Thesis (doctoral)--Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, 1982. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, 1982. / Extra t.p. with thesis statement inserted. Includes bibliographical references.

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Published Article / The issue of Generic Skills has received considerable attention over the past few years as universities, in their response to calls for accountability, need to articulate and demonstrate the achievement of these (Barrie, 2005: 1). In recent years, employers and their representatives consistently demand that their employees must possess a range of personal and intellectual attributes. These include attributes beyond those traditionally made explicit in programmes of study in higher education institutions (Harvey, 2000:7). Universities describe these graduate qualities differently, resulting in a variety of terms used to target the same attribute (Barrie, 2006:218). This diversity of descriptions prompts questions as to the extent to what stakeholders in the Radiography programme understand by the term generic graduate skills. One of the major goals was to explore what the stakeholders involved in academic and work-based learning as well as radiography students identified as generic graduate skills radiography students must obtain during their studies to prepare them adequately for the world of work. Findings from this study agreed on the importance of higher education to be informed of expectations from employees in order to respond to the need of preparing students adequately for future job tasks and contributions to society. In addition to this. the study also identified the particular generic skills stakeholders regard essential for students entering the profession.

Dissertation submitted in partial compliance with the requirements for the Masters in Technology: Chiropractic, Durban University of Technology, 2010. / Aim: To determine a radiographic and clinical profile of adult subjects with scoliosis and to determine an association between selected radiographic and clinical parameters. Subjects: Sixty subjects between 18 and 45 years, with or without neck/back pain, previously diagnosed with scoliosis. Methodology: A case history and a physical examination of the subject which included an orthopedic assessment of the cervical, thoracic and lumbar spinal areas were conducted for all subjects. Selected clinical data viz. a case history, family history, level and location of pain if present, presence of leg length inequality, pelvic obliquity, shoulder height inequality and/or rib hump was recorded. A full spine A-P radiograph was taken for each subject in the weight-bearing position. Selected radiographic parameters viz. location of curve/s, side of convexity, degree of pedicle rotation, level of the apex vertebra and the Cobb angle of inclination were assessed and recorded. SPSS version 15.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, Illinois, USA) was used for data analysis. Results: The mean (± SD) age of the subjects was 26.8 (± 7.9) years. The majority of the subjects were females (63.3 %). A family history of scoliosis was reported by 14 subjects. Most of the subjects (73.3%) complained of pain of moderate severity at the time of presentation. The thoracic and lumbar regions were common areas of complaint in symptomatic subjects and they were most likely to experience pain at the level of the apex vertebra. Shoulder height inequality was observed in 96.7% of subjects, LLI in 91.7% of subjects, rib hump in 73.3% of subjects and pelvic obliquity in 86.7% of subjects. The majority of scoliotic curves were of idiopathic origin (96.7%). Thirty subjects presented with more than one curve. The mean (± SD) Cobb angle for the major curve was 21.3º (± 13.1º) while the mean (± SD) Cobb measurement for the minor curve was 16.7º (± 5.4º). The range for the major and minor curve was 11.5º - 97.0º and 10º- 37º respectively. Both the major and minor curve had the majority of curves located in the thoracic region. However, the apex vertebra was most likely to be found in the T7/T8 region for the major curve and L1/2 region for the minor curve. Pedicle rotation was Grade 1, Grade 0 or Grade 2 (in that order) for the major curves and Grade 0, Grade1 and Grade 2 for the minor iv curves. There was no significant association between the gender of the patient and the severity of pain (p = 0.725), severity of the major curve (p = 0.545) or grade of pedicle rotation (p = 0.639). There was also no significant association between the ethnicity of the subjects and severity of the major curve (p = 0.088) or degree of pedicle rotation (p = 0.882). No significant association was found between location of the major curve and presence of pain (p = 0.565) or between the side of the curve and pain (p = 0.812). There was no correlation between the degree of pain and the degree of curve (r = 0.102). No significant association was found between LLI and degree of curvature (p = 0.470). A significant association between LLI and reported pain was found (p = 0.034). A significant association was observed between the presence of a rib hump and the degree of curvature (p = 0.049). A positive correlation was found between rib hump elevation and degree of curvature (r = 0.814). A positive correlation between rib hump elevation and degree of pedicle rotation was found (rho = 0.308). Conclusion: Idiopathic scoliosis is the most common form of scoliosis in young adults. Pain is a common clinical feature in adult scoliosis. The size of the curve does not influence the magnitude of the LLI, pelvic obliquity or shoulder height inequality, however since these clinical features are common findings in the scoliotic individual, it is suggested that these parameters be routinely evaluated for their diagnostic significance. The presence of shoulder height inequality, LLI, rib hump and pelvic obliquity are deemed to be good clinical signs of scoliosis. Even though LLI was not associated with the magnitude of the curve, it may be a significant contributor to the back pain as LLI was found to be the only clinical parameter to have a significant association with pain. Therefore clinicians should explore the treatment of LLI to alleviate pain associated with scoliosis. The presence of a rib hump is a good clinical indication of the presence of a scoliosis.

