Machine Vision based Computer-Aided Detection of Pulmonary Tuberculosis using Chest X-Ray Images

Tuberculosis (TB) is a lethal disease and developing countries are struggling to overcome this health hazard especially in rural areas and faced globally. Therefore, serious measures are required to reduce this global health hazard. Millary and pulmonary are the most common types of tuberculosis occurring globally. X-ray is the preliminary method to detect tuberculosis; however, the diagnosis is quite often subject to human error. In contrast, the chances of curing Tuberculosis depend on its timely and accurate diagnosis. Therefore, an intelligent machine learning algorithm is developed in this study to assist the clinician in an accurate TB identification in x-ray images. The proposed method pre-processes the X-ray image, enhances its quality and extracts the features of each class which are further passed on to a Deep Convolutional Neural Network-based design for the X-ray image classification, followed by the identification of the tuberculosis type i.e. Millary, Cavitary, Healthy. The classification accuracy for the developed method resulted in 88% and 89% for millary and cavitary TB diseases in x ray images.

An Integrated Model of Psychological Entitlement and its Behavioral Outcomes: A Study of Service Sector of Pakistan

This research study examines the association between psychological entitlement and employee negative behavioral outcomes i.e. knowledge hiding behavior and instigated incivility accompanied by mediating role of abusive supervision perceptions. Furthermore, the intervening effect of job stress between psychological entitlement and instigated incivility is also analyzed. Apart from testing these underlying mechanisms, this study elaborates the moderating impact of hostile attribution bias on the association between psychological entitlement and abusive supervision perceptions. The buffering influence of rumination on the linkage between abusive supervision perceptions and two behavioral outcomes i.e. knowledge hiding behavior and instigated incivility is also analyzed. In addition, this research highlights that whether the sense of job calling moderates the positive impact of job stress on instigated incivility or not. Current study follows a sequential explanatory mixed method design where the first phase is quantitative in nature and the second phase is qualitative. In the quantitative phase of the study, data were gathered from 513 respondents in three time lags. Moreover, stratified random sampling technique was used for the stratification of the service sector followed by convenient sampling for data collection from the sample. In order to further explain and validate the quantitative results, unstructured one to one interviews from eight participants using the maximum variation sampling technique were conducted. Ten themes with corresponding subthemes were emerged in the qualitative phase. Integrated analysis of both phases was conducted at the end in the form of elaborate discussion. The quantitative results revealed that psychological entitlement is positively and significantly associated with knowledge hiding behavior and instigated incivility of employees. Furthermore, the mediating impact of abusive supervision perceptions and job stress were found significant. Moreover, the moderating impact of hostile attribution bias and job calling were also proved. However, the boundary level effect of rumination on the association between abusive supervision perceptions and knowledge hiding behavior and between abusive supervision perceptions and instigated incivility was found insignificant. The results of all the hypothesized relationships were further elaborated in the light of qualitative findings. The themes generated as a result of thematic analysis explained significant and insignificant findings of the quantitative phase. This research study also unfolded certain theoretical implications, practical implications and future research directions.