Psychologists face challenges on a daily basis. Among the challenges they face are making diagnostic decisions. Recently, bipolar disorder has shown an increase in diagnosis in children and adolescents. Once felt to be an adult disorder, journals are describing the use of the diagnosis with children and adolescents. While the diagnosis has been considered as relevant, no psychological measures have been developed to make an accurate diagnosis. Developing a new psychological measure for bipolar disorder in children is critical. Due to the lack of data on what constitutes normal behavior as well as the absence of an accurate measurement of early-onset bipolar disorder, it is necessary to develop such a measure. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a newly developed measure based on the literature on bipolar disorder in children. The measure was developed through a review of the current literature, DSMIV-TR criteria for bipolar disorder, and ideas developed within a bipolar disorder research team at Texas A&M University. Because of the item content, the new measure is entitled the Mania Assessment Scale for Children (MASC). The first steps in understanding a new measure for early-onset bipolar disorder is to determine the factor structure of the scale as well as the reliability and validity. Results indicated that the MASC is best understood as a measure with a single score, or factor. Once the underlying structure of the MASC was determined, the study evaluated which behaviors of typically developing children may be misconstrued as indicative of bipolar disorder. Group differences on the measure are also evaluated. Results from statistical analysis showed that there were significant group differences between age groups, but not gender and ethnic groups. In addition, there was a statistically significant difference between clinical and non-clinical groups. To conclude, a discussion of the findings and recommendations for future research is presented. Overall, it is hoped that the study will help psychologists better understand the complexity of behaviors associated with the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in children and adolescents.

National Health Insurance (NHI) is more than 13 years in Taiwan. The NHI paid medical fees to service providers on the basis of "fee-for-service" in the beginning. However, the cases numbers were increased by health providers for erned more money. Besides, it was very difficult to review the cases. The health capital expenditure was increased gradually. The Bureau of National Health Insurance took a serial measures to finance control, such as ¡§case-payment¡¨, ¡§self-management¡¨, ¡§hospital excellence program¡¨ and ¡§global budget reimubursement system¡¨. But the medical needs elevate due to the life quality and life expectancy increased, unbalance of payments is very serious¡COur government began to investigate the excellent ¡§diagnosis related group payment system¡¨ which carried out in America and other OECD countries for many years. The prospective payment system made medical costs more easily control. Though Taiwan diagnosis related groups was finished and was revised to the third edition on the basis of experts consensus during many times of discussion, the exacted time of execution is delayed again and again. Mainly in Taiwan medical league doubted and blocked the new measure. Moreover, people worried about would become medical garbage because health institute refused critical patient owing to DRG fixed payment or few percentage additional charges, especially in medical centers. It might decrease the examination items and compromised the patient rights and quality of medical care. Eeverytimes when NHI implemented new measure to control medical capital expenditure, it resulted in some degree damage to medical institute in fact. This study analysed the regional hospital income and the difference of implementation DRG by major diagnosis categories and sections in 2006 and 2007 with BCG model. The hospital begame to promote DRG payment system in 2007, compared to 2006, may simulate the difference after implementation of DRG. We also compared the medical performance and medical care quality of 2007 to 2006 to simulate the difference after implementation of DRG. The thesis reviewed the results of execution DRG in others countries and summarized some experts and scholars advisement abut the impaction of DRG carried out in Taiwan. At last, we interviewed to the department directors about the opinions and suggestions of DRG in-depth and addressed the responsive strategies and balanced scorcard implementation¡C DRG payment system was proved as an excellent measure by others countries. It could control the medical cost effectively and did not compromise medical care quality. There are several measures, including ¡§global budget reimubursement system¡¨, ¡§case- payment¡¨ and ¡§fee-for-outcome¡¨in Taiwan. Is the result of DRG implementation in Taiwan diffierent to other DRG countaries¡HOur conclusions are implementation DRG may not damage to hospital finance and medical care quality may decrease a little in the first time. For checking on medical care quality critically, it is necessary for hospitals and Bureau of NHI to set up peer review organization

The core of diagnosis in Chinese Medicine is ¡§pattern identification/syndrome differentiation and treatment¡¨ with inspection, listening and smelling examination, inquiry, and palpation as the bases. Tongue diagnosis tops the four diagnoses and hence is crucial to the inspection diagnosis in Chinese Medicine. Clinically, doctors mostly rely on their own knowledge and experience when determining major lesions of a patient by observing the coloration, overall modalities, and volume of salivary on different parts of the tongue. As a result, the diagnosis tends to be limited by knowledge, experience, train of thought, and diagnostic techniques.The subjective determination is likely to be affected by the doctor¡¦s color sensitivity and interpretation.Different doctors may come to drastically different judgments on the same tongue presentation with little overlap. Therefore, it is important to develop scientific methods that can help doctors diagnose based on standardized differentiation procedures and render reliable diagnoses in order to enhance the clinical application value of Chinese Medicine.The computerized automatic capture of characteristics shown on the images of the surface and the back of the tongue comprises breakup of the tongue image and capture of the tongue characteristics.The original tongue images first go through HSI color space conversion, detection of the control points inside and outside the surface of the tongue, curve smoothness modification and active contour model to capture images of the tongue. After that, the tongue shape, tongue fur, tongue body, and body fluid are captured from the breakup image of the tongue.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--York University, 2008. Graduate Programme in Education. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-103). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:MR38776

The goal of this thesis is to study the potential of optical spectroscopy as a clinical diagnostic tool for melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancer. Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the United States. Like most cancers, early diagnosis and treatment improves patient prognosis for both melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancer. However, current “gold standard” for diagnosis is invasive, costly and time-consuming. A diagnostic procedure consists of a clinical examination of the suspicious lesion, followed by biopsy and histopathology, with an additional turnaround time of approximately one week. There is a need for an accurate, objective, noninvasive, and faster method to aid physician in diagnosing cancerous lesions, increasing diagnosis accuracy while preventing unnecessary biopsies. We propose Spectral Diagnosis, a system capable of noninvasive in vivo spectroscopic examination of human skin. The research objectives are: (1) Probe pressure effects on in vivo spectroscopy measurements of human skin, (2) Clinical trial of Spectral Diagnosis, (3) Design, construction, and characterization of a confocal Raman microspectroscope. Spectral Diagnosis utilizes an optical fiber probe that transmits and collects optical spectra in contact with the suspected lesion. We identified short term and light probe pressure effects to be minimal on diagnostic parameters, and should not negatively influence diagnostic performance. We conducted a clinical trial at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and our results show that principal components from three spectroscopy modalities (diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, laser induced fluorescence spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy) provide excellent melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancer diagnosis. We also constructed and characterized a Raman microspectroscope, with the goal of developing a physiological-based fitting model to better understand the analysis of in vivo Raman spectroscopy data from human skin tissue. / text

published_or_final_version / Microbiology / Master / Master of Medical Sciences

published_or_final_version / Medical Sciences / Master / Master of Medical Sciences

published_or_final_version / Nursing Studies / Master / Master of Nursing in Advanced Practice

published_or_final_version / Medical Sciences / Master / Master of Medical Sciences

published_or_final_version / Medicine / Master / Master of Medical Sciences