Efthyvoulos C Kyriacou

Efthyvoulos C Kyriacou
Cyprus University of Technology · Department of Electrical Engineering Computer Engineering and Informatics

PhD

About

210
Publications
51,871
Reads
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4,056
Citations
Additional affiliations
September 2007 - December 2011
Frederick University
Position
  • Professor (Associate)
September 2002 - December 2006
University of Cyprus
Position
  • Visiting lecturer
December 2001 - September 2004
Cyprus Institute of Neurology and Genetics
Position
  • PostDoc Position

Publications

Publications (210)
Article
Full-text available
Recent studies conclude that early and specialized prehospital management contributes to emergency case survival. We have developed a portable medical device that allows telediagnosis, long distance support, and teleconsultation of mobile healthcare providers by expert physicians. The device allows the transmission of vital biosignals and still ima...
Article
Full-text available
Carotid plaques have been associated with ipsilateral neurological symptoms. High-resolution ultrasound can provide information not only on the degree of carotid artery stenosis but also on the characteristics of the arterial wall including the size and consistency of atherosclerotic plaques. The aim of this study is to determine whether the additi...
Article
Full-text available
Background: The purpose of this study was to determine the cerebrovascular risk stratification potential of baseline degree of stenosis, clinical features, and ultrasonic plaque characteristics in patients with asymptomatic internal carotid artery (ICA) stenosis. Methods: This was a prospective, multicenter, cohort study of patients undergoing medi...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of this study was to investigate the usefulness of multilevel binary and gray scale morphological analysis in the assessment of atherosclerotic carotid plaques. Ultrasound images were recorded from 137 asymptomatic and 137 symptomatic plaques (Stroke, Transient Ischaemic Attack (TIA), Amaurosis Fugax (AF)). We carefully develop the clinical...
Article
Full-text available
The provision of effective emergency telemedicine and home monitoring solutions are the major fields of interest discussed in this study. Ambulances, Rural Health Centers (RHC) or other remote health location such as Ships navigating in wide seas are common examples of possible emergency sites, while critical care telemetry and telemedicine home fo...
Poster
Full-text available
In this study, we investigated how carotid plaque motion (overall plaque area) changes from early to middle cardiac systole, aiming to verify that blood-flow induced forces are more profound in middle systole compared to peak systole, suggesting a higher risk of rupture in sensitive plaque compositions.
Conference Paper
The objective of this work was to investigate the Amplitude Modulation - Frequency Modulation (AM- FM) texture feature variability in carotid ultrasound video during the cardiac cycle at systole and diastole. The goal here was to identify AM-FM features that are associated with increased risk of stroke. We computed the instantaneous amplitude, inst...
Article
The integration of telemedicine tools such as teleconsultation and telemonitoring in cancer patients care may allow to improve person-centered care and patients’ empowerment. The eCAN JA (https://ecanja.eu/) explores the role of telemedicine tools in clinical trials focusing on tele-rehabilitation and tele-psychological support in different populat...
Chapter
Transfer learning (TL) reuses knowledge from real-world objects to perform faster and accurate image classification tasks in related content. Multiple studies have shown evaluated deep learning (DL) models in atherosclerotic plaque classification (Asymptomatic, AS, or Symptomatic, SY), using carotid ultrasound (CUS) images, with only a few studies...
Chapter
A semi-automated method based on a U-Net 3+ network, for the segmentation of brain metastases (BM) lesions is proposed and evaluated on Magnetic Resonance (MRI) images from105 patients with brain metastases. We divided the dataset based on the lesions size as small (S, [2.65, 13.26) mm2), medium (M, [13.26, 37.11) mm2) and large (L, [37.11, 1152.21...
Chapter
Full-text available
Video streaming applications have witnessed widespread adoption over the past decades due to the rising demand for real-time and on-demand video content across different application domains. As a result, video streaming has become the dominant source of internet traffic, while the abundance of video-driven applications will likely lead to a further...
Conference Paper
The objective of this work was the investigation of multiscale Amplitude Modulation-Frequency Modulation (AM-FM) analysis based on Difference of Gaussians (DoG) filterbanks representations in order to predict the risk of stroke by analysing carotid plaques ultrasound images of individuals with asymp-tomatic carotid stenosis. We computed the instant...
Conference Paper
The automated and reliable delineation of atherosclerotic carotid plaques in ultrasound (CUS) videos is of significant clinical relevance for management of the disease and the prediction of future stroke events. To facilitate stroke risk assessment, in this study, we propose an integrated software system for the automated segmentation and classific...
Article
Background: SCORE2 and SCORE2-OP algorithms and associated online calculators provide a new and easy method of estimating the 10-year cardiovascular risk in apparently healthy Europeans. The aim of the study was to determine the performance of these algorithms in terms of discrimination and calibration in the cohort of the Cyprus Epidemiological S...
