Sharif Digital Repository

Detection and classification of ventricular complexes from the ECG is of considerable importance in Holter and critical care patient monitoring, being essential for the timely diagnosis of dangerous heart conditions. Accurate detection of premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) is particularly important in relation to life-threatening arrhythmias. In this paper, we introduce a model-based dynamic algorithm for tracking the ECG characteristic waveforms using an extended Kalman filter. The algorithm can work on single or multiple leads. A "polargram"--a polar representation of the signal--is introduced, which is constructed using the Bayesian estimations of the state variables. The polargram... 

In this paper, we describe a Gaussian wave-based state space to model the temporal dynamics of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. It is shown that this model may be effectively used for generating synthetic ECGs as well as separate characteristic waves (CWs) such as the atrial and ventricular complexes. The model uses separate state variables for each CW, i.e. P, QRS and T, and hence is capable of generating individual synthetic CWs as well as realistic ECG signals. The model is therefore useful for generating arrhythmias. Simulations of sinus bradycardia, sinus tachycardia, ventricular flutter, atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia are presented. In addition, discrete versions of... 

In this paper, a nonlinear Bayesian filtering framework is proposed for the filtering of single channel noisy electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings. The necessary dynamic models of the ECG are based on a modified nonlinear dynamic model, previously suggested for the generation of a highly realistic synthetic ECG. A modified version of this model is used in several Bayesian filters, including the Extended Kalman Filter, Extended Kalman Smoother, and Unscented Kalman Filter. An automatic parameter selection method is also introduced, to facilitate the adaptation of the model parameters to a vast variety of ECGs. This approach is evaluated on several normal ECGs, by artificially adding white and... 

The classification of sleep stages plays a crucial role in understanding and diagnosing sleep pathophysiology. Sleep stage scoring relies heavily on visual inspection by an expert, which is a time-consuming and subjective procedure. Recently, deep learning neural network approaches have been leveraged to develop a generalized automated sleep staging and account for shifts in distributions that may be caused by inherent inter/intra-subject variability, heterogeneity across datasets, and different recording environments. However, these networks (mostly) ignore the connections among brain regions and disregard modeling the connections between temporally adjacent sleep epochs. To address these... 

Manual inspection of Electroencephalography (EEG) signals to detect epileptic seizures is time-consuming and prone to inter-rater variability. Moreover, EEG signals are contaminated with different noise sources, e.g., patient movement during seizures, making the accurate identification of seizure activities challenging. In a Multi-View seizure detection system, since seizures do not uniformly affect the brain, some views likely play a more significant role in detecting seizures and should therefore be assigned a higher weight in the concatenation step. To address this dynamic weight assignment issue and also create a more interpretable model, in this work, we propose a fusion attentive deep... 

We present generalizations of our previously published artificial models for generating multi-channel ECG so that the simulation of abnormal rhythms is possible. Using a three-dimensional vectorcardiogram (VCG) formulation, we generate the normal cardiac dipole for a patient using a sum of Gaussian kernels, fitted to real VCG recordings. Abnormal beats are then specified either as new dipoles, or as perturbations of the existing dipole. Switching between normal and abnormal beat types is achieved using a hidden Markov model (HMM). Probability transitions can be learned from real data or modeled by coupling to heart rate and sympathovagal balance. Natural morphology changes form beat-to-beat... 

The present article pertains to the assessment of thermoelastic damping (TED) in rectangular nanoplates by incorporation of size effect within the constitutive and heat conduction relations. With the purpose of establishing size-dependent coupled thermoelastic equations, nonlocal elasticity theory and dual-phase-lag heat conduction model are utilized. By considering time-harmonic vibrations, nonclassical frequency equation affected by thermoelastic coupling is derived. By solving this equation and extracting the real and imaginary parts of damped natural frequency via some mathematical operations, an explicit expression for description of TED in circular nanoplates is obtained. With the goal... 

This paper deals with the mixed convective heat transfer of nanofluids through a concentric vertical annulus. Because of the non-adherence of the fluid-solid interface in the presence of nanoparticle migrations, known as slip condition, the Navier's slip boundary condition was considered at the pipe walls. The employed model for nanofluid includes the modified two-component four-equation non-homogeneous equilibrium model that fully accounts for the effects of nanoparticles volume fraction distribution. Assuming the fully developed flow and heat transfer, the basic partial differential equations including continuity, momentum, and energy equations have been reduced to two-point ordinary... 

Residual stresses, created in a steel beam by elastic-plastic bending, are predicted using an approximate analysis and the finite element method. The predictions are compared to experimental measurements obtained from the application of incremental centre hole drilling, deep hole drilling and neutron diffraction methods. Finite element simulations of the incremental centre hole drilling and deep hole drilling methods applied to the predicted residual stresses permitted an assessment of their ability to reconstruct the stresses. An analytical reconstruction analysis using an Airy stress function together with boundary and equilibrium conditions is developed and applied to the predictions and... 

This paper presents a hybrid QR decomposition (QRD) design that reduces the number of computations and increases their execution parallelism by using a unique combination of Multi-dimensional Givens rotations, Householder transformations and conventional 2-D Givens rotations. A semi-pipelined semi-iterative architecture is presented for the QRD core, that uses innovative design ideas to develop 2-D, Householder 3-D and 4-D/2-D configurable CORDIC processors, such that they can perform the maximum possible number of vectoring and rotation operations within the given number of cycles, while minimizing gate count and maximizing the resource utilization. Test results for the 0.3 mm 2 QRD chip,... 

