Monthly Archives: August 2011

Computer-Assisted Diagnosis is a bit strange

In that we are taking techniques which were developed to accommodate our human desire to deal with problems by looking at them, then trying to train computers, which have no innate sense of vision and which could be using any type of sensor imaginable, to understand visual data designed for human use.

…Just a thought.

If my diagnostic company succeeds, I do plan to pursue research into new non-visual sensing technology which is more appropriate for computerized detection. The future of diagnostics is digital.

Cold season actually begins in August

Anecdotal, but this is something I’ve seen for years. As an added piece of totally non-rigorous evidence (especially because including Australia throws all of my northern hemisphere seasonal biases off), Google seems to agree:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22runny+nose%22+%22sore+throat%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2010&sort=0

Diaphragm FES for ALS

Though restoring control of every muscle in the body to patients with ALS is far too invasive for current technology to suffice, electrodes on the motor strip and pons, connected to receivers in the lungs and diaphragm seem like they would suffice to prevent further deaths from the disease. And perhaps even tracheotomies.

Is there some reason I’m missing that this wouldn’t work? Because if I can’t find one, I may very well partner with a neurologist and pursue it. I certainly have the neuroinformatics and signal processing backgrounds; I know that this scope and granularity of FES is currently well within the range of what is technologically possible.