Cette thèse a pour objectif l’étude de trois problèmes : l’estimation de cartes de saillance de l’énergie du bruit apériodique de la marche humaine par la perception de profondeur pour la détection de pathologies, les modèles de détection d’objets saillants en général et les modèles légers en particulier par l’opposition de couleurs. Comme première contribution, nous proposons un système basé sur une caméra de profondeur et un tapis roulant, qui analyse les parties du corps du patient ayant un mouvement irrégulier, en termes de périodicité, pendant la marche. Nous supposons que la marche d'un sujet sain présente n'importe où dans son corps, pendant les cycles de marche, un signal de profondeur avec un motif périodique sans bruit. La présence de bruit et son importance peuvent être utilisées pour signaler la présence et l'étendue de pathologies chez le sujet. Notre système estime, à partir de chaque séquence vidéo, une carte couleur de saillance montrant les zones de fortes irrégularités de marche, en termes de périodicité, appelées énergie de bruit apériodique, de chaque sujet. Notre système permet aussi de détecter automatiquement les cartes des individus sains et ceux malades. Nous présentons ensuite deux approches pour la détection d’objets saillants. Bien qu’ayant fait l’objet de plusieurs travaux de recherche, la détection d'objets saillants reste un défi. La plupart des modèles traitent la couleur et la texture séparément et les considèrent donc implicitement comme des caractéristiques indépendantes, à tort. Comme deuxième contribution, nous proposons une nouvelle stratégie, à travers un modèle simple, presque sans paramètres internes, générant une carte de saillance robuste pour une image naturelle. Cette stratégie consiste à intégrer la couleur dans les motifs de texture pour caractériser une micro-texture colorée, ceci grâce au motif ternaire local (LTP) (descripteur de texture simple mais puissant) appliqué aux paires de couleurs. La dissemblance entre chaque paire de micro-textures colorées est calculée en tenant compte de la non-linéarité des micro-textures colorées et en préservant leurs distances, donnant une carte de saillance intermédiaire pour chaque espace de couleur. La carte de saillance finale est leur combinaison pour avoir des cartes robustes. Le développement des réseaux de neurones profonds a récemment permis des performances élevées. Cependant, il reste un défi de développer des modèles de même performance pour des appareils avec des ressources limitées. Comme troisième contribution, nous proposons une nouvelle approche pour un modèle léger de réseau neuronal profond de détection d'objets saillants, inspiré par les processus de double opposition du cortex visuel primaire, qui lient inextricablement la couleur et la forme dans la perception humaine des couleurs. Notre modèle proposé, CoSOV1net, est entraîné à partir de zéro, sans utiliser de ``backbones'' de classification d'images ou d'autres tâches. Les expériences sur les ensembles de données les plus utilisés et les plus complexes pour la détection d'objets saillants montrent que CoSOV1Net atteint des performances compétitives avec des modèles de l’état-de-l’art, tout en étant un modèle léger de détection d'objets saillants et pouvant être adapté aux environnements mobiles et aux appareils à ressources limitées. / The purpose of this thesis is to study three problems: the estimation of saliency maps of the aperiodic noise energy of human gait using depth perception for pathology detection, and to study models for salient objects detection in general and lightweight models in particular by color opposition. As our first contribution, we propose a system based on a depth camera and a treadmill, which analyzes the parts of the patient's body with irregular movement, in terms of periodicity, during walking. We assume that a healthy subject gait presents anywhere in his (her) body, during gait cycles, a depth signal with a periodic pattern without noise. The presence of noise and its importance can be used to point out presence and extent of the subject’s pathologies. Our system estimates, from each video sequence, a saliency map showing the areas of strong gait irregularities, in terms of periodicity, called aperiodic noise energy, of each subject. Our system also makes it possible to automatically detect the saliency map of healthy and sick subjects. We then present two approaches for salient objects detection. Although having been the subject of many research works, salient objects detection remains a challenge. Most models treat color and texture separately and therefore implicitly consider them as independent feature, erroneously. As a second contribution, we propose a new strategy through a simple model, almost without internal parameters, generating a robust saliency map for a natural image. This strategy consists in integrating color in texture patterns to characterize a colored micro-texture thanks to the local ternary pattern (LTP) (simple but powerful texture descriptor) applied to the color pairs. The dissimilarity between each colored micro-textures pair is computed considering non-linearity from colored micro-textures and preserving their distances. This gives an intermediate saliency map for each color space. The final saliency map is their combination to have robust saliency map. The development of deep neural networks has recently enabled high performance. However, it remains a challenge to develop models of the same performance for devices with limited resources. As a third contribution, we propose a new approach for a lightweight salient objects detection deep neural network model, inspired by the double opponent process in the primary visual cortex, which inextricably links color and shape in human color perception. Our proposed model, namely CoSOV1net, is trained from scratch, without using any image classification backbones or other tasks. Experiments on the most used and challenging datasets for salient objects detection show that CoSOV1Net achieves competitive performance with state-of-the-art models, yet it is a lightweight detection model and it is a salient objects detection that can be adapted to mobile environments and resource-constrained devices.

