João Paulo Cunha

João Paulo Cunha
University of Porto | UP · Faculty of Engineering

Associate Professor

About

420
Publications
60,705
Reads
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3,948
Citations
Additional affiliations
June 2014 - present
Carnegie Mellon | Portugal
Position
  • Managing Director
Description
  • www.cmuportugal.org
January 2014 - present
Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science (INESC TEC)
Position
  • co-coordinator Centre for Biomedical Engineering Research (C-BER)
January 2013 - present
Institute for Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science (INESC TEC)
Position
  • Group Leader

Publications

Publications (420)
Preprint
The gold standard methods for real-time core temperature (CT) monitoring are invasive and cost-inefficient. The application of Kalman filters for an indirect estimation of CT has been explored in the literature since 2010. This paper presents a comparative study between different state of the art Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) estimation algorithms a...
Preprint
Full-text available
p>Many clinical applications involve in-bed patient activity monitoring, from intensive care and neuro-critical infirmary, to semiology-based epileptic seizure diagnosis support or sleep monitoring at home, which require accurate recognition of in-bed movement actions from video streams. The major challenges of clinical application arise from the...
Preprint
Full-text available
p>Many clinical applications involve in-bed patient activity monitoring, from intensive care and neuro-critical infirmary, to semiology-based epileptic seizure diagnosis support or sleep monitoring at home, which require accurate recognition of in-bed movement actions from video streams. The major challenges of clinical application arise from the...
Article
How we perceive and experience the world around us is inherently multisensory. Most of the Virtual Reality (VR) literature is based on the senses of sight and hearing. However, there is a lot of potential for integrating additional stimuli into Virtual Environments (VEs), especially in a training context. Identifying the relevant stimuli for obtain...
Article
Full-text available
Seizure semiology is a well-established method to classify epileptic seizure types, but requires a significant amount of resources as long-term Video-EEG monitoring needs to be visually analyzed. Therefore, computer vision based diagnosis support tools are a promising approach. In this article, we utilize infrared (IR) and depth (3D) videos to show...
Preprint
Full-text available
Human motion analysis has seen drastic improvements recently, however, due to the lack of representative datasets, in clinical in-bed scenarios, it is still lagging behind for clinical applications. To address this issue, we implemented BlanketGen, a pipeline that augments videos with synthetic blanket occlusions. With this pipeline, we generated a...
Article
Full-text available
Hereditary Amyloidosis associated with variant Transthyretin (ATTRv Amyloidosis) is a progressive and highly disabling neurological disorder that affects gait. Quantitative motion analysis is useful for assessing motor function, including gait, in diseases affecting movement. A single markerless RGB-D camera enables 3D full-body motion capture in a...
Preprint
Full-text available
Recent advancements in computer vision, particularly by making use of deep learning, have drastically improved human motion analysis in videos. However, these improvements have not yet fully translated into improved performance in clinical in-bed scenarios due to the lack of public datasets representative of this scenario. To address this issue, we...
Article
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Deep brain stimulation of the Anterior Nucleus of the Thalamus (ANT-DBS) is an effective therapy in epilepsy. Poorer surgical outcomes are related to deviations of the lead from the ANT-target. The target identification relies on the visualization of anatomical structures by medical imaging, which presents some disadvantages. This study aims to res...
Article
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Hereditary amyloidosis associated with transthyretin (ATTRv), is a rare autosomal dominant disease characterized by length-dependent symmetric polyneuropathy that has gait impairment as one of its consequences. The gait pattern of V30M ATTRv amyloidosis patients has been described as similar to that of diabetic neuropathy, associated with steppage,...
Article
The use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology to train professionals has increased over the years due to its advantages over traditional training. This paper presents a study comparing the effectiveness of a Virtual Environment (VE) and a Real Environment (RE) designed to train firefighters. To measure the effectiveness of the environments, a new meth...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction and objectives: [ 99mTc] Tc-HMPAO, developed for brain imaging, is taken up by the heart, but never used to study it. We aimed to compare cardiac images with [99mTc] Tc-HMPAO and [ 99mTc] Tc-Tetrofosmin, using imaging techniques. Materials and methods: Cardiac gated SPECTs with [99mTc] Tc-HMPAO were compared with myocardial perfusion s...
