Improved adjusted minimal important change took reliability of transition ratings into account

Objectives: The anchor-based minimal important change (MIC), based on the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis or predictive modeling, is biased by the proportion of improved patients. The adjusted MIC, published in 2017, adjusts the predictive MIC for this bias but does not take the reliability of the transition ratings (i.e., the...

The anchor-based minimal important change, based on receiver operating characteristic analysis or predictive modeling, may need to be adjusted for the proportion of improved patients

Objectives. Patients have their individual minimal important changes (iMICs) as their personal benchmarks to determine whether a perceived health-related quality of life (HRQOL) change constitutes a (minimally) important change for them. We denote the mean iMIC in a group of patients as the “genuine MIC” (gMIC). The aims of this paper are to...

Integrated Optimization of Long-Range Underwater Signal Detection, Feature Extraction, and Classification for Nuclear Treaty Monitoring

We designed and jointly optimized an integrated signal processing chain for detection and classification of long-range passive-acoustic underwater signals recorded by the global geophysical monitoring network of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization. Starting at the level of raw waveform data, a processing chain of signal...

Predictive validity of the Hand Arm Risk assessment Method (HARM)

The Hand Arm Risk assessment Method (HARM) is a simplified risk assessment method for determining musculoskeletal symptoms to the arm, neck and/or shoulder posed by hand-arm tasks of the upper body. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the predictive validity of HARM using data collected from a three year prospective cohort Study on...

Region descriptors for automatic classification of small sea targets in infrared video

We evaluate the performance of different key-point detectors and region descriptors when used for automatic classification of small sea targets in infrared video. In our earlier research performed on this subject as well as in other literature, many different region descriptors have been proposed. However, it is unclear which methods are most...

Compressive sensing for high resolution radar imaging

In this paper we present some preliminary results on the application of Compressive Sensing (CS) to high resolution radar imaging. CS is a recently developed theory which allows reconstruction of sparse signals with a number of measurements much lower than what is required by the Shannon sampling theorem. This method has already found its way in...

The dependence of fusion gain on signal amplitude distributions and position errors

This paper considers statistical detection theory for a system of two geographically distributed sensors. The performance of the two main fusion rules (OR and AND) is evaluated in the absence and presence of position errors in the observations, by means of receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curves. The analysis is restricted to three...

Predicting the duration of sickness absence for patients with common mental disorders in occupational health care

Objectives: This study attempted to determine the factors that best predict the duration of absence from work among employees with common mental disorders. Methods: A cohort of 188 employees, of whom 102 were teachers, on sick leave with common mental disorders was followed for 1 year. Only information potentially available to the occupational...

Joint IRCTR/TNO-DS&S measurement campaign for AP-mine detection with VIR GPR

The results of the measurement campaign held during the autumn of 2004 in a sand pit located at the TNO-DS&S (formerly known as TNO Physics and Electronics Laboratory (FEL)) GPR test facility "Waalsdorp" in The Hague, The Netherlands, are presented. Some contamination of the sand in the pit with small scatterers (e.g. sea shells) comparable in...