Cortical thickness of the tibial diaphysis reveals age- and sex-related characteristics between non-obese healthy young and elderly subjects depending on the tibial regions

Purpose This study aimed to evaluate the age- and sex-related characteristics in cortical thickness of the tibial diaphysis between non-obese healthy young and elderly subjects as reference data. Methods The study investigated 31 young subjects (12 men and 19 women; mean age, 25 ± 8 years) and 54 elderly subjects (29 men and 25 women; mean age, 70 ± 6 years). Three-dimensional estimated cortical thickness of the tibial diaphysis was automatically calculated for 5000–9000 measurement points using the high-resolution cortical thickness measurement from clinical computed tomography data. In 12 assessment regions created by combining three heights (proximal, central, and distal diaphysis) and four areas of the axial plane at 90° (medial, anterior, lateral, and posterior areas) in the tibial coordinate system, the standardized thickness was assessed using the tibial length. Results As structural characteristics, there were no differences in the medial and lateral thicknesses, while the anterior thickness was greater than the posterior thickness in all groups. The sex-related difference was not shown. As an age-related difference, elderly subjects showed greater or lesser cortical thickness than the young subjects, depending on the regions of the tibia. Conclusions Cortical thickness was different depending on sex, age, and regions in the tibia. The results of this study are of clinical relevance as reference points to clarify the causes of various pathological conditions for diseases. Level of evidence Level 3.

The importance of sonographic evaluation of muscle depth and thickness prior to the ‘tiny percutaneous needle biopsy’

Biopsy of human skeletal muscle tissue is a widely used method in many research studies, where ‘the tiny percutaneous needle biopsy’ (TPNB) is one of the relatively simplest and safest procedures currently available. By using and contrasting ultrasound images of vastus lateralis of young and elderly subjects, this work highlights further the safety aspects of TPNB and stresses the importance of prior ultrasound evaluation of muscle depth and thickness in order to prevent wrong muscle group or tissue sampling in subsequent laboratory analyses.

Finding Characteristics of Users in Sensory Information: From Activities to Personality Traits

The main objective of this work was to use information provided by a sensor-based activity recognition system to create a profile comprising user habits and link this information to the personality traits of users. User habits are represented by the sequence and duration of often observed daily life activities. Based on this information, we represented the user trials (sequence of activities) following a numerical method using Fourier series. The duration and sequence of the activities changed the phase and amplitude of the harmonics present in the Fourier representation. Each trial represented in this manner is called a behavioral spectrum. These data and the scores obtained from personality questionnaires were clustered separately and then an association was created between the clusters. The objective was to associate the activity-related features (sensor-based) and personality traits. The experimental results showed that for both young and elderly subjects, there is an association between the user personality traits and the manner in which they perform their activities. Moreover, the results obtained in this work show a promising method of assessing the personality traits of users based on their activities.