Article
Objective Heart rate variability (HRV), an index of the autonomic cardiac activity, is decreased in patients with epilepsy, and a low HRV is associated with a higher risk of sudden death. Generalized tonic-clonic seizures are one of the most consistent risk factors for SUDEP, but the influence (and relative risk) of each type of seizure on cardiac...
Conference Paper
Occupational stress is a complex process affecting health and performance. Air Traffic Control is a complex and demanding profession. The current study demonstrates the concept of using a biomonitoring wearable platform (BWP), that combines self-report measures with biomarkers, to track stress among Air Traffic Controllers. A wearable ECG device wa...
Article
Full-text available
Hereditary Transthyretin Amyloidosis (vATTR-V30M) is a rare and highly incapacitating sensorimotor neuropathy caused by an inherited mutation (Val30Met), which typically affects gait, among other symptoms. In this context, we investigated the possibility of using machine learning (ML) techniques to build a model(s) that can be used to support the d...
Article
Full-text available
The main goal of this systematic review is to synthesize existing evidence on the use of immersive virtual reality (IVR) to train professionals as well as to identify the main gaps and challenges that still remain and need to be addressed by future research. Following a comprehensive search, 66 documents were identified, assessed for relevance, and...
Article
Full-text available
Hereditary amyloidosis associated with transthyretin V30M (ATTRv V30M) is a rare and inherited multisystemic disease, with a variable presentation and a challenging diagnosis, follow-up and treatment. This condition entails a definitive and progressive motor impairment that compromises walking ability from near onset. The detection of the latter is...
Conference Paper
Training firefighters using Virtual Reality (VR) technology brings several benefits over traditional training methods including the reduction of costs and risks. The ability of causing the same level of stress as a real situation so that firefighters can learn how to deal with stress was investigated. An experiment aiming to study the influence tha...
Article
Full-text available
The development of wearable health systems has been the focus of many researchers who aim to find solutions in healthcare. Additionally, the large potential of textiles to integrate electronics, together with the comfort and usability they provide, has contributed to the development of smart garments in this area. In the field of neurological disor...
Conference Paper
Wearable devices have been showing promising results in a large range of applications: since industry, to entertainment and, in particular, healthcare. In the scope of movement disorders, wearable devices are being widely implemented for motor symptoms objective assessment. Currently, clinicians evaluate patients' motor symptoms resorting to subjec...
Article
Full-text available
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
Conference Paper
Epilepsy affects approximately 1% of the world’s population. Semiology of epileptic seizures contain major clinical signs to classify epilepsy syndromes currently evaluated by epileptologists by simple visual inspection of video. There is a necessity to create automatic and semiautomatic methods for seizure detection and classification to better su...
Article
Full-text available
With the advent of personalized medicine, there is a movement to develop “smaller” and “smarter” microdevices that are able to distinguish similar cancer subtypes. Tumor cells display major differences when compared to their natural counterparts, due to alterations in fundamental cellular processes such as glycosylation. Glycans are involved in tum...
Chapter
Biometric authentication (i.e., verification of a given subject’s identity using biological characteristics) relying on gait characteristics obtained in a non-intrusive way can be very useful in the area of security, for smart surveillance and access control. In this contribution, we investigated the possibility of carrying out subject identificati...
Article
Full-text available
Motion analysis systems based on a single markerless RGB-D camera are more suitable for clinical practice than multi-camera marker-based reference systems. Nevertheless, the validity of RGB-D cameras for motor function assessment in some diseases affecting gait, such as Transthyretin Familial Amyloid Polyneuropathy (TTR-FAP), is yet to be investiga...
Chapter
Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorders, affecting up to 1% of the World population. Patients with epilepsy may suffer from severe consequences from seizures (e.g. injuries) when not monitored. Automatic seizure detection systems could mitigate this problem, improving seizure tracking and alerting a caregiver during a seizure. Exi...
