Demographic Profile Associated With Malnutrition

Worldwide, malnutrition is the severemost health problem leading to the highest rate of disease and mortality among children less than 5 years of age. Objective: To find out the association between malnutrition and demographic profile. Methods: 350 malnourished children were chosen by non-probability convenient sampling technique from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Lahore. Children were assessed through pre-tested questionnaire. Data were analyzed by SPSS version 21.0. Results: 45% malnourished children were 1-3 years of age, majority of the children were females (52%), 89% children were from rural areas, 82.6% children were from low socioeconomic status, 54.6% mothers were uneducated, 50% malnourished children were not having their own house, 115 malnourished children were having 3 or more siblings and 89 mothers were having less than one year of pregnancy gap. Conclusions: Low socioeconomic status, illiteracy of mothers, rural area, gap between pregnancy and female gender has been found to be linked with malnutrition in children below 5 years of age.

Automated Detection of Glaucoma from Fundus and Optical Coherence Tomography Images

Medical image analysis can play a substantial role in diagnosis of different medical problems. Glaucoma is an asymptomatic neurological disease. Oculists mostly use fundoscopy or OpticalCoherence-Tomography (O-C-T) to diagnose glaucoma.Fundoscopy can be used to analyse the external stratum of posterior part of the eye whereas, O-C-T imaging technology has the ability to analyse the internal stratums of posterior part of the eye.In this thesis, a Hybrid Computer Aided Diagnosis (H-CAD) system has been proposed that integrates both fundus and O-C-T imaging technologies for reliable diagnosis. Fundus module has a novel combination of hybrid structural and textural features. The system improves the decision making process after analysing a variety of glaucoma conditions. It further consists of two sub modules Hybrid Structural Feature-set (HSF) and Hybrid Texture Feature-set (HTF). HSF module calculates structural changes i.e. Cupto-Disc-Ratio (C-D-R) and classifies a sample using Support-Vector-Machine (S-V-M). HTF module analyses the textural properties of optic nerve head and again using S-V-M, makes a decision. In O-C-T module, C-D-R has been calculated on the base of the inner stratums of the retina. In the Cup Diameter Extraction (C-D-E) method, cup boundary has been marked on the base of Inner-Limiting-Membrane (I-L-M) stratum. The O-C-T module presents a new method to increase the accuracy of I-L-M stratum segmentation. It also introduces a new method to interpolate missing points on the extracted Upper-Surface of I-L-M stratum (?????). In addition, a novel technique to remove outliers from ????? has been applied. In Disc-Diameter-Extraction (D-D-E) process, Retinal-Pigment-Epithelium (R-P-E) stratum termination points have been used to locate disc margin. Earlier to R-P-E stratum segmentation, I-L-M stratum elimination has been done by a new approach to trace and eliminate I-L-M stratum. Finally, precise R-P-E stratum segmentation has been achieved on the base of new Thickness Value approximation technique. Furthermore, a novel standard for cup boundaries identification, on the base of mean value of R-P-E stratum terminations points is offered. A local-dataset of SD-O-C-T and fundus images annotated by four oculists has been used for evaluation of proposed H-CAD system. Each module ofH_CAD system classifies data independently. The final result of H-CAD system is determined based on decision of three diverse modules. The evaluations and results have shown that the final result of H_CAD system is more trustable than its contemporary automated models.