Adams County
Identifying Neural Signatures from fMRI using Hybrid Principal Components Regression
Rieck, Jared, Wrobel, Julia, Gowin, Joshua L., Wang, Yue, Paulus, Martin, Peterson, Ryan
Recent advances in neuroimaging analysis have enabled accurate decoding of mental state from brain activation patterns during functional magnetic resonance imaging scans. A commonly applied tool for this purpose is principal components regression regularized with the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO PCR), a type of multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA). This model presumes that all components are equally likely to harbor relevant information, when in fact the task-related signal may be concentrated in specific components. In such cases, the model will fail to select the optimal set of principal components that maximizes the total signal relevant to the cognitive process under study. Here, we present modifications to LASSO PCR that allow for a regularization penalty tied directly to the index of the principal component, reflecting a prior belief that task-relevant signal is more likely to be concentrated in components explaining greater variance. Additionally, we propose a novel hybrid method, Joint Sparsity-Ranked LASSO (JSRL), which integrates component-level and voxel-level activity under an information parity framework and imposes ranked sparsity to guide component selection. We apply the models to brain activation during risk taking, monetary incentive, and emotion regulation tasks. Results demonstrate that incorporating sparsity ranking into LASSO PCR produces models with enhanced classification performance, with JSRL achieving up to 51.7\% improvement in cross-validated deviance $R^2$ and 7.3\% improvement in cross-validated AUC. Furthermore, sparsity-ranked models perform as well as or better than standard LASSO PCR approaches across all classification tasks and allocate predictive weight to brain regions consistent with their established functional roles, offering a robust alternative for MVPA.
"It Felt Like I Was Left in the Dark": Exploring Information Needs and Design Opportunities for Family Caregivers of Older Adult Patients in Critical Care Settings
Fu, Shihan, Yao, Bingsheng, Desai, Smit, Hu, Yuqi, Sun, Yuling, Stonbraker, Samantha, Gao, Yanjun, Goldberg, Elizabeth M., Wang, Dakuo
Older adult patients constitute a rapidly growing subgroup of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients. In these situations, their family caregivers are expected to represent the unconscious patients to access and interpret patients' medical information. However, caregivers currently have to rely on overloaded clinicians for information updates and typically lack the health literacy to understand complex medical information. Our project aims to explore the information needs of caregivers of ICU older adult patients, from which we can propose design opportunities to guide future AI systems. The project begins with formative interviews with 11 caregivers to identify their challenges in accessing and interpreting medical information; From these findings, we then synthesize design requirements and propose an AI system prototype to cope with caregivers' challenges. The system prototype has two key features: a timeline visualization to show the AI extracted and summarized older adult patients' key medical events; and an LLM-based chatbot to provide context-aware informational support. We conclude our paper by reporting on the follow-up user evaluation of the system and discussing future AI-based systems for ICU caregivers of older adults.
Towards Next-Generation Medical Agent: How o1 is Reshaping Decision-Making in Medical Scenarios
Xu, Shaochen, Zhou, Yifan, Liu, Zhengliang, Wu, Zihao, Zhong, Tianyang, Zhao, Huaqin, Li, Yiwei, Jiang, Hanqi, Pan, Yi, Chen, Junhao, Lu, Jin, Zhang, Wei, Zhang, Tuo, Zhang, Lu, Zhu, Dajiang, Li, Xiang, Liu, Wei, Li, Quanzheng, Sikora, Andrea, Zhai, Xiaoming, Xiang, Zhen, Liu, Tianming
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become essential in modern healthcare, with large language models (LLMs) offering promising advances in clinical decision-making. Traditional model-based approaches, including those leveraging in-context demonstrations and those with specialized medical fine-tuning, have demonstrated strong performance in medical language processing but struggle with real-time adaptability, multi-step reasoning, and handling complex medical tasks. Agent-based AI systems address these limitations by incorporating reasoning traces, tool selection based on context, knowledge retrieval, and both short- and long-term memory. These additional features enable the medical AI agent to handle complex medical scenarios where decision-making should be built on real-time interaction with the environment. Therefore, unlike conventional model-based approaches that treat medical queries as isolated questions, medical AI agents approach them as complex tasks and behave more like human doctors. In this paper, we study the choice of the backbone LLM for medical AI agents, which is the foundation for the agent's overall reasoning and action generation. In particular, we consider the emergent o1 model and examine its impact on agents' reasoning, tool-use adaptability, and real-time information retrieval across diverse clinical scenarios, including high-stakes settings such as intensive care units (ICUs). Our findings demonstrate o1's ability to enhance diagnostic accuracy and consistency, paving the way for smarter, more responsive AI tools that support better patient outcomes and decision-making efficacy in clinical practice.
A Review of Deep Learning Approaches for Non-Invasive Cognitive Impairment Detection
Alsuhaibani, Muath, Fard, Ali Pourramezan, Sun, Jian, Poor, Farida Far, Pressman, Peter S., Mahoor, Mohammad H.