Conference Paper
At present, there is no established set of ultrasonic features that can identify all the potentially unstable and high risk atherosclerotic carotid plaques in asymptomatic patients. The degree of stenosis is still the main criterion used to decide whether carotid endarterectomy is needed, but it has now been shown to be inaccurate. The overall obje...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In this study, we propose an automated system for the segmentation of cancer brain metastases (CBM) using MRI images. The goal is the correlation with regards to the primary cancer site. The segmentation of CBM is a challenging task due to their wide range in terms of number, shape, size and location in the brain. We experimented with the training...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Early stroke risk stratification in individuals with carotid atherosclerosis is of great importance, especially in high-risk asymptomatic (AS) cases. In this study, we present a new computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) system for the automated segmentation of the atherosclerotic plaque in carotid ultrasound (US) images and the extraction of a refined se...
Article
Background Studies have indicated that the presence and size of subclinical atherosclerotic plaques improve the prediction of atherosclerotic cardiovascular events (ASCVE) over and above that provided by conventional risk factors alone. However, the relative contribution of different ultrasonographic measurements and sites of measurements on the 10...
Chapter
In recent years, it has become apparent that the severity of an asymptomatic carotid stenosis is not sufficient to assess the risk of stroke. Although the risk of stroke increases with increasing grades of stenosis, and as a result a stenosis of ≥80% is used by many surgeons as an indication for surgery, this subgroup does not contain the majority...
Article
Full-text available
After publishing an in-depth study that analyzed the ability of computerized methods to assist or replace human experts in obtaining carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) measurements leading to correct therapeutic decisions, here the same consortium joined to present technical outlooks on computerized CIMT measurement systems and provide considera...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Breast cancer brain metastasis (BCBM) still remains a major clinical challenge. Current systemic treatments are often inadequate while diagnosis involves time-consuming series of neuro-imaging acquisitions and dangerous invasive biopsies. Automated image analysis systems for the identification, prediction and follow up of BCBM are therefore require...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction: The support of prehospital and emergency call handling and the impact of Covid-19 is discussed throughout this study. The initial purpose was to create an electronic system (eEmergency system) in order to support, improve, and help the procedure of handling emergency calls. This system was expanded to facilitate needed operation chang...
Article
Full-text available
Carotid distensibility is an indicator of carotid elasticity, which can be used as a cardiovascular disease risk factor. The objective of this study was to investigate how the degree of stenosis influences the strain characteristics of wall and plaque in the internal carotid artery (ICA). Ultrasound videos of the ICA from 83 subjects with atheroscl...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Recent studies have suggested that textural characteristics of the intima-media complex (IMC), may be more useful than intima-media thickness (IMT) in evaluating cardiovascular risk. Aims: The primary aim of our study was to investigate the association between texture features of the common carotid IMC and prevalent clinical cardiova...
Article
Full-text available
Common carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) is a commonly used marker for atherosclerosis and is often computed in carotid ultrasound images. An analysis of different computerized techniques for CIMT measurement and their clinical impacts on the same patient data set is lacking. Here we compared and assessed five computerized CIMT algorithms again...
Article
Objective: Dynamic image analysis of carotid plaques has demonstrated that during systole and early diastole all plaque components move in the same direction (concordant motion) in some plaques, while in others, different parts of the plaque move in different directions (discordant motion). The aim of our study was (a) to determine the prevalence...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose Breast cancer brain metastasis (BCBM) represents a major clinical challenge. Can MRI help in advancements in the management of BCBM? This review discusses MRI developments and the corresponding potential advancements in BCBM management. Methods An exhaustive literature search was undertaken to identify studies which look into the potential...
Chapter
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) can be identified through ultrasound scans of the arteries and more specific the common carotid artery (CCA). Measurement of the intima–media thickness (IMT) of the CCA is an established indicator of CVD. Several reports have indicated differences in the IMT of CCA and related then with various risk factors as well as t...
Conference Paper
Identification of carotid plaques associated with the risk of Stroke is the main objective of this work. Several studies had shown that non-invasive ultrasound imaging of plaques can help in the estimation of cerebrovascular risk stratification. Along this direction, we started investigating the performance of deep learning models named ResNet50, V...
Chapter
High-resolution vascular B-mode and Doppler ultrasound provide information not only on the degree of carotid artery stenosis but also on the characteristics of the arterial wall including the size and consistency of atherosclerotic plaques [1]. Carotid stenosis alone has limitations in predicting risk and does not show plaque vulnerability and inst...