Das Klinoskop ist die Firmenzeitschrift des Klinikums Chemnitz für Mitarbeiter, Patienten, Angehörige und für unsere Partner. Es erscheint in vier bis fünf Ausgaben pro Jahr in einem Umfang von 40 bis 92 Seiten im Vollfarbdruck. Unsere Firmenzeitschrift wurde seit 2006 von einer qualitativen Mitarbeiterinformation kontinuierlich zu einem relevanten Informationsmedium für unsere Partner wie niedergelassene Ärzte weiterentwickelt. Parallel soll das Klinoskop eine Publikation sein, mit der Patienten und Angehörige einen informativen Zugang zu Ihrem Klinkum Chemnitz erhalten. Damit möchten wir auch unseren Anspruch einer offenen Kommunikation unterlegen. (Erscheinen eingestellt) / The Klinoskop is the corporate magazine of the Klinikum Chemnitz for our staff, patients and their family members as well as for our cooperating partners. It is published in full colour, with four or five issues per year, and each issue contains between 40 and 92 pages. Since 2006, our corporate magazine has been continuously refined from a high-quality publication for our staff to the relevant information medium for our partners, in particular physicians in private practice. At the same time, the Klinoskop is intended to be a publication that provides patients and their relatives with more detailed information about their Hospital in Chemnitz. This also helps us to emphasize our intentions of fostering open communication.

Objectives: Information was collected to identify anxiety in dental patients visiting a dental clinic using the Dental Anxiety Scale, their level of psychological distress using the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 and identifying a correlation between these groups as well as the gender and age. Data description: This data contains a set of 1550 patients’ answers to questionnaires taken before dental treatment in a dental clinic. It is divided into male and female patients as well as according to their age. The level of Dental Anxiety can be interpreted by answers chosen in the Dental Anxiety Scale (DAS) and the level of psychological distress by answers chosen in the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18). This dataset should help to encourage more research in the field of dental anxiety and we hope to see more comparisons with our data in the future or in different regions of the world.

This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of adolescents living with vertically acquired HIV receiving treatment, care and support services at Dora Nginza Wellness clinic, in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Six adolescents living with vertically acquired HIV (four females and two males) between the ages of 16-17 years participated in in-depth semi-structured open-ended individual interviews. Tesch’s (1990) method of data analysis for qualitative research was used to analyse the interviews. Adolescents that participated in the study spoke widely about the outlook on their illness and their lives both in the past and present. They depicted fear, anxiety, pain and sadness in their lived experiences. They were anxious about their own death and had experienced illness and death of parents, siblings and close relatives due to HIV and AIDS. They described painful and traumatic life events related to their illness which included knowing their own HIV status and severe health problems and hospitalisations. They all learnt about their HIV status in early adolescence and choose not to disclose their status to people outside the family due to fear of rejection, stigma and discrimination. Taking ARVs was challenging to the participants due to side effects and strict medication schedules. Their school attendance and performance was affected by their illness. Family was an important resource of support. The participants had good experiences of HIV treatment at the Wellness clinic. The findings suggest that adolescents living with vertically acquired HIV faced a number of challenges in dealing with their disease and its treatment. They need intensive care and support services that enhance their positive self, facilitate self-disclosure and decrease and discourage stigma and discrimination at school and within their communities. / Health Studies / M.A. (Social Behavioural Studies in HIV/AIDS)

