Adam Pantanowitz

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Senior Lecturer at University of the Witwatersrand

Aim: The design and implementation of a wearable training device to improve cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is presented. Methods: The MYO contains both Electromyography (EMG) and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensors which are used to detect effective CPR, and the four common incorrect hand and arm positions viz. relaxed fingers; hands to...

In this study, magnetoencephalography (MEG) data were recorded as subjects carried out a basic numerical task: deciding whether a number is even or odd. Signal processing techniques were applied to the MEG data so as to characterise the spatial and temporal dynamics of the brain during the decision-making process. Event-related fields (ERFs) were f...

Models of urea kinetics facilitate a mechanistic understanding of urea transfer and provide a tool for optimizing dialysis efficacy. Dual-compartment models have largely replaced single-compartment models as they are able to accommodate the urea rebound on the cessation of dialysis. Modeling the kinetics of urea and other molecular species is frequ...

Blood pressure is an important vital sign that sometimes requires continuous measurement. The current methods include cuff measurements (manual auscultation and oscillometric techniques) for non-continuous measurement and invasive arterial cannulation for continuous measurement. The use of photoplethysmography as a cuffless, non-invasive, and conti...

Brain–computer interfaces are an emerging field of medical technology that enable users to control external digital devices via brain activity. Steady-state evoked potential is a type of electroencephalogram signal that is widely used for brain–computer interface applications. Collecting electroencephalogram data is an effort-intensive task that re...

This paper presents the design and construction of a cost-effective, portable sign language to speech translator. The system is designed to work with American Sign Language fingerspelling (which facilitates translation in any Latin alphabet-based language) and aims to translate a pangram into speech. The system consists of three subsystems, namely,...

Obesity is an important concern in public health, and Body Mass Index is one of the useful, common and convenient measures. However, Body Mass Index requires access to accurate scales and a stadiometer for measurements, and could be made more convenient through analysis of photographs. It could be applied to photographs comprising more than one ind...

Large hospitals sort patients into wards or clinics based on a number of factors. The information of a patient’s location is potentially useful in a number of medical contexts. By demonstrating and studying the sorting that occurs in a hospital, we show that each ward has characteristic signatures emergent from the blood test results associated wit...

Chest X-rays are a vital diagnostic tool in the workup of many patients. Similar to most medical imaging modalities, they are profoundly multi-modal and are capable of visualising a variety of combinations of conditions. There is an ever pressing need for greater quantities of labelled images to drive forward the development of diagnostic tools; ho...

Interest in the mathematical modeling of infectious diseases has increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, many medical students do not have the required background in coding or mathematics to engage optimally in this approach. System dynamics is a methodology for implementing mathematical models as easy-to-understand stock-flow diagrams. Re...

Pupil tracking data are collected through the use of an infrared camera, and a head-mounted system [1]. The head-mounted system detects the relative pupil position and adjusts the mouse cursor position accordingly. This data are available for comparison of eye tracking with saccadic movements (with the head fixed in space) versus those from smooth...

The characteristics of smooth versus saccadic eye movement tracking were compared for the purpose of human-computer interface. The study was performed by implementing a custom head-mounted system to track smooth eye movements for control of a mouse cursor. The system comprises a head-mounted infrared camera, an infrared light source, and a computer...

The SSVEP response is used to transmit information in a unidirectional through-brain non-cognitive (entirely passive) communication channel. This, in effect, is connecting two otherwise disconnected computers through the brain, allowing us to consider the bandwidth of SSVEP encoding. The system uses green LEDs driven by a square wave to stimulate S...

Chest x-rays are one of the most commonly performed medical investigations globally and are vital to identifying a number of conditions. These images are however protected under patient confidentiality and as such require the removal of identifying information as well as ethical clearance to be released. Generative adversarial networks (GANs) are a...

A custom head-mounted system to track smooth eye movements for control of a mouse cursor is implemented and evaluated. The system comprises a head-mounted infrared camera, an infrared light source, and a computer. Software-based image processing techniques, implemented in Microsoft Visual Studio, OpenCV, and Pupil, detect the pupil position and dir...

Data of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation performed on a mannequin was collected via wearable instrumentation (using the MYO device). The data were collected for both “good” CPR and for performance of CPR with common errors introduced intentionally for this study. The data are labelled according to the error, and contain a variety of derived measuremen...

Obesity is an important concern in public health, and Body Mass Index is one of the useful (and proliferant) measures. We use Convolutional Neural Networks to determine Body Mass Index from photographs in a study with 161 participants. Low data, a common problem in medicine, is addressed by reducing the information in the photographs by generating...

Within developing countries, there is a realistic need for technologies that can assist medical practitioners in meeting the increasing demand for patient screening and monitoring. To this end, computer aided diagnosis (CAD) based approaches to chest radiograph screening can be utilised in areas where there is a high burden of diseases such as tube...

Threshold-based segmentation methods provide a simple and efficient way to implement lip segmentation. However, automatic computation of robust thresholds presents a major challenge. This research proposes an adaptive method for selecting the histogram threshold, based on feedback of shape information. The proposed method reduces unnecessary overhe...

An automated approach for tracking individual nephrons through three-dimensional histological image sets of mouse and rat kidneys is presented. In a previous study, the available images were tracked manually through the image sets in order to explore renal microarchitecture. The purpose of the current research is to reduce the time and effort requi...

A fully online EEG-based hybrid braincomputer interface (BCI) is presented. The BCI is used to control a robotic arm in three degrees of freedom. The system utilises the commercially available Emotiv SDK and EPOC neuroheadset. Using facial gestures, test subjects were able to carry out six different actions with an average detection accuracy of 66....

Lip segmentation is a fundamental system component in a range of applications including: automatic lip reading, emotion recognition and biometric speaker identification. The first step in lip segmentation involves applying a colour transform to enhance the contrast between the lips and surrounding skin. However, there is much debate among researche...

Recent advances in telecommunications have enabled surgeons to operate remotely on patients with the use of robotics. The investigation and testing of remote surgery using a robotic arm is presented. The robotic arm is designed to have four degrees of freedom that track the surgeon's x, y, z positions and the rotation angle of the forearm {\theta}....

Gesture recognition has attracted significant interest due to diverse potential applications, including: hand writing recognition, robot control and human-computer interfaces. This paper identifies and addresses three shortcomings in current approaches to feature vector selection and parameter optimisation for continuous gesture recognition. First,...

This paper presents an impact assessment for the imputation of missing data. The assessment is performed by measuring the impacts of missing data on the statistical nature of the data, on a classifier, and on a logistic regression system. The data set used is HIV seroprevalence data from an antenatal clinic study survey performed in 2001. Data impu...

This paper presents an impact assessment for the imputation of missing data. The data set used is HIV Seroprevalence data from an antenatal clinic study survey performed in 2001. Data imputation is performed through five methods: Random Forests, Autoassociative Neural Networks with Genetic Algorithms, Autoassociative Neuro-Fuzzy configurations, and...

This paper presents an impact assessment for the imputation of missing data. The data set used is HIV Seroprevalence data from an antenatal clinic study survey performed in 2001. Data imputation is performed through five methods: Random Forests, Autoassociative Neural Networks with Genetic Algorithms, Autoassociative Neuro-Fuzzy configurations, and...