ABSTRACT
The reconstruction of the face has historically been a significant issue in medical and forensic science. The presence of COVID-19 has added a significant new dimension. To model a new face, plastic surgery and informatics are employed, representing cyber forensics with challenges. The classic facial recognition techniques suffer from major drawbacks when face masks are widely used. As a result, new techniques are now being tried and tested to reconstruct a face from a collection of masked facial images. To determine the identification accuracy and other parameters/metrics, these faces are compared to real-world images of the same subject. Our research focuses on the task of post-mask face reconstruction, addressing the pressing need for precise and reliable techniques. We evaluate the effectiveness of three key algorithms: Edge Connect, Gated Convolution, and Hierarchical Variational Vector Quantized Autoencoders (HVQVAE). We use two synthetic datasets, MaskedFace-CelebA and MaskedFace-CelebAHQ, to rigorously assess the quality of reconstructed faces using metrics such as PSNR, SSIM, UIQI, and NCORR. Gated Convolution (GC) emerges as the superior choice in terms of image quality. To validate our findings, we employ five classifiers (Vgg16, Vgg19, ResNet50, ResNet101, ResNET152) and explore Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) as novel approaches for face recognition. A comprehensive ablation study reinforces our conclusion that Generative Convolution (GC) excels among the three models. Our research offers valuable insights into face reconstruction amid widespread mask usage, emphasizing innovative methodologies to address contemporary challenges in the field.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Learning DisabilitiesABSTRACT
BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns adversely affected global health care services to varying extent. Emergency Services were affected along-with elective surgeries, to accommodate the added burden of COVID19 affected patients. We aimed to reflect, quantify and analyse the trends of essential surgeries and bellwether procedures during the waxing and waning of the pandemic, across various hospitals in India.MethodologyA research consortium led by WHO Collaboration Centre (WHOCC) for Research in Surgical Care Delivery in Low-and Middle-Income countries, India, conducted this study with 5 centres. All surgeries performed during the months of April 2020 (wave 1), November 2020 (recovery 1) and April 2021 (wave 2) were compared with those performed in April 2019 (pre-pandemic period). ResultsThe total number of surgeries reduced by 77% during wave 1, which improved to 52% reduction in recovery 1, as compared to pre-pandemic period. However, surgeries reduced again during wave 2 to 68%, but reduction was less as compared to wave 1. Emergency and essential surgeries were affected along-with the elective ones, but to a lesser extent.ConclusionOur study quantified the effects of the pandemic on surgical-care delivery across a timeline and documented reduction in overall surgical volumes during the peaks of the pandemic (wave 1 and 2) with minimal improvement as the surge of COVID19 cases declined (recovery 1). The second wave showed improved surgical volumes as compared to the first one which may be attributable to improved preparedness. Caesarean sections were affected the least.
Subject(s)
COVID-19ABSTRACT
Background Nations have faced significant challenges with the COVID-19 related biomedical waste since its outbreak. Before the pandemic, Indian hospitals typically generated 500g of BMW per bed each day, which has now risen to about 2.5-4 kg per bed per day. Proper BMW aims to reduce waste generation, ensures efficient collection, handling and safe disposal that it controls infection and improves safety for the medical professionals. Hence, the present study was conducted to assess the level of knowledge among medical professionals regarding biomedical waste segregation , transport and treatment and thereafter provide constructive suggestions to reduce mismanagement practices. Methodology An e-survey was done to assess the knowledge and awareness of management of Biomedical Waste generated due to Covid-19 among Medical Professionals (students, residents and consultants) of tertiary care hospital of North India. Result The average knowledge score about BMW waste generated due to Covid-19 was found to be: for segregation - 27.46%, 59.615%, and 49.8%; transport of waste from site of generation to the site of disposal- 63.66%, 89.1% and 95.2% ; disposal of waste generated- 29%, 71.96%, and 68.24% in students, residents, and consultants respectively. Overall, the knowledge score was 41.4%, 67.98%, and 61.34% among the students, residents and consultants respectively. We found that participants with greater years of experience (residents and consultants) had better knowledge compared to that of the students(p<0.05). Discussion Our study found that the mean score was 56.9% which is comparably more than the knowledge score of few Low and Middle Income Countries but less than the knowledge score of some European countries. Studies have found that the chances of infection directly correlates with the low level of knowledge. This underlines that training aspects of health-care waste management should be strengthened, not only for the practising medical professionals but also of the students so that the current, existing, and future regulations are practiced diligently and uniformly. Hence, it is important that we strengthen the training aspect of medical professionals. Periodic evaluation and assessment should become routine to enforce adherence to waste management.