This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of adolescents living with vertically acquired HIV receiving treatment, care and support services at Dora Nginza Wellness clinic, in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Six adolescents living with vertically acquired HIV (four females and two males) between the ages of 16-17 years participated in in-depth semi-structured open-ended individual interviews. Tesch’s (1990) method of data analysis for qualitative research was used to analyse the interviews. Adolescents that participated in the study spoke widely about the outlook on their illness and their lives both in the past and present. They depicted fear, anxiety, pain and sadness in their lived experiences. They were anxious about their own death and had experienced illness and death of parents, siblings and close relatives due to HIV and AIDS. They described painful and traumatic life events related to their illness which included knowing their own HIV status and severe health problems and hospitalisations. They all learnt about their HIV status in early adolescence and choose not to disclose their status to people outside the family due to fear of rejection, stigma and discrimination. Taking ARVs was challenging to the participants due to side effects and strict medication schedules. Their school attendance and performance was affected by their illness. Family was an important resource of support. The participants had good experiences of HIV treatment at the Wellness clinic. The findings suggest that adolescents living with vertically acquired HIV faced a number of challenges in dealing with their disease and its treatment. They need intensive care and support services that enhance their positive self, facilitate self-disclosure and decrease and discourage stigma and discrimination at school and within their communities. / Health Studies / M.A. (Social Behavioural Studies in HIV/AIDS)

The researcher investigated the knowledge, attitudes and experiences of people living with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) towards antiretroviral treatment (ART) and who are accessing antiretroviral treatment at a public health clinic in Limpopo, South Africa. A qualitative method was used. The research findings revealed five themes: experiences, social support, knowledge, attitudes, unemployment and economic themes of the study. Factors reported influencing optimum adherence were the inability of the patients to take medication at work, laziness of the patients to collect medication, unemployment, economic hardship, poverty and lack of knowledge of employers regarding HIV/AIDS. / Health Studies / M.A. (Social Behaviour Studies in HIV and AIDS)

La prestation coordonnée de soins de santé primaires (SSP) a été éprouvée comme améliorant la qualité et l’accès des soins prodigués aux Canadiens. Plusieurs études ont notamment confirmé les avantages des infirmières praticiennes (IP) et des modèles interprofessionnels en SSP pour le système de santé. Les écrits suggèrent toutefois que l’intégration des IP en SSP est jalonnée de tensions et restructurations en raison d’une confusion supposée de leur rôle. À ce jour, les recherches ont principalement ciblé les barrières et facilitateurs de l’intégration du rôle des IP. Une analyse critique des dynamiques socioprofessionnelles et politiques de l’intégration des IP n’a toutefois pas encore été réalisée. Une ethnographie critique combinant la Théorie de l’acteur-réseau et les concepts foucaldiens de discours, savoir et pouvoir a permis l’examen des interactions sémiotiques caractérisant certains milieux de SSP. Différents modèles interprofessionnels de SSP (2 centres de santé communautaire, 2 équipes de santé familiale et 2 cliniques dirigées par les IP) ont été investis. Les données issues d’entrevues semi-dirigées avec des IP (n=23), d’observations directes de milieux et de rencontres interprofessionnelles, et d’analyse documentaire ont été soumises à une analyse thématique puis une analyse critique de discours. Les résultats montrent que la valeur morale des IP, les finalités organisationnelles des milieux de SSP, les normes de pratique, la collaboration interprofessionnelle et la prise en charge des patients disposent les IP à la négociation de leur rôle et à certains enjeux socioprofessionnels et politiques qui génèrent plusieurs contrecoups: pluralisme de leurs rôles professionnels, dissonance identitaire, sentiments d’incompétence et d’incertitude, glissements discursifs dans leurs propres discours, et divers états émotionnels et souffrances. Ces contrecoups commandent diverses stratégies d’adaptation et de résistance permettant aux IP de gérer ces tensions. Plusieurs entités non-humaines (inscription des clientèles, discours de soutien aux médecins et espaces physiques) émergent comme acteurs agissant sur l’intégration et la négociation du rôle des IP en SSP. Cette étude permet de décrire le processus de traduction du rôle de l’IP en SSP qui problématise certains discours tenus pour acquis en SSP. Elle permet également de proposer une nouvelle définition de l’intégration du rôle des IP en SSP.