Many classes of applications require Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees from the system interconnect. In Networks-on-Chip (NoC) QoS guarantees usually translate into bandwidth and latency constraints for the traffic flows and require hardware support in the NoC fabric and its interfaces. In this article we present a novel NoC synthesis framework to automatically build networks that meet hard latency constraints of end-to-end traffic streams without requiring specialized hardware for the network components. The hard latency constraints are met by carefully designing the NoC topology and selecting the appropriate routes for flow using lean best-effort network components. We perform... 

Histidine rich protein II derived peptide (HRP II 169-182) was investigated by molecular dynamics, MD, simulation and 17O electric field gradient, EFG, tensor calculations. MD simulation was performed in water at 300 K with α-helix initial structure. It was found that peptide loses its initial α-helix structure rapidly and is converted to random coil and bent secondary structures. To understand how peptide structure affects EFG tensors, initial structure and final conformations resulting from MD simulations were used to calculate 17O EFG tensors of backbone carbonyl oxygens. Calculations were performed using B3LYP method and 6-31 + G* basis set. Calculated 17O EFG tensors were used to... 

There are different well-established strategies for making a process plant inherently safer. The benefits of applying these strategies on reducing the overall risk inside a plant are obvious. However, some of these changes are rejected many times because they appear to be too costly. But if the effects of applying inherently safer design strategies are investigated not only on the processing costs of a plant but also on the potential accident costs, the decision would in fact be different. In this paper an optimization procedure is proposed which integrates both processing and accident costs for different design schemes. In this procedure, some of the design variables are chosen with regard... 

In this study, a well-known Computational Fluid Dynamics software, so-called Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), has been used to simulate multiple ethanol pool fire scenarios. Influences and reciprocal impacts in terms of dynamics and growth of the pool fires have been investigated. Heat release rates temperature and flame shapes have been monitored as the main outputs of the simulations. Based on the simulation results, it can be concluded that the amounts of mass burning rate, the radiation energy and the pool fire flame height were significantly higher in multiple pool fires, when compared with the theoretical values obtained by the mere summation of single pool fires. Furthermore, the... 

There are different well-established strategies for making a process plant inherently safer. The benefits of applying these strategies on reducing the overall risk inside a plant are obvious. However, some of these changes are rejected many times because they appear to be too costly. But if the effects of applying inherently safer design strategies are investigated not only on the processing costs of a plant but also on the potential accident costs, the decision would in fact be different. In this paper an optimization procedure is proposed which integrates both processing and accident costs for different design schemes. In this procedure, some of the design variables are chosen with regard... 

In this paper, a new method based on Fuzzy theory is presented to estimate the occurrence possibility of vapor cloud explosion (VCE) of flammable materials. This new method helps the analyst to overcome some uncertainties associated with estimating VCE possibility with the Event Tree (ET) technique. In this multi-variable model, the physical properties of the released material and the characteristics of the surrounding environment are used as the parameters specifying the occurrence possibility of intermediate events leading to a VCE. Factors such as area classification, degree of congestion of a plant and release rate are notably affecting the output results. Moreover, the proposed method... 

An analytical method for reconstructing residual stresses within axisymmetric cylinders is presented. The method uses the stress equilibrium and boundary conditions together with an Airy stress function that satisfies these conditions. The method allows the reconstruction of residual stresses from limited measurements. The analysis is also coupled to a least squares approximation and a regularization analysis to provide stability of the inverse problem. The application of the method is demonstrated for four cases; two correspond to analytical solutions for residual stresses created during autofrettage and two sets of experimental results for through wall measurements of residual stresses. In... 

Cemented coarse-grained alluvium is present in a vast area of Tehran city. Iran including its suburbs. This deposit consists of gravely sand to sandy gravel with some cobbles and is dominantly cemented by carbonaceous materials. In order to understand the mechanical behaviour of this soil, a series of triaxial compression tests were performed on uncemented, artificially cemented and destructured samples. Hydrated lime was used as the cementation agent for sample preparation to model the Tehran deposit. The tests were performed on cemented samples after an appropriate time for curing. The tests on cemented samples show that a shear zone appears as the shear stress approaches the peak shear... 

Seismic vehicle-bridge interaction (SVBI) is the study of vehicle-bridge interaction (VBI) in the presence of earthquake excitation. SVBI is an interdisciplinary problem of increasing importance to the design and safety of railways. This study deploys a consistent methodology to decouple the vehicle-bridge system and solve independently the bridge and vehicle subsystems, bypassing multiple challenges the seismic response analysis of a coupled vehicle-bridge system entails. The proposed approach builds upon the previously established Extended Modified Bridge System (EMBS) method for decoupling vehicle-bridge systems (in the absence of earthquake excitation). Its premise is to first... 

Theoretical calculations of structural parameters, 57Fe, 14N and 17O electric field gradient (EFG) tensors for full size-hemin group have been carried out using density functional theory. These calculations are intended to shed light on the difference between the geometry parameters, nuclear quadrupole coupling constants (QCC), and asymmetry parameters (ηQ) found in three spin states of hemin; doublet, quartet and sextet. The optimization results reveal a significant change for propionic groups and porphyrin plane in different spin states. It is found that all principal components of EFG tensor at the iron site are sensitive to electronic and geometry structures. A relationship between the...