Subject(s)
COVID-19ABSTRACT
Background: - There is a limited literature especially in India on the awareness regarding facemasks among medical professionals. Therefore the aim of the study is t o assess the awareness, practices followed and problems faced in using different types of facemasks among medical professionals in a COVID dedicated hospital. Method: ology- An e-survey via was conducted among medical professionals working in a tertiary care (COVID dedicated) hospital of North-India. The survey asked for the general demographic details, knowledge and awareness on facemask use, quality and various problems faced on regular or prolonged use, sanitization / disposal and recommendations to infected and non- infected people in community. Results: - Survey was sent to around 368 medical professionals out of which a total of 150 participants completed the survey giving an overall response rate of 40.8%. The mean score was 9.8 +/- 2.375 out of 21 giving an overall correct rate of 46.67%. 38% and 31.33% participants knew the correct recommendations of facemasks to infected and non-infected people in the community respectively, Only 4.67% knew the correct sanitization procedures, 84% and 69.33% participants reported problems of discomfort on face and sweat issues respectively while 48.7% of the population felt some amount of breathlessness within 1-3 hours with N-95/FFP2 masks. Discussion: - Awareness in this part of the world was low as compared to the western compared to countries (46.67%) which increases significantly with years of experience(p<0.001), however no such correlation of knowledge score with discipline of medical professionals was found. Since, it is the young medical force which is at the forefront to tackle the menace, therefore, institute should provide regular training and knowledge up gradation about the facemasks and adequate and accurate information needs to be disseminated to younger medical professionals via social media to prevent them from the risk of infection.
ABSTRACT
Background: The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown have adversely affected global health care services to varying extent. Emergency Services were also affected along with elective surgeries, which were deferred to accommodate the added burden of COVID 19 affected patients, on the healthcare systems. We aimed to assess the change in delivery of essential and emergency surgeries due to the pandemic. Methodology: A research consortium led by WHO Collaboration Centre (WHOCC) for Research in Surgical Care Delivery in Low- and Middle-Income countries (LMIC), India, conducted this retrospective cross-sectional study with 12 recruited centers. All surgeries performed during the months of April 2020 were compared with those performed in April 2019. These surgeries were stratified into emergency and elective, and further categorized based on NHS surgery prioritization documents. Results: A total of 4396 surgeries were performed at these centers in April 2019 and 1216 surgeries were performed in same month during 2020, yielding a fall of 72.3% (1216 /4396).We found a 54% reduction in emergency surgeries and a 91% reduction in the elective surgeries. Number of cesarean sections reduced by 29.7% and fracture surgeries declined by 85.3% Laparotomies and surgeries for local soft tissue infections with necrotic tissue reduced by 71.7% and 69.5% respectively. Conclusion: Our study quantifies the effects of COVID 19 pandemic on surgical care delivery in India and documents that the overall surgical volume reduced by three fourths in the pandemic period. Emergency surgeries reduced to half when compared with pre-pandemic period. Cesarean section surgeries were affected the least by pandemic, whereas the fracture surgeries and laparotomies were affected the most.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Fractures, Bone , NecrosisABSTRACT
Background The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown have adversely affected global health care services to varying extent. Emergency Services were also affected along with elective surgeries, which were deferred to accommodate the added burden of COVID 19 affected patients, on the healthcare systems. We aimed to assess the change in delivery of essential and emergency surgeries due to the pandemic.Methodology A research consortium led by WHO Collaboration Centre (WHOCC) for Research in Surgical Care Delivery in Low- and Middle-Income countries (LMIC), India, conducted this retrospective cross-sectional study with 12 recruited centers. All surgeries performed during the months of April 2020 were compared with those performed in April 2019. These surgeries were stratified into emergency and elective, and further categorized based on NHS surgery prioritization documents. Results A total of 4396 surgeries were performed at these centers in April 2019 and 1216 surgeries were performed in same month during 2020, yielding a fall of 72.3% (1216 /4396).We found a 54% reduction in emergency surgeries and a 91% reduction in the elective surgeries. Number of cesarean sections reduced by 29.7% and fracture surgeries declined by 85.3% Laparotomies and surgeries for local soft tissue infections with necrotic tissue reduced by 71.7% and 69.5% respectively.Conclusion Our study quantifies the effects of COVID 19 pandemic on surgical care delivery in India and documents that the overall surgical volume reduced by three fourths in the pandemic period. Emergency surgeries reduced to half when compared with pre-pandemic period. Cesarean section surgeries were affected the least by pandemic, whereas the fracture surgeries and laparotomies were affected the most.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Fractures, Bone , NecrosisABSTRACT
COVID-19, a viral respiratory pandemic, has rapidly spread throughout the globe. Large scale and rapid testing of the population is required to contain the disease, but such testing is prohibitive in terms of resources, cost and time. Recently RT-PCR based pooled testing has emerged as a promising way to boost testing efficiency. We introduce a stepped pooled testing strategy, a probability driven approach which significantly reduces the number of tests required to identify infected individuals in a large population. Our comprehensive methodology incorporates the effect of false negative and positive rates to accurately determine not only the efficiency of pooling but also it's accuracy. Under various plausible scenarios, we show that this approach significantly reduces the cost of testing and also reduces the effective false positive rate of tests when compared to a strategy of testing every individual of a population. We also outline an optimization strategy to obtain the pool size that maximizes the efficiency of pooling given the diagnostic protocol parameters and local infection conditions.