Chapter
Full-text available
High-resolution vascular B-mode and Doppler ultrasound provide information not only on the degree of carotid artery stenosis but also on the characteristics of the arterial wall including the size and consistency of atherosclerotic plaques [1]. Carotid stenosis alone has limitations in predicting risk and does not show plaque vulnerability and inst...
Article
Full-text available
The objective of this paper was to investigate texture feature variability in ultrasound video of the carotid artery during the cardiac cycle in an attempt to define new discriminatory biomarkers of the vulnerable plaque. More specifically, in the present work, 120 longitudinal ultrasound videos, acquired from 40 normal (N) subjects from the common...
Chapter
In recent years, it has become apparent that the severity of an asymptomatic carotid stenosis is not sufficient to assess the risk of stroke. Although the risk of stroke increases with increasing grades of stenosis, and as a result a stenosis of ≥80% is used by many surgeons as an indication for surgery, this subgroup does not contain the majority...
Article
Full-text available
We propose an approach for providing well-calibrated confidence measures for determining cerebrovascular risk stratification based on characteristics from noninvasive ultrasound imaging of carotid plaques. An important challenge we address is the class imbalance problem inherent in the particular task. The proposed approach is based on a novel fram...
Chapter
Erratum to: E. Kyriacou et al. (eds.)XIV Mediterranean Conference on Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing 2016, IFMBE Proceedings 57, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-32703-7
Poster
Full-text available
Παρουσιάζουμε ένα ολοκληρωμένο σύστημα (Βλ. Εικ. 1) για την τρισδιάστατη (3Δ) ανακατασκευή και ευθυγράμμιση εγκέφαλου και εστιών πολλαπλής σκλήρυνσης (ΠΣ) από εικόνες μαγνητικής τομογραφίας (ΜRI). Ασθενείς οι οποίοι παρουσίασαν συμπτώματα ΠΣ, έτυχαν παρακολούθησης σε περίοδο δυο χρόνων και υποβλήθηκαν σε εξέταση ΜΤ ανά εξάμηνο σε τέσσερις συνολικά...
Poster
Full-text available
Παρουσιάζουμε ένα ολοκληρωμένο σύστημα (Βλ. Εικ. 1) για την τρισδιάστατη (3Δ) ανακατασκευή εστιών πολλαπλής σκλήρυνσης (ΠΣ) (Βλ. Εικ. 2) και περιγραμμάτων εγκεφάλου με εμφανές τις εστίες ΠΣ (Βλ. Εικ. 3) από εικόνες μαγνητικής τομογραφίας (ΜΤ). Επίσης διερευνούμε την εφαρμογή της ανάλυσης υφής στις εστίες ΠΣ για την παρακολούθηση και την καλύτερη κα...
Article
Full-text available
In recent years we have witnessed key technological advances in the multidisciplinary fields of mobile health systems and services. The vision of future healthcare delivery systems is underpinned by efforts to improve patient quality of life via anywhere, anytime, any device ubiquitous access to healthcare services, facilitating continuous monitori...
Chapter
Support of Emergency cases handling using telemedicine systems is an issue of publication and research efforts for years. The goal of this study is to present feedback from the actual use of an emergency telemedicine system from paramedics and doctors working with emergencies. The feedback of 72 paramedics and doctors was solicited after the use of...
Chapter
Crisis and emergency response training is one of the actions that can improve the performance of personnel handling major emergencies or crisis events. This paper is presenting a system that has been created in order to help personnel handling a major emergency event and describes the results of the feedback received by nursing personnel who used t...
Chapter
This study presents a system to support and monitor speech and language development in children with hearing impairment using hearing aids or cochlear implants or children with language delays. The idea is to support children at home, as well as during sessions with their speech therapists or teachers. The system is based on a set of applications f...
Chapter
This study presents a platform created in order to support the emergency procedures followed by the Ambulance Department of the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Cyprus. The procedures start from the point an emergency call is received until a patient is transferred to the hospital. The platform consists of a) a system that supports emergency d...
Article
Τhe performance of rescuers and personnel handling major emergencies or crisis events can be significantly improved through continuous training and through technology support. This paper discusses the work done in order to create a system which can support both resources and victims during a crisis or major emergency event. More specifically, the s...
Article
Background: Carotid plaque echodensity and texture features predict cerebrovascular symptomatology. Our purpose was to determine the association of echodensity and textural features obtained from a digital image analysis (DIA) program with histologic features of plaque instability as well as to identify the specific morphologic characteristics of...
Book
This volume presents the proceedings of Medicon 2016, held in Paphos, Cyprus. Medicon 2016 is the XIV in the series of regional meetings of the International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE) in the Mediterranean. The goal of Medicon 2016 is to provide updated information on the state of the art on Medical and Biological Engi...
