e., each voxel in the original image is represented by a 62-dimensional radiomics feature vector. Two digital phantoms are then designed to validate the technique's ability to quantify regional image information. To test the technique as a potential pulmonary biomarker, we generated radiomics filtered images for 25 lung CT image and are subsequently evaluated against corresponding Galligas PET images, as the ground truth for pulmonary function, using voxel-wise Spearman correlation (r). The Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA)-based feature fusion method is also implemented to enhance such a correlation. Finally, the Spearman distributions were compared with 37 individual CT ventilation image (CTVI) algorithms to assess the overall performance relative to conventional CT-based techniques.

    Results: Several radiomics filtered images were identified to be correlated with Galligas PET lung imaging. The most robust association was found to be the Run Length Encoding feature, Run-Length Non-uniformity (0.21

    Conclusions: This preliminary study indicates that spatially-encoded lung texture and lung density are potentially associated with pulmonary function as measured via Galligas PET ventilation images. Collectively, low density, heterogeneous coarse lung texture was often associated with lower Galligas radiotracer amounts.