Article
Objective: Axial motor features are common in Parkinson's disease (PD). These include gait impairment and postural abnormalities, such as camptocormia. The response of these symptoms to deep brain stimulation (DBS) is variable and difficult to assess objectively. For the first time, this study analyzes the treatment outcomes of two PD patients wit...
Conference Paper
Transthyretin Familial Amyloid Polyneuropathy (TTR-FAP) is a rare and disabling neurological disorder caused by a mutation of the transthyretin gene. One of the disease's characteristics that mostly affects patients' quality of life is its influence on locomotion, with a variable evolution timing. Quantitative motion analysis is useful for assessin...
Article
It is known that excessive levels of occupational stress affect professionals' technical and non-technical skills and surgeons are no exception. However, very few studies address this problem in neurosurgeons. A system for monitoring cardiovascular strain and autonomic imbalance during intracranial aneurysm procedures is proposed in order to obtain...
Article
Full-text available
Background In view of the growing importance of nanotechnologies, the detection/identification of nanoparticles type has been considered of utmost importance. Although the characterization of synthetic/organic nanoparticles is currently considered a priority (eg, drug delivery devices, nanotextiles, theranostic nanoparticles), there are many exampl...
Article
RGB-D cameras provide 3-D body joint data in a low-cost, portable and non-intrusive way, when compared with reference motion capture systems used in laboratory settings. In this contribution, we evaluate the validity of both Microsoft Kinect versions (v1 and v2) for motion analysis against a Qualisys system in a simultaneous protocol. Two different...
Article
Full-text available
Background Stress at work has been broadly acknowledged as a worldwide problem and has been the focus of concern for many researchers. Firefighting, in particular, is frequently reported as a highly stressful occupation. In order to investigate firefighters’ occupational health in terms of stress events, perceptions, symptoms, and physiological rea...
Article
Full-text available
Background Stress is a complex process with an impact on health and performance. The use of wearable sensor-based monitoring systems offers interesting opportunities for advanced health care solutions for stress analysis. Considering the stressful nature of firefighting and its importance for the community’s safety, this study was conducted for fir...
Article
In this work we propose a regression approach based on separability maximization (RASMa) for modeling a continuous-valued estimate of the stress level (we called it stress index) using some features extracted from electrocardiogram (ECG) data. Since no objective measure of the actual stress level (output) is available, finding the stress index cann...
Article
Full-text available
Optical fiber tweezers have been gaining prominence in several applications in Biology and Medicine. Due to their outstanding focusing abilities, they are able to trap and manipulate microparticles, including cells, needing any physical contact and with a low degree of invasiveness to the trapped cell. Recently, we proposed a fiber tweezer configur...
Article
Full-text available
Human gait analysis provides valuable information regarding the way of walking of a given subject. Low-cost RGB-D cameras, such as the Microsoft Kinect, are able to estimate the 3-D position of several body joints without requiring the use of markers. This 3-D information can be used to perform objective gait analysis in an affordable, portable, an...
Article
Full-text available
Wearable Health Devices (WHDs) are increasingly helping people to better monitor their health status both at an activity/fitness level for self-health tracking and at a medical level providing more data to clinicians with a potential for earlier diagnostic and guidance of treatment. The technology revolution in the miniaturization of electronic dev...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Occupational stress has been broadly acknowledged as a global challenge and has been the focus of concern for many researchers. Stress affects workers health and performance. Hence, the current study aimed to: a) assess psychophysiological stress among different occupational groups and b) understand if there are differences between these groups usi...
Article
Purpose: To investigate the frequency, localizing significance, and intensity characteristics of ictal vocalization in different focal epilepsy syndromes. Methods: Up to four consecutive focal seizures were evaluated in 277 patients with lesional focal epilepsy, excluding isolated auras and subclinical EEG seizure patterns. Vocalization was cons...
Conference Paper
Firefighting is a hazardous profession commonly exposed to high stress that can interfere with firefighter's health and performance. Nevertheless, on-duty stress levels quantitative evaluations are very rare in the literature. In order to investigate firefighters' occupational health in terms of stress perceptions, symptoms, and quantified physiolo...
