Behnaz Ghoraani

Prof. Dr. Behnaz Ghoraani

Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA
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Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

16Years (2011-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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1 February 2020 in Data
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
MHMurtadha Hssayeni
Murtadha Hssayeni
MCMuayad Croock
Muayad Croock
Aymen Dawood SalmanAymen Dawood Salman
Aymen Dawood Salman
HAHassan Falah Al-Khafaji
Hassan Falah Al-Khafaji
ZYZakaria A. Yahya
Zakaria A. Yahya
BGBehnaz Ghoraani
Behnaz Ghoraani
Traumatic brain injuries may cause intracranial hemorrhages (ICH). ICH could lead to disability or death if it is not accurately diagnosed and treated in a time-sensitive procedure. The current clinical protocol to diagnose ICH is examining Computerized Tomography (CT) scans by radiologists to detect ICH and localize its regions. However, this process relies heavily on the availability of an experienced radiologist. In this paper, we designed a study protocol to collect a dataset of 82 CT scans of subjects with a traumatic brain injury. Next, the ICH regions were manually delineated in each slice by a consensus decision of two radiologists. The dataset is publicly available online at the PhysioNet repository for future analysis and comparisons. In addition to publishing the dataset, which is the main purpose of this manuscript, we implemented a deep Fully Convolutional Networks (FCNs), known as U-Net, to segment the ICH regions from the CT scans in a fully-automated manner. The method as a proof of concept achieved a Dice coefficient of 0.31 for the ICH segmentation based on 5-fold cross-validation.

1 February 2021 in Biomedical Signal Processing and Control
Verified
Journal Article
Closed access
BGBehnaz Ghoraani
Behnaz Ghoraani
LBLillian N. Boettcher
Lillian N. Boettcher
MHMurtadha D. Hssayeni
Murtadha D. Hssayeni
ARAmie Rosenfeld
Amie Rosenfeld
MTMagdalena I. Tolea
Magdalena I. Tolea
JGJames E. Galvin
James E. Galvin

28 September 2019 in Sensors
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
MHMurtadha Hssayeni
Murtadha Hssayeni
JJJoohi Jimenez-Shahed
Joohi Jimenez-Shahed
MBMichelle A. Burack
Michelle A. Burack
BGBehnaz Ghoraani
Behnaz Ghoraani
Tremor is one of the main symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) that reduces the quality of life. Tremor is measured as part of the Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) part III. However, the assessment is based on onsite physical examinations and does not fully represent the patients’ tremor experience in their day-to-day life. Our objective in this paper was to develop algorithms that, combined with wearable sensors, can estimate total Parkinsonian tremor as the patients performed a variety of free body movements. We developed two methods: an ensemble model based on gradient tree boosting and a deep learning model based on long short-term memory (LSTM) networks. The developed methods were assessed on gyroscope sensor data from 24 PD subjects. Our analysis demonstrated that the method based on gradient tree boosting provided a high correlation (r = 0.96 using held-out testing and r = 0.93 using subject-based, leave-one-out cross-validation) between the estimated and clinically assessed tremor subscores in comparison to the LSTM-based method with a moderate correlation (r = 0.84 using held-out testing and r = 0.77 using subject-based, leave-one-out cross-validation). These results indicate that our approach holds great promise in providing a full spectrum of the patients’ tremor from continuous monitoring of the subjects’ movement in their natural environment.

