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Publications

Publications by Carlos Ferreira

2017

Acute Kidney Injury Detection: An Alarm System to Improve Early Treatment

Authors
Nogueira, AR; Ferreira, CA; Gama, J;

Publication
Foundations of Intelligent Systems - 23rd International Symposium, ISMIS 2017, Warsaw, Poland, June 26-29, 2017, Proceedings

Abstract
This work aims to help in the correct and early diagnosis of the acute kidney injury, through the application of data mining techniques. The main goal is to be implemented in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) as an alarm system, to assist health professionals in the diagnosis of this disease. These techniques will predict the future state of the patients, based on his current medical state and the type of ICU. Through the comparison of three different approaches (Markov Chain Model, Markov Chain Model ICU Specialists and Random Forest), we came to the conclusion that the best method is the Markov Chain Model ICU Specialists. © Springer International Publishing AG 2017.

2018

Agribusiness Intelligence: Grape Production Forecast Using Data Mining Techniques

Authors
de Oliveira, RC; Moreira, JM; Ferreira, CA;

Publication
Trends and Advances in Information Systems and Technologies - Volume 3 [WorldCIST'18, Naples, Italy, March 27-29, 2018].

Abstract
The agribusiness volatility is related to the uncertainty of the environment, rising demand, falling prices and new technologies. However, generation of agriculture data has increased over past years and can be used for a growing number of applications of data mining techniques in agriculture. The multidisciplinary approach of integrating computer science with agriculture will support the necessary decisions to be taken in order to mitigate risks and maximize profits. The present study analyzes different methods of regression applied in the study case of grapes production forecast. The selected methods were multivariate linear regression, regression trees, lasso and random forest. Their performance were compared against the predictions obtained by the company through the mean squared error and the coefficient of variation. The four regression methods used obtained better predictive results than the method used by the company with statistical significance < 0.5%. © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018.

2018

Improving acute kidney injury detection with conditional probabilities

Authors
Nogueira, AR; Ferreira, CA; Gama, J;

Publication
INTELLIGENT DATA ANALYSIS

Abstract
The Acute Kidney Injury (AKI), is a disease that affects the kidneys and is characterized by the rapid deterioration of these organs, usually associated with a pre-existing critical illness. Being an acute disease, time is a key element in the prevention. By anticipating a patient's state transition, we are preventing future complications in his health, such as the development of a chronic disease or loss of an organ, in addition to decreasing the amount of money spent on the patient's care. The main goal of this paper is to address the problem of correctly predicting the illness path in various patients by studying different methodologies to predict this disease and propose new distinct approaches based on this idea of improving the performance of the classification. Through the comparison of five different approaches (Markov Chain Model ICU Specialists, Markov Chain Model Features, Markov Chain Model Conditional Features, Markov Chain Model and Random Forest), we came to the conclusion that the application of conditional probabilities to this problem produces a more accurate prediction, based on common inputs.

2018

Artificial Neural Networks Classification of Patients with Parkinsonism based on Gait

Authors
Fernandes, C; Fonseca, L; Ferreira, F; Gago, M; Costa, L; Sousa, N; Ferreira, C; Gama, J; Erlhagen, W; Bicho, E;

Publication
PROCEEDINGS 2018 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON BIOINFORMATICS AND BIOMEDICINE (BIBM)

Abstract
Differential diagnosis between Idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD) and Vascular Parkinsonism (VaP) is a difficult task, especially early in the disease. There is growing evidence to support the use of gait assessment in diagnosis and management of movement disorder diseases. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of some machine learning strategies in distinguishing IPD and VaP gait. Wearable sensors positioned on both feet were used to acquire the gait data from 15 IPD, 15 VaP, and 15 healthy subjects. A comparative classification analysis was performed by applying two supervised machine learning algorithms: Multiple Layer Perceptrons (MLPs) and Deep Belief Networks (DBNs). The decisional space was composed of the gait variables, with or without neuropsychological evaluation (Montreal cognitive assessment (MoCA) score), top-ranked in an error incremental analysis. In the classification task of characterizing parkinsonian gait by distinguishing between patients (IPD+VaP) and healthy control, from the all strides classification of the gait performed by the person, high accuracy (93% with or without MoCA) was obtained for both algorithms. In the classification task of the two groups of patients (VaP vs. IPD), DBN classifier achieved higher performance (73% with MoCA). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study on gait classification that includes a VaP group. DBN classifiers are not frequently applied in literature to similar studies, but the results here obtained demonstrate that the use of DBN classifiers based on gait analysis is promising to be a good support to the neurologist in distinguishing VaP and IPD.

