COVID-19 vaccines have met varying levels of acceptance and hesitancy in different parts of the world, which has implications for eliminating the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this systematic review is to examine how and why the rates of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and hesitancy differ across countries and continents. PubMed, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore and Science Direct were searched between 1 January 2020 and 31 July 2021 using keywords such as “COVID-19 vaccine acceptance”. 81 peer-reviewed publications were found to be eligible for review. The analysis shows that there are global variations in vaccine acceptance among different populations. The vaccine-acceptance rates were the highest amongst adults in Ecuador (97%), Malaysia (94.3%) and Indonesia (93.3%) and the lowest amongst adults in Lebanon (21.0%). The general healthcare workers (HCWs) in China (86.20%) and nurses in Italy (91.50%) had the highest acceptance rates, whereas HCWs in the Democratic Republic of Congo had the lowest acceptance (27.70%). A nonparametric one-way ANOVA showed that the differences in vaccine-acceptance rates were statistically significant (H (49) = 75.302, p = 0.009*) between the analyzed countries. However, the reasons behind vaccine hesitancy and acceptance were similar across the board. Low vaccine acceptance was associated with low levels of education and awareness, and inefficient government efforts and initiatives. Furthermore, poor influenza-vaccination history, as well as conspiracy theories relating to infertility and misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine on social media also resulted in vaccine hesitancy. Strategies to address these concerns may increase global COVID-19 vaccine acceptance and accelerate our efforts to eliminate this pandemic.

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disorder mediated by the immune response that affects a large number of people. According to latest worldwide statistics, 125 million individuals are suffering from psoriasis. Deep learning techniques have demonstrated success in the prediction of skin diseases and can also lead to the classification of different types of psoriasis. Hence, we propose a deep learning-based application for effective classification of five types of psoriasis namely, plaque, guttate, inverse, pustular, and erythrodermic as well as the prediction of normal skin. We used 172 images of normal skin from the BFL NTU dataset and 301 images of psoriasis from the Dermnet dataset. The input sample images underwent image preprocessing including data augmentation, enhancement, and segmentation which was followed by color, texture, and shape feature extraction. Two deep learning algorithms of convolutional neural network (CNN) and long short-term memory (LSTM) were applied with the classification models being trained with 80% of the images. The reported accuracies of CNN and LSTM are 84.2% and 72.3%, respectively. A paired sample T-test exhibited significant differences between the accuracies generated by the two deep learning algorithms with a . The accuracies reported from this study demonstrate potential of this deep learning application to be applied to other areas of dermatology for better prediction.

Background. Dental caries is one of the major oral health problems and is increasing rapidly among people of every age (children, men, and women). Deep learning, a field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), is a growing field nowadays and is commonly used in dentistry. AI is a reliable platform to make dental care better, smoother, and time-saving for professionals. AI helps the dentistry professionals to fulfil demands of patients and to ensure quality treatment and better oral health care. AI can also help in predicting failures of clinical cases and gives reliable solutions. In this way, it helps in reducing morbidity ratio and increasing quality treatment of dental problem in population. Objectives. The main objective of this study is to conduct a systematic review of studies concerning the association between dental caries and machine learning. The objective of this study is to design according to the PICO criteria. Materials and Methods. A systematic search for randomized trials was conducted under the guidelines of PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses). In this study, e-search was conducted from four databases including PubMed, IEEE Xplore, Science Direct, and Google Scholar, and it involved studies from year 2008 to 2022. Result. This study fetched a total of 133 articles, from which twelve are selected for this systematic review. We analyzed different types of machine learning algorithms from which deep learning is widely used with dental caries images dataset. Neural Network Backpropagation algorithm, one of the deep learning algorithms, gives a maximum accuracy of 99. Conclusion. In this systematic review, we concluded how deep learning has been applied to the images of teeth to diagnose the detection of dental caries with its three types (proximal, occlusal, and root caries). Considering our findings, further well-designed studies are needed to demonstrate the diagnosis of further types of dental caries that are based on progression (chronic, acute, and arrested), which tells us about the severity of caries, virginity of lesion, and extent of caries. Apart from dental caries, AI in the future will emerge as supreme technology to detect other diseases of oral region combinedly and comprehensively because AI will easily analyze big datasets that contain multiple records.

Alopecia areata is defined as an autoimmune disorder that results in hair loss. The latest worldwide statistics have exhibited that alopecia areata has a prevalence of 1 in 1000 and has an incidence of 2%. Machine learning techniques have demonstrated potential in different areas of dermatology and may play a significant role in classifying alopecia areata for better prediction and diagnosis. We propose a framework pertaining to the classification of healthy hairs and alopecia areata. We used 200 images of healthy hairs from the Figaro1k dataset and 68 hair images of alopecia areata from the Dermnet dataset to undergo image preprocessing including enhancement and segmentation. This was followed by feature extraction including texture, shape, and color. Two classification techniques, i.e., support vector machine (SVM) and -nearest neighbor (KNN), are then applied to train a machine learning model with 70% of the images. The remaining image set was used for the testing phase. With a 10-fold cross-validation, the reported accuracies of SVM and KNN are 91.4% and 88.9%, respectively. Paired sample -test showed significant differences between the two accuracies with a . SVM generated higher accuracy (91.4%) as compared to KNN (88.9%). The findings of our study demonstrate potential for better prediction in the field of dermatology.

Upper limb myoelectric prosthetic control is an essential topic in the field of rehabilitation. The technique controls prostheses using surface electromyogram (sEMG) and intramuscular EMG (iEMG) signals. EMG signals are extensively used in controlling prosthetic upper and lower limbs, virtual reality entertainment, and human-machine interface (HMI). EMG signals are vital parameters for machine learning and deep learning algorithms and help to give an insight into the human brain’s function and mechanisms. Pattern recognition techniques pertaining to support vector machine (SVM), k-nearest neighbor (KNN) and Bayesian classifiers have been utilized to classify EMG signals. This paper presents a review on current EMG signal techniques, including electrode array utilization, signal acquisition, signal preprocessing and post-processing, feature selection and extraction, data dimensionality reduction, classification, and ultimate application to the community. The paper also discusses using alternatives to EMG signals, such as force sensors, to measure muscle activity with reliable results. Future implications for EMG classification include employing deep learning techniques such as artificial neural networks (ANN) and recurrent neural networks (RNN) for achieving robust results.

In order to perform their daily activities, a person is required to communicating with others. This can be a major obstacle for the deaf population of the world, who communicate using sign languages (SL). Pakistani Sign Language (PSL) is used by more than 250,000 deaf Pakistanis. Developing a SL recognition system would greatly facilitate these people. This study aimed to collect data of static and dynamic PSL alphabets and to develop a vision-based system for their recognition using Bag-of-Words (BoW) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) techniques. A total of 5120 images for 36 static PSL alphabet signs and 353 videos with 45,224 frames for 3 dynamic PSL alphabet signs were collected from 10 native signers of PSL. The developed system used the collected data as input, resized the data to various scales and converted the RGB images into grayscale. The resized grayscale images were segmented using Thresholding technique and features were extracted using Speeded Up Robust Feature (SURF). The obtained SURF descriptors were clustered using K-means clustering. A BoW was obtained by computing the Euclidean distance between the SURF descriptors and the clustered data. The codebooks were divided into training and testing using fivefold cross validation. The highest overall classification accuracy for static PSL signs was 97.80% at 750 × 750 image dimensions and 500 Bags. For dynamic PSL signs a 96.53% accuracy was obtained at 480 × 270 video resolution and 200 Bags.