8 June 2022 in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
MSMahmoud Seifallahi
Mahmoud Seifallahi
AMAfsoon Hasani Mehraban
Afsoon Hasani Mehraban
JGJames E. Galvin
James E. Galvin
BGBehnaz Ghoraani
Behnaz Ghoraani
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease affecting cognitive and functional abilities. However, many patients presume lower cognitive or functional abilities because of aging and do not undergo clinical assessments until the symptoms become too advanced. Developing a low-cost and easy-to-use AD detection tool, which can be used in any clinical or non-clinical setting, can enable widespread AD assessments and diagnosis. This paper investigated the feasibility of developing such a tool to detect AD vs. healthy control (HC) from a simple balance and walking assessment called the Timed Up and Go (TUG) test. We collected joint position data of 47 HC and 38 AD subjects as they performed TUG in front of a Kinect V.2 camera. Our signal processing and statistical analyses provided a comprehensive analysis of balance and gait with 12 significant features for discriminating AD from HC after adjusting for age and the Geriatric Depression Scale. Using these features and a support vector machine classifier, our model classified the two groups with an average accuracy of 97.75% and an F-score of 97.67% for five-fold cross-validation and 98.68% and 98.67% for leave-one-subject out cross-validation. These results demonstrate the potential of our approach as a new quantitative complementary tool for detecting AD among older adults. Our work is novel as it presents the first application of Kinect V.2 camera and machine learning to provide a comprehensive and quantitative analysis of the TUG test to detect AD patients from HC. This study supports the feasibility of developing a low-cost and convenient AD assessment tool that can be used during routine checkups or even at home; however, future investigations could confirm its clinical diagnostic value in a larger cohort.

1 February 2021 in IEEE Access
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
MHMurtadha Hssayeni
Murtadha Hssayeni
BGBehnaz Ghoraani
Behnaz Ghoraani
Automated momentary estimation of positive and negative affects (PA and NA), the basic sense of feeling, can play an essential role in detecting the early signs of mood disorders. Physiological wearable sensors and machine learning have a potential to make such automated and continuous measurements. However, the physiological signals' features that are associated with the subject-reported PA or NA may not be known. In this work, we use data-driven feature extraction based on deep learning to investigate the application of raw physiological signals for estimating PA and NA. Specifically, we propose two multi-modal data fusion methods with deep Convolutional Neural Networks. We use the proposed architecture to estimate PA and NA and also classify baseline, stress, and amusement emotions. The training and evaluation of the methods are performed using four physiological and one chest motion signal modalities collected using a chest sensing unit from 15 subjects. Overall, our proposed model performed better than traditional machine learning on hand-crafted features. Utilizing only two modalities, our proposed model estimated PA with a correlation of 0.69 (P<; 0.05) vs. 0.59 (P<; 0.05) with traditional machine learning. These correlations were 0.79 (P<; 0.05) vs. 0.73 (P<; 0.05) for NA estimation. The best emotion classification was achieved by the traditional method with 79% F1-score and 80% accuracy when all the four physiological modalities are used. This is while with only two modalities, the deep learning achieved 78% F1-score and 79% accuracy.

31 March 2021 in BioMedical Engineering OnLine
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
PDF file
MHMurtadha D. Hssayeni
Murtadha D. Hssayeni
JJJoohi Jimenez-Shahed
Joohi Jimenez-Shahed
MBMichelle A. Burack
Michelle A. Burack
BGBehnaz Ghoraani
Behnaz Ghoraani
Background: Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale-part III (UPDRS III) is part of the standard clinical examination performed to track the severity of Parkinson’s disease (PD) motor complications. Wearable technologies could be used to reduce the need for on-site clinical examinations of people with Parkinson’s disease (PwP) and provide a reliable and continuous estimation of the severity of PD at home. The reported estimation can be used to successfully adjust the dose and interval of PD medications.Methods: We developed a novel algorithm for unobtrusive and continuous UPDRS-III estimation at home using two wearable inertial sensors mounted on the wrist and ankle. We used the ensemble of three deep-learning models to detect UPDRS-III-related patterns from a combination of hand-crafted features, raw temporal signals, and their time–frequency representation. Specifically, we used a dual-channel, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) for hand-crafted features, 1D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-LSTM for raw signals, and 2D CNN-LSTM for time–frequency data. We utilized transfer learning from activity recognition data and proposed a two-stage training for the CNN-LSTM networks to cope with the limited amount of data.Results: The algorithm was evaluated on gyroscope data from 24 PwP as they performed different daily living activities. The estimated UPDRS-III scores had a correlation of $$0.79\, (\textit{p}<0.0001)$$0.79(p<0.0001) and a mean absolute error of 5.95 with the clinical examination scores without requiring the patients to perform any specific tasks.Conclusion: Our analysis demonstrates the potential of our algorithm for estimating PD severity scores unobtrusively at home. Such an algorithm could provide the required motor-complication measurements without unnecessary clinical visits and help the treating physician provide effective management of the disease.