Year: 2014
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Primary Care Medicine, including Family Practice and Pediatrics, relies on physical patient examination skills and relatively simple instruments for diagnostic decision-making, monitoring, and referral to specialists. Otitis media is one of the most common reasons for a visit to the primary care clinic, and represents a significant burden for physicians to properly diagnose and treat this pervasive disease. Unfortunately, technological advances in other areas of medicine far exceed work being done with respect to primary care devices. New advanced diagnostic and quantitative technologies and instruments must to be developed to better assist physicians to detect disease and quantitatively monitor disease progression or regression. This thesis will discuss recent applications of non-invasive optical imaging in the middle ear. A clinical study was organized to observe the tympanic membrane of patients with normal, acute, and chronic infections in an attempt to identify differentiating characteristics of each infection state. Following this work, algorithms were developed to identify and quantify middle ear effusions. Lastly, the development of a second-generation portable handheld primary care OCT imaging system is described. This work is intended to demonstrate the utility of non-invasive optical measurements in the middle ear to better diagnose infection in the primary care setting.
Author: Guillermo L. Monroy
Language: English
Topic: Ear Surgery and Otitis Media
Subfield: Otorhinolaryngology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
Award: G7283954384
OpenAlex ID: W2590298491