No description available.

Dissertation submitted in full compliance with the requirements for the Master's Degree in Technology: Radiography, Natal Technikon, 2001. / Radical radiotherapy is quite commonly used to treat localised prostate cancer. Acute and chronic toxicity to the bladder and rectum are dependant upon field arrangement, dose delivered to these organs and the volume of these organs that is within the target volume. A prospective study was conducted in order to determine whether the 3-field or the 4-field radiation treatment technique yields less severe bladder and rectal toxicity. METHODS AND MATERIALS Sixty patients with histologically confirmed stage B or C (Jewitt's staging system) prostate cancer, with or without radical prostatectomy were recruited from two private oncology institutions, 30 of whom were in group 1 (3-field technique) and 30 in group 2 (4-field technique). Pre-treatment and post-treatment prostatic specific antigen (PSA) levels were recorded in order to compare the effect of radiation on PSA. Both groups were treated in 2.00gy fractions per day to a dose of 60.00gy before the field arrangements were changed. This study therefore assessed the patients / M

Ph.D., Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, 1999

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand in fulfillment for the degree of Master of Medicine in the branch of Diagnostic Radiology / Chest radiography is the most commonly performed diagnostic X-ray examination. Optimised image quality is important, particularly in children with radio-sensitive immature organs.

A new method for the segmentation of 3D breast lesions in dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) images, using parallel programming with general purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPUs), is proposed. The method has two main parts: a pre-processing step and a segmentation algorithm. In the pre-processing step, DCE-MRI images are registered using an intensity-based rigid transformation algorithm based on gradient descent. After the registration, voxels that correspond to breast lesions are enhanced using the Naïve Bayes machine learning classifier. This classifier is trained to identify four different classes inside breast images: lesion, normal tissue, chest and background. Training is performed by manually selecting 150 voxels for each of the four classes from images in which breast lesions have been confirmed by an expert in the field. Thirteen attributes obtained from the kinetic curves of the selected voxels are later used to train the classifier. Finally, the classifier is used to increase the intensity values of voxels labeled as lesions and to decrease the intensities of all other voxels. The post-processed images are used for volume segmentation of the breast lesions using a level set method based on the active contours without edges (ACWE) algorithm. The segmentation algorithm is implemented in OpenCL for the GPGPUs to accelerate the original model by parallelizing two main steps of the segmentation process: the computation of the signed distance function (SDF) and the evolution of the segmented curve. The proposed framework uses OpenGL to display the segmented volume in real time, allowing the physician to obtain immediate feedback on the current segmentation progress. The proposed implementation of the SDF is compared with an optimal implementation developed in Matlab and achieves speedups of 25 and 12 for 2D and 3D images, respectively. Moreover, the OpenCL implementation of the segmentation algorithm is compared with an optimal implementation of the narrow-band ACWE algorithm. Peak speedups of 55 and 40 are obtained for 2D and 3D images, respectively. The segmentation algorithm has been developed as open source software, with different versions for 2D and 3D images, and can be used in different areas of medical imaging as well as in areas within computer vision, such like tracking, robotics and navigation. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Scientific Computing in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester 2015. / November 2, 2015. / GPU, Level Sets, OpenCL, OpenGL, Segmentation / Includes bibliographical references. / Anke Meyer-Baese, Professor Directing Dissertation; Mark Sussman, University Representative; Gordon Erlebacher, Committee Member; Dennis Slice, Committee Member; Xiaoqiang Wang, Committee Member.