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Emerging molecular and precision medicine makes nuclear medicine a de facto choice of imaging, especially in the era of target-oriented medical care. Nuclear medicine is minimally invasive, four-dimensional (space and time or dynamic space), and functional imaging using radioactive biochemical tracers in evaluating human diseases on an anatomically configured image. Many radiopharmaceuticals are also used in therapies. However, there have been concerns over the emission of radiation from the radionuclides, resulting in wrongly neglecting the potential benefits against little or any risks at all of imaging to the patients. The sound concepts of radiation and radiation protection are critical for promoting the optimal use of radiopharmaceuticals to patients, and alleviating concerns from caregivers, nuclear medicine staff, medical colleagues, and the public alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Understanding balance ability and assessing the risk of possible falls are very important for elderly rehabilitation. The Mini-Balanced Evaluation System Test (Mini-BESTest) is an important survey for older adults to evaluate subject balance, but it is not easy to complete due to various limitations of physical activities, including occasional fear of injury. A center of pressure (CoP) signal can be extracted from a force pressure plate with a short recording time, and it is relatively achievable to ask subjects to stand on a force pressure plate in a clinical environment. The goal of this study is to estimate the cutoff score of Mini-BESTest scores from CoP data. Methods: CoP signals from a human balance evaluation database with data from 75 people were used. Time domain, frequency domain, and nonlinear domain parameters of 60 s CoP signals were extracted to classify different cutoff point scores for both linear regression and a decision tree algorithm. Classification performances were evaluated by accuracy and area under a receiver operating characteristic curve. Results: The correlation coefficient between real and estimated Mini-BESTest scores by linear regression is 0.16. Instead of linear regression, binary classification accuracy above or below a cutoff point score was developed to examine the CoP classification performance for Mini-BESTest scores. The decision tree algorithm is superior to regression analysis among scores from 16 to 20. The highest area under the curve is 0.76 at a cutoff point score of 21 for the CoP measurement condition of eyes opened on the foam, and the corresponding classification accuracy is 76.15%. Conclusions: CoP measurement is a potential tool to estimate corresponding balance and fall survey scores for elderly rehabilitation and is useful for clinical users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]