ataxia: inherited disease that affects areas in the brain and spinal cord that control coordination, muscle movement, and other functions;
Guillain-Barré syndrome: autoimmune disorder of the nerves that leads to muscle weakness or paralysis;
Lambert–Eaton myasthenic syndrome: autoimmune disorder of the nerves that causes muscle weakness;
multiple mononeuropathy: a nervous system disorder that involves damage to at least two separate nerve areas;
mononeuropathy: damage to a single nerve that results in loss of movement, sensation, or other function of that nerve;
myopathy: muscle degeneration caused by a number of disorders, including muscular dystrophy;
myasthenia gravis: autoimmune disorder of the nerves that causes weakness of the voluntary muscles;
peripheral neuropathy: damage of nerves away from the brain and spinal cord;
polymyositis: muscle weakness, swelling, tenderness, and tissue damage of the skeletal muscles;
radial nerve dysfunction: damage of the radial nerve causing loss of movement or sensation in the back of the arm or hand;
sciatic nerve dysfunction: injury to or pressure on the sciatic nerve that causes weakness, numbness, or tingling in the leg;
sensorimotor polyneuropathy: condition that causes a decreased ability to move or feel because of nerve damage;
Shy–Drager syndrome: nervous system disease that causes body-wide symptoms;
thyrotoxic periodic paralysis: muscle weakness from high levels of thyroid hormone;
tibial nerve dysfunction: damage of the tibial nerve causing loss of movement or sensation in the foot.
Surface EMGs are very noisy and often include the effects of heart pulsation, movement, and system noise. Therefore, computerised systems and algorithms for recognition of the abnormalities should be robust against noise. In some cases, however, EMG is taken invasively by inserting a needle electrode into the muscle.
A physical or physiological condition caused by a disease is often called the pathological state. Such a state is also evaluated by examining biochemistry and chemical metabolism of the human body often through sampling and laboratory analysis of human blood, exhale, tissue, urine, or faeces.
2.4 Biological State of Human Body
Biology is a general term which describes various organs of living organisms, including human, and their behaviour starting from biochemical reactions in tissue molecules and tissue cell behaviour in circulatory, respiratory, and nervous systems.
Current techniques in system biology focus on complex interactions within biological systems, using a holistic approach to biological research. One of the aims of systems biology is to model and discover emergent properties of cells, tissues, and organisms, collectively functioning as a system, whose theoretical description is only possible using techniques which fall under the remit of systems biology [13]. These typically involve metabolic or cell signalling networks [14] available in all live human organs.
Biological abnormalities refer to either genetic disorders, which may cause secondary problems, or infectious, bacterial, and immunodeficiency diseases. Tuberculosis, cholera, malaria, and AIDS as one of the deadliest one caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are some examples of biological diseases.
Genetic disorders are caused by point mutation or gene damage due to insertion or deletion of a gene bond, deletion of a gene or genes, missing chromosomes, or trinucleotide repeat disorder. There are many types of such disorders, including colour blindness, cystic fibrosis, Down syndrome, haemophilia, neurofibromatosis, polycystic kidney disease, and spinal muscular atrophy.
Monitoring the human body for diseases often starts from noninvasive examinations and data recordings followed by taking and testing blood or urine samples. In the later stages, however, invasive tissue sampling by means of biopsy or various imaging modalities may become necessary. As an example, for monitoring a tumour in the body, the examination may be extended to biopsy operation and radiography to enable accurate diagnosis.
A class of biological diseases called autoimmune diseases are among the top mortality causes according to the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA). These diseases are the result of an abnormal immune response of the body against substances and tissues normally present in the body [15]. To diagnose autoimmune diseases, high resolution imaging of the affected organ through indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) is needed. IIF is an imaging technique that captures images of human epithelial type-2 (HEp-2) cells [16]. Using this imaging technique, antinuclear antibody (ANA), a type of autoantibody binding to the contents of the cell nucleus, is considered a hallmark of autoimmune diseases.
In the IIF test, antibodies are first stained in HEp-2 tissue and then bound to a fluorescent chemical compound. In the cells containing ANAs, the antibodies bound to the nucleus demonstrate different patterns that can be captured and seen via microscope imaging. Categorising the patterns in the HEp-2 cell images can be used to distinguish the phase and severity of autoimmune diseases [17]. The IIF imaging test consists of five different stages [18] where the first stage is autofocus image acquisition to reduce photobleaching effects [19]. The second stage is automatic segmentation of the cells using methods such as the similarity-based watershed and adaptive edge-based segmentation [20, 21]. This is followed by the mitotic cell segmentation using morphological and textural features and local binary patterns (LBPs) [22]. In the fourth stage, the intensity level images are classified into three classes of negative, intermediate, and positive intensities [23]. Finally, the cell staining patterns are classified into centromere (Ce), coarse-speckled (Cs), cytoplasmatic (Cy), fine-speckled (Fs), homogeneous (H), nucleolar (N), and Golgi (G), corresponding to different types of autoimmune diseases.
Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) systems, developed by engineers and computer scientists for automatic classification of HEp-2 cells, have attracted much interest in the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases. The systems reduce the cost and time of the diagnosis process and provide repeatability of the test for different physicians.
2.5 Psychological and Behavioural State of the Human Body
Body functions under brain control, thus any factor affecting the human brain, consequently influence the behavioural and physical states of the body. The new technology, the tremendous research, and the conceptual advances in the behavioural, biological, and medical sciences can certainly aid recognition of bidirectional and multilevel relationships between behaviour and health. Psychological, neurological, and anatomical diagnoses often involve different screening and testing procedures. For example, epileptic seizure has different symptoms including whole body movement, heart rate variation, and most importantly changes in the EEG dynamics and waveforms. On the other hand, an anatomical problem, often caused by a brain tumour, should be diagnosed through medical imaging followed by pathological tests.
Figure 2.2 Different brain sensory zones. (See color plate section for color representation of this figure)
Although the brain's action is unpredictable during