Background Plasmodium falciparum malaria during pregnancy poses a substantial risk to mother and foetus. In recent years, convincing evidence has shown that preventive methods such as the use of insecticide treated bed nets (ITNs) and intermittent preventive treatment (IPT) in pregnancy with sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (IPTp-sp) can greatly reduce the adverse effects of malaria during pregnancy. Purpose The main purpose of the study was to assess the knowledge and use of Intermittent Preventive Treatment of Malaria among pregnant women receiving Antenatal Care at the primary health centers of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja Nigeria. Methods A quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted Structured questionnaires were administered to 300 pregnant women aged between 18 and 49 years. Data was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 22. Results The results revealed that most of the respondents had knowledge about IPT, majority of the respondents had received IPT drugs, in the clinic, but unfortunately none of them were supervised by a health worker during taking of the drug. Few of the respondents did not take the drugs at all for fear of complication, some of them did not know exactly how many tablets were given to them and there was poor adherence to the Directly Observed Therapy (DOT) scheme. Conclusion Knowledge of malaria and IPT was good and many pregnant women received the drugs and used it, but some of them had challenges and did not use the drugs. / Health Studies / M.P.H.

The subject of my diploma thesis are selected parts of the construction technology project of the psychiatric clinic of the University Hospital Brno based on the provided project documentation. It is an extension of a new six-storey building to the existing buildings. The thesis contains a technical report to the construction technology project, the coordination situation of the construction, the situation of wider transport routes, time and financial plan by objects, study of the realization of the main technological stages, a site equipment design, a design of a machine set, technological regulation for monolithic structures, quality control and testing plan of monolithic structures, noise study and selected documents for LEED certification.

Service provision in veterinary oncology in Ontario was examined using a mixed methods approach. First, an interview-based qualitative study explored the service expectations of oncology clients at a tertiary referral centre. Next, a survey-based quantitative study established an understanding of oncology service in primary care practice and investigated the treatment recommendations of practitioners for dogs diagnosed with cancer. The first study, which involved 30 individual and dyadic interviews, identified “uncertainty” (attributable to the unpredictable nature of cancer and its treatment) as an overarching psychological feature of clients’ experience. Consequently, “the communication of information” (both content and process) was the foremost service expectation. For clients, it enabled confidence in the service, the ability to make informed patient care decisions, and preparedness for the potential outcomes of those decisions; it also contributed to creating a humanistic environment, which enhanced client resiliency. Findings suggest that services can support client efforts to manage uncertainty through strategic design and delivery of service, and incorporate intentional communication strategies to support clients’ psychological fortitude in managing the cancer journey. The second study, a vignette-based survey of primary care practitioners across Ontario (N=1071) which investigated veterinarian decision-making in relation to oncology care, determined that 56% of practitioners recommended referral as their first choice of intervention, while 28% recommended palliative care, 13% in-clinic treatment, and 3% euthanasia. Recommendations were associated with patient, client and veterinarian factors. Specifically, referral and treatment were recommended for younger dogs, healthier dogs, and dogs with lymphoma versus osteosarcoma; for strongly bonded clients, and financially secure clients; and by veterinarians who graduated from a North American college, had experience with treating cancer, felt confident in the referral centre, and believed treatment was worthwhile, with variation in relation to practitioner gender and the type of medicine practiced. The human-animal bond appeared to be the primary factor associated with practitioners’ advocacy for quality of medical care for patients. Through a blend of qualitative and quantitative methodologies, this thesis contributes to the evidence upon which best practices may be built so as to enhance the quality of patient and client care in veterinary oncology. / Ontario Veterinary College Pet Trust Fund 049406 and 049854