2019

Classifying Heart Sounds Using Images of Motifs, MFCC and Temporal Features

Authors
Nogueira, DM; Ferreira, CA; Gomes, EF; Jorge, AM;

Publication
JOURNAL OF MEDICAL SYSTEMS

Abstract
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the world, and its early detection is a key to improving long-term health outcomes. The auscultation of the heart is still an important method in the medical process because it is very simple and cheap. To detect possible heart anomalies at an early stage, an automatic method enabling cardiac health low-cost screening for the general population would be highly valuable. By analyzing the phonocardiogram signals, it is possible to perform cardiac diagnosis and find possible anomalies at an early-term. Therefore, the development of intelligent and automated analysis tools of the phonocardiogram is very relevant. In this work, we use simultaneously collected electrocardiograms and phonocardiograms from the Physionet Challenge database with the main objective of determining whether a phonocardiogram corresponds to a normal or abnormal physiological state. Our main contribution is the methodological combination of time domain features and frequency domain features of phonocardiogram signals to improve cardiac disease automatic classification. This novel approach is developed using both features. First, the phonocardiogram signals are segmented with an algorithm based on a logistic regression hidden semi-Markov model, which uses electrocardiogram signals as a reference. Then, two groups of features from the time and frequency domain are extracted from the phonocardiogram segments. One group is based on motifs and the other on Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients. After that, we combine these features into a two-dimensional time-frequency heat map representation. Lastly, a binary classifier is applied to both groups of features to learn a model that discriminates between normal and abnormal phonocardiogram signals. In the experiments, three classification algorithms are used: Support Vector Machines, Convolutional Neural Network, and Random Forest. The best results are achieved when both time and Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients features are considered using a Support Vector Machines with a radial kernel.

2019

Gait stride-to-stride variability and foot clearance pattern analysis in Idiopathic Parkinson's Disease and Vascular Parkinsonism

Authors
Ferreira, F; Gago, MF; Bicho, E; Carvalho, C; Mollaei, N; Rodrigues, L; Sousa, N; Rodrigues, PP; Ferreira, C; Gama, J;

Publication
JOURNAL OF BIOMECHANICS

Abstract
The literature on gait analysis in Vascular Parkinsonism (VaP), addressing issues such as variability, foot clearance patterns, and the effect of levodopa, is scarce. This study investigates whether spatiotemporal, foot clearance and stride-to-stride variability analysis can discriminate VaP, and responsiveness to levodopa. Fifteen healthy subjects, 15 Idiopathic Parkinson's Disease (IPD) patients and 15 VaP patients, were assessed in two phases: before (Off-state), and one hour after (On-state) the acute administration of a suprathreshold (1.5 times the usual) levodopa dose. Participants were asked to walk a 30-meter continuous course at a self-selected walking speed while wearing foot-worn inertial sensors. For each gait variable, mean, coefficient of variation (CV), and standard deviations SDI and SD2 obtained by Poincare analysis were calculated. General linear models (GLMs) were used to identify group differences. Patients were subject to neuropsychological evaluation (MoCA test) and Brain MRI. VaP patients presented lower mean stride velocity, stride length, lift-off and strike angle, and height of maximum toe (later swing) (p < .05), and higher %gait cycle in double support, with only the latter unresponsive to levodopa. VaP patients also presented higher CV, significantly reduced after levodopa. Yet, all VaP versus IPD differences lost significance when accounting for mean stride length as a covariate. In conclusion, VaP patients presented a unique gait with reduced degrees of foot clearance, probably correlated to vascular lesioning in dopaminergic/non-dopaminergic cortical and subcortical non-dopaminergic networks, still amenable to benefit from levodopa. The dependency of gait and foot clearance and variability deficits from stride length deserves future clarification.

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