Romance Languages and Literatures electronic theses and dissertations (MU)The electronic theses and dissertations of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.https://hdl.handle.net/10355/53162024-03-29T09:07:03Z2024-03-29T09:07:03ZAdvances in medical infrared thermographyAl-Sadr, Hasanainhttps://hdl.handle.net/10355/916442024-01-30T21:47:26Z2022-01-01T00:00:00ZAdvances in medical infrared thermography
Al-Sadr, Hasanain
The association between illness and body temperature dates back to the beginnings of medicine. Over the last few years, infrared thermography has attracted increased attention in various medical applications due to technological advancements that reduce manufacturing costs and enable high-resolution cameras with great sensitivity. The recent 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic revealed that disease transmission control is crucial in preventing an outbreak. Thermography has been considered the gold standard for screening fevered individuals during pandemics since the 2003 SARS outbreak. With the increasing demands for objective and quantitative diagnostic tools in primary health care, thermography offers advantages over conventional approaches as a low-cost, non-invasive, radiation-free, and pain-free method for detecting changes in skin temperature with high spatial accuracy. Several topics are investigated in this dissertation to address the use of infrared imaging as a quantitative tool in medical applications. Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is a common circulatory problem that affects 202 million patients globally and more than 20 percent of people over 70. The ankle-brachial index (ABI) measurement has been considered the most reliable diagnostic test for PAD. However, some limitations exist where ABI may give false normal values above 1.4 for patients with diabetes or chronic kidney disease with rigid and non-compressible arterial vessel walls. Additionally, ABI must be performed in a vascular laboratory by trained vascular staff to ensure the accuracy of the measurements. During the physical examination, one of the PAD signs is the reduction in the patient's feet and legs' skin temperature, which offers the potential of using infrared thermography in diagnosing PAD. Thus, we conducted a study based on 12 patients recruited by vascular surgeons at the University of Missouri Hospital outpatient clinic. These patients were diagnosed with PAD and scheduled for intervention after clinical evaluation. We developed a framework based on Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) with LOSO cross-validation to correlate the thermal features with the corresponding ABI. Additionally, we proposed a classification model based on the weighted K-Nearest neighbors (WKNN) algorithm to assess the severity of PAD based on infrared thermography. The regression results demonstrate a strong association between the thermal features and the ABI values. The proposed WKNN classification model shows thermography's capabilities in assessing the severity of PAD with high accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity. Since PAD patients are more likely to develop wounds and ulcers in the foot region than in the leg, we conducted another study with 10 PAD patients where the foot and ankle region was selected as the targeted ROI. Using SVM regression with LOSO cross-validation and Bayesian optimization, the proposed also shows a strong correlation between the ABI and the extracted thermal features. These studies demonstrate the potential for thermography to be used as a non-invasive supplementary screening tool for PAD. Endovascular treatments, such as peripheral angioplasty and conventional bypass surgery, have been extensively adopted to treat PAD. Despite promising initial results with surgical interventions, long-term durability leads to more surgeries and an increased risk of amputation, disability, and mortality. Following surgical treatments, the current standard of care is a clinic-based surveillance program consisting of office visits every 3 to 6 months during the patient's lifetime. Surgical intervention failures occur in up to 49 percent of patients after two years. However, any failure that is recognized early can be treated effectively with elective surgery, which significantly minimizes the risk of amputation. Therefore, we proposed a novel home-based, patient-operated early warning system to detect declining perfusion following surgical interventions. The study group consists of 10 PAD patients recruited by vascular surgeons at the University of Missouri Hospital outpatient clinic. We proposed a novel PAD Temperature Index Score (PTI) based on the FCM algorithm to interpret changes in lower limb temperature distribution patterns. The proposed PTI index shows stable and repeatable results in recognizing the impact of the revascularization procedure across different scenarios. Additionally, we examine the potential of deep learning-based thermal image analysis in determining the severity of PAD for our in-home surveillance system. ABI is utilized as ground truth in categorizing PAD severity into three classes (severe, moderate, and mild/normal). Based on 10-fold cross-validation, the model achieved high accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and precision. As a result, the proposed framework provides frequent surveillance that can result in earlier failure detection, lower the risk of amputation, and improve survival in PAD patients. Detecting abnormal body temperature patterns can help predict sepsis before any other symptoms of infection. As a result, we propose using thermography as a non-invasive tool to measure body temperature patterns and detect abnormalities. We hypothesize that sepsis onset will lead to abnormal body temperature patterns, which can be detected by calculating the temperature difference (ETD) between the core and the body extremities. We use "cold stress" induced by cold water immersion (CWI) as a proxy for sepsis. Toward this goal, we proposed a fully automated methodology for calculating core vs. extremity ETD based on the frontal and lateral view of the face. We developed a framework based on FCM clustering for inner and outer ear localization for the frontal view of the face. While for lateral view, we implement an efficient approach for tracking the tip of the nose and the inner corner of the eyes by using a mixture of Viola-Jones, KLT, and superpixel algorithms. The results produce specific core versus body extremities temperature patterns that can be used to simulate body response to sepsis. Additionally, we proposed a deep learning classification procedure for sepsis detection. The study is based on 140 patients being evaluated for sepsis at the University of Missouri Emergency Department. The result demonstrates the viability of infrared imaging with deep learning models for future use in the emergency department setting to detect sepsis. As a result, these studies highlight the potential of using infrared thermography as a suitable screening approach in different medical applications.