This review paper explores recent advances in deep learning approaches for non-invasive cognitive impairment detection. We examine various non-invasive indicators of cognitive decline, including speech and language, facial, and motoric mobility. The paper provides an overview of relevant datasets, feature-extracting techniques, and deep-learning architectures applied to this domain. We have analyzed the performance of different methods across modalities and observed that speech and language-based methods generally achieved the highest detection performance. Studies combining acoustic and linguistic features tended to outperform those using a single modality. Facial analysis methods showed promise for visual modalities but were less extensively studied. Most papers focused on binary classification (impaired vs. non-impaired), with fewer addressing multi-class or regression tasks. Transfer learning and pre-trained language models emerged as popular and effective techniques, especially for linguistic analysis. Despite significant progress, several challenges remain, including data standardization and accessibility, model explainability, longitudinal analysis limitations, and clinical adaptation. Lastly, we propose future research directions, such as investigating language-agnostic speech analysis methods, developing multi-modal diagnostic systems, and addressing ethical considerations in AI-assisted healthcare. By synthesizing current trends and identifying key obstacles, this review aims to guide further development of deep learning-based cognitive impairment detection systems to improve early diagnosis and ultimately patient outcomes.
Easy ways to make calls when vision is a challenge
The upgraded Magnifier app stands out with iOS 18. Technology can be wonderfully convenient and provide a great deal of entertainment, but it can also be a great way to improve your everyday life, too. For those who experience visual challenges, a variety of apps and features can help you. That's why we love this question about apps and features that can help visually challenged loved ones: "I am not tech savvy. I need to know if there is an app that I can download on a phone, that will allow my mother to tell the app, without needing internet services, who she wants to make a phone call to? She's losing her eyesight and can no longer see the numbers on her phone. She's 88 years old and doesn't own a computer and has limited income," writes "Sheryl" of Westminster, Colorado.
Environment Scan of Generative AI Infrastructure for Clinical and Translational Science
Idnay, Betina, Xu, Zihan, Adams, William G., Adibuzzaman, Mohammad, Anderson, Nicholas R., Bahroos, Neil, Bell, Douglas S., Bumgardner, Cody, Campion, Thomas, Castro, Mario, Cimino, James J., Cohen, I. Glenn, Dorr, David, Elkin, Peter L, Fan, Jungwei W., Ferris, Todd, Foran, David J., Hanauer, David, Hogarth, Mike, Huang, Kun, Kalpathy-Cramer, Jayashree, Kandpal, Manoj, Karnik, Niranjan S., Katoch, Avnish, Lai, Albert M., Lambert, Christophe G., Li, Lang, Lindsell, Christopher, Liu, Jinze, Lu, Zhiyong, Luo, Yuan, McGarvey, Peter, Mendonca, Eneida A., Mirhaji, Parsa, Murphy, Shawn, Osborne, John D., Paschalidis, Ioannis C., Harris, Paul A., Prior, Fred, Shaheen, Nicholas J., Shara, Nawar, Sim, Ida, Tachinardi, Umberto, Waitman, Lemuel R., Wright, Rosalind J., Zai, Adrian H., Zheng, Kai, Lee, Sandra Soo-Jin, Malin, Bradley A., Natarajan, Karthik, Price, W. Nicholson II, Zhang, Rui, Zhang, Yiye, Xu, Hua, Bian, Jiang, Weng, Chunhua, Peng, Yifan
This study reports a comprehensive environmental scan of the generative AI (GenAI) infrastructure in the national network for clinical and translational science across 36 institutions supported by the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program led by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at the United States. With the rapid advancement of GenAI technologies, including large language models (LLMs), healthcare institutions face unprecedented opportunities and challenges. This research explores the current status of GenAI integration, focusing on stakeholder roles, governance structures, and ethical considerations by administering a survey among leaders of health institutions (i.e., representing academic medical centers and health systems) to assess the institutional readiness and approach towards GenAI adoption. Key findings indicate a diverse range of institutional strategies, with most organizations in the experimental phase of GenAI deployment. The study highlights significant variations in governance models, with a strong preference for centralized decision-making but notable gaps in workforce training and ethical oversight. Moreover, the results underscore the need for a more coordinated approach to GenAI governance, emphasizing collaboration among senior leaders, clinicians, information technology staff, and researchers. Our analysis also reveals concerns regarding GenAI bias, data security, and stakeholder trust, which must be addressed to ensure the ethical and effective implementation of GenAI technologies. This study offers valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities of GenAI integration in healthcare, providing a roadmap for institutions aiming to leverage GenAI for improved quality of care and operational efficiency.
Evaluation of Large Language Models for Summarization Tasks in the Medical Domain: A Narrative Review
Croxford, Emma, Gao, Yanjun, Pellegrino, Nicholas, Wong, Karen K., Wills, Graham, First, Elliot, Liao, Frank J., Goswami, Cherodeep, Patterson, Brian, Afshar, Majid
Large Language Models have advanced clinical Natural Language Generation, creating opportunities to manage the volume of medical text. However, the high-stakes nature of medicine requires reliable evaluation, which remains a challenge. In this narrative review, we assess the current evaluation state for clinical summarization tasks and propose future directions to address the resource constraints of expert human evaluation.