Conference Paper
Human gait analysis is of utmost importance in understanding several aspects of human movement. In clinical practice, characterizing movement in order to obtain accurate and reliable information is a major challenge, and physicians usually rely on direct observation in order to evaluate a patient's motor abilities. In this contribution, a system th...
Article
Full-text available
Occupational stress has been widely recognized as a global challenge and has received increased attention by the academic community. Ambulatory Assessment methodologies, combining psychophysiological measures of stress, offer a promising avenue for future prevention and/or rehabilitation stress research. Considering that policing is well known for...
Article
Full-text available
Background Air Traffic Control (ATC) is a complex and demanding process, exposing Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) to high stress. Recently, efforts have been made in ATC to maintain safety and efficiency in the face of increasing air traffic demands. Computer simulations have been a useful tool for ATC training, improving ATCs skills and consequentl...
Article
Full-text available
Stress can impact multiple psychological and physiological human domains. In order to better understand the effect of stress on cognitive performance, and whether this effect is related to an autonomic response to stress, the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) was used as a testing platform along with a 2-Choice Reaction Time Task. When considering th...
Article
Skin temperature regulation is dependent on the autonomic nervous system function, which may be impaired in patients with neuropathy. Literature reporting thermographic assessment of patients with established diagnosis of Diabetic Foot (DF) is scarce, but this information is completely absent in patients suffering from Transthyretin Familial Amyloi...
Article
Measuring human gait is important in medicine to obtain outcome parameter for therapy, for instance in Parkinson’s disease. Recently, small inertial sensors became available which allow for the registration of limb-position outside of the limited space of gait laboratories. The computation of gait parameters based on such recordings has been the su...
Article
Full-text available
Recent trends on microbiology point out the urge to develop optical micro-tools with multifunctionalities such as simultaneous manipulation and sensing. Considering that miniaturization has been recognized as one of the most important paradigms of emerging sensing biotechnologies, optical fiber tools, including Optical Fiber Tweezers (OFTs), are su...
Article
Background: The tip of an optical fiber has been considered an attractive platform in Biology. The simple cleaved end of an optical fiber can be machined, patterned and/or functionalized, acquiring unique properties enabling the exploitation of novel optical phenomena. Prompted by the constant need to measure and manipulate nanoparticles, the inve...
Conference Paper
Skin temperature regulation is dependant of the autonomic nervous system function, which may be impaired in patients with neuropathy. Studies reporting thermographic assessment of patients with established diagnosis of Diabetic Foot (DF) are scarce but this information is completely absent in patients suffering from Transthyretin Familial Amyloid P...
Article
Epilepsy diagnosis is typically performed through 2Dvideo-EEG monitoring, relying on the viewer's subjective interpretation of the patient's movements of interest. Several attempts at quantifying seizure movements have been performed in the past using 2D marker-based approaches, which have several drawbacks for the clinical routine (e.g. occlusions...
Conference Paper
We investigated if a recently proposed method can differentiate yogurt bacteria trapped by a polymeric lensed fiber tip, through back-scattered signal analysis. Results suggest that it can be a valuable contribution for foodborne analysis/bacteria identification.
Article
Full-text available
A fundamental question that often occurs in statistical tests is the normality of distributions. Countless distributions exist in science and life, but one distribution that is obtained via permutations, usually referred to as permutation distribution, is interesting. Although a permutation distribution should behave in accord with the central limi...
Article
Full-text available
Epilepsy being one of the most prevalent neurological disorders, affecting approximately 50 million people worldwide, and with almost 30–40% of patients experiencing partial epilepsy being nonresponsive to medication, epilepsy surgery is widely accepted as an effective therapeutic option. Presurgical evaluation has advanced significantly using noni...
Chapter
Anger and anxiety are basic, transcultural and adaptative human emotions (Darwin, 1872; Ekman & Friesen, 1971). These emotions, however, can become maladaptive and dysfunctional, when experienced excessively. Anger and anxiety are a multidimensional phenomenon that include physiological, cognitive, and behavioral components (Kassinove, 1995). Altho...