Research
Full-text available
Improving patient quality of life underpins the vision of future healthcare delivery systems. The mHealth concept aims to achieve this via ubiquitous access to healthcare services (anywhere, anytime, any-device), facilitating continuous monitoring and timely interventions, while reducing associated costs and removing socioeconomic barriers to acces...
Chapter
Full-text available
mHealth, eEmergency systems can be defined as ‘emerging mobile communications and network technologies for emergency healthcare support’ [1]. This concept represents the evolution of ‘traditional’ e-health systems from desktop platforms and wired connections to the use of more compact devices and wireless connections in emergency health care suppor...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Non-invasive ultrasound imaging of carotid plaques can provide information on the characteristics of the arterial wall including the size and consistency of atherosclerotic plaques. As presented until now this can be used to determine cerebrovascular risk stratification. The aim of this study is to continue the effort being done to estimate the ris...
Conference Paper
Non-invasive ultrasound imaging of carotid plaques can provide information on the characteristics of the arterial wall including the size, morphology and texture of the atherosclerotic plaques. Several studies were carried out that demonstrated the usefulness of these feature sets for differentiating between asymptomatic and symptomatic plaques and...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
This study proposes a unifying framework for m-Health video communication systems that provides for the joint optimization of video quality, bitrate demands, and encoding time. The framework is video modality and infrastructure independent and facilitates adaptation to the best available encoding mode that satisfies underlying technology and applic...
Article
The intima-media thickness (IMT) of the common carotid artery (CCA) is an established indicator of cardiovascular disease (CVD). There have been reports about the difference between the left and the right sides of the CCA IMT and their relation with CVD. In this paper, we propose an automated system based on image normalization, speckle reduction f...
Article
Full-text available
Serious games involving virtual patients in medical education can provide a controlled setting within which players can learn in an engaging way, while avoiding the risks associated with real patients. Moreover, serious games align with medical students' preferred learning styles. The Virtual Emergency TeleMedicine (VETM) game is a simulation-based...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Abstract—This paper proposes the use of an adaptive HEVC encoding framework for the wireless transmission of real-time emergency scenery video. The goal of the proposed approach is to adapt HEVC encoding methods and parameters so as to meet time-varying constraints on available bandwidth, video quality, and performance. We present an example in rea...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Through this work we had created a platform that will support the emergency health care procedures starting from an emergency call until a patient is transferred to a central hospital. The platform consists of a) a system that supports emergency dispatch protocols, b) data recording and workflow management of ambulance department and c) an emergenc...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
a) Pareto-front for Video Quality vs Encoding Speed (b) Emergency Scenery Video-29.7 dB (33.88 fps @ 226 kbps) Fig. 1. Adaptive HEVC encoding framework example. In this example, we have adaptation for the maximum video quality mode subject to real-time encoding that translates to frame-rate ≥ 25 fps and available bandwidths of [3]: (1) BW ≤ 250 kbp...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The paper presents an effective video communications system that uses despeckle filtering prior to real-time transmission. The system is demonstrated using an open-source mHealth video communication framework for real-time transmission over 3.5G HSPA wireless networks. Unlike communications with the original clinical ultrasound videos, the use of d...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
a) Encoded videos @768 kbps (b) Decoded videos @768 kbps (c) Encoded videos @1024 kbps (d) Decoded videos @1024kbps Fig. 1. Real-time ultrasound video communications using despeckle filtering. PSNR scores for the whole dataset (5 videos): (a) Encoded videos @768kbps, (b) Decoded videos @768 kbps (following transmission), (c) Encoded videos @1024 kb...
Article
Full-text available
The paper presents the development of a Computer Aided Diagnostic (CAD) system for the early detection of endometrial cancer. The proposed CAD system supports reproducibility through texture feature standardization, standardized multi-feature selection, and provides physicians with comparative distributions of the extracted texture features. The CA...
Conference Paper
The intima–media thickness (IMT) of the common carotid artery (CCA) is a well-known indicator of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The objective of this study was to investigate the application of texture analysis of the medial layer (ML) of the CCA, and how texture features vary between the left and right carotid sides, as well as how these are affect...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Through this work we had created a system that supports management of rescue teams and health services during a major disaster. The system can be installed in the disaster area using its own infrastructure (telecommunications and power). It mainly consists of a central/control station which is installed in the area control center, the rescuers unit...
Chapter
Full-text available
Advances in communication technologies, information technology and medical technologies facilitate the development of effective systems that can be used in support of emergency healthcare (eEmergency). The objectives of the chapter are to provide an overview of the way that information and communication technologies have been used in order to devel...
Chapter
Full-text available
Advances in communication technologies, information technology and medical technologies facilitate the development of effective systems that can be used in support of emergency healthcare (eEmergency). The objectives of the chapter are to provide an overview of the way that information and communication technologies have been used in order to devel...
Conference Paper
Full-text available