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZAl-Tahtawi's translations of French works : a precursor to Nahda's and literary modernity in the Arab worldAl-Awawdeh, Nabilhttps://hdl.handle.net/10355/676412022-09-28T16:54:00Z2018-01-01T00:00:00ZAl-Tahtawi's translations of French works : a precursor to Nahda's and literary modernity in the Arab world
Al-Awawdeh, Nabil
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] "This thesis showed that the Nahda project, despite its partial failure because it did end with the end of the century due to the new circumstances and new intellectual movements, did change the Egyptian society in particular and Arab society in general. The issues encountered by the intellectuals during their path to Nahda provided a variety of danger that might still be obstacles in front of Arabs to progress and advance and catch up to the other nations and they have to deal with it differently." --Page 185.
2018-01-01T00:00:00ZAlbert Camus en la obra Carlos Martinez Rivas y Charles BukowskiMedina-Rodriguez, Eduardohttps://hdl.handle.net/10355/940802024-01-30T21:47:30Z2022-01-01T00:00:00ZAlbert Camus en la obra Carlos Martinez Rivas y Charles Bukowski
Medina-Rodriguez, Eduardo
This dissertation aims to shed light on the works of Carlos Martinez Rivas y Charles Bukowski from the perspective of a comparative analysis of their poetic production; the ethics and aesthetics of these authors inserted in the time they lived which comprehend their most important works: post Second World War mid-20th Century. The focus of this analysis centers in the critique posture they assumed faced with the collapse of human values that spawned the global psychological crisis consequence of the IIWW recently ended. I put forward the idea that in Martinez Rivas and Bukowski's poetics be identified an affiliation with Albert Camus' critique of modernity which is intrinsically related to his theory of the absurd: an existential crisis derived from the absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world. His critique of modernity depicts the anguish that rested in humanity's collective conscious awakening after the outbreak of First and Second War World, marked by the disillusion of living in a rational and safe world. Life seemed to lack of any meaning, and this precipitated a profound sense of disenchantment in thinkers altering the zeitgeist and the orientation of an entire intellectual milieu who superseded the illusion of meaning for the notion of the absurd.
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZArauco domado de Lope de Vega: etica y esteticaTaub, Maria Quirozhttps://hdl.handle.net/10355/144582022-09-29T20:34:16Z2011-01-01T00:00:00ZArauco domado de Lope de Vega: etica y estetica
Taub, Maria Quiroz
Este estudio sobre Arauco domado de Lope de Vega revela las distintas concepciones del hombre americano durante la época de la conquista americana. Una de estas posiciones recurre a la autoridad de Aristóteles para proponer que el indio es esclavo natural. A pesar de que el título insinúa acuerdo con esta postura, la obra, con arte, niega que los indios sean esclavos naturales y afirma que comparten la naturaleza humana con los españoles, sus conquistadores. Además, también al igual que los españoles, cuentan con una organización política y social. Por ello, la obra propone que los indios están sometidos a la ley natural pues poseen libre albedrío como cualquier ser humano. La defensa de la ley natural se basa en argumentos propuestos por Santo Tomás y defendidos por Francisco de Vitoria y Bartolomé de Las Casas. Aunque la mayoría de la opinión crítica interpreta la obra de Lope como lo que Maravall llama “instrumento político” para defender la monarquía absoluta, en su Arauco domado nuestro autor dramatiza el comportamiento indefensible, hasta anticristiano de sus compatriotas conquistadores, entre ellos el padre de su mismo patrón. La amputación de las manos de Galvarino, el infanticidio de Fresia y el empalamiento de Caupolicán otorgan grandeza épica tanto a los indígenas como a la obra entera. En definitiva, esta obra de Lope presenta una defensa inquebrantable de la libertad de los indios y, así, de la ley natural.
Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on May 31, 2012).; The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.; Dissertation advisor: Dr. Charles Presberg; Vita.; Includes bibliographical references.; Dissertations, Academic -- University of Missouri--Columbia -- Romance languages.; Ph. D. University of Missouri--Columbia 2011.; "December 2011"
2011-01-01T00:00:00Z