Chair's Introduction to 2009 IEEE Circuits and Systems International Conference on Testing and Diagnosis

Based on the recommendation of ICTD＇09 TPC members, this Special Issue of the Journal of Electronic Science ＆ Technology of China （JESTC） contained 22 high quality papers selected from the Proceedings of 2009 IEEE Circuits and Systems International Conference on Testing and Diagnosis （ICTD ＇09） which is fully sponsored by the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society （CASS）, and is technically co-sponsored by the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China （UESTC）, the Chinese Institute of Electronics （CIE）, the China Instrument ＆ Control Society （CIS）, and organized by UESTC.

SPECTRAL TECHNIQUES FOR OFF-LINE TESTING AND DIAGNOSIS OF COMPUTER SYSTEMS

In this paper we present some of our recent results on applications of spectral techniques over finite fields to the problems of testing and diagnosis of computer systems.

Alterations in the Results of Biochemical Laboratory Tests Due to the Administration of Antihypertensive Drugs

Objective:Perform a literary review of the interference in the results of biochemical laboratory tests caused by antihypertensive drugs.Methods:This is a review of the scientific literature with descriptive research performed according to the PRISMA model using the databases PUBMED,SCIELO,MEDLINE,LILACS,and searches of Brazilian Ministry of Health and Federal Pharmacy Council publications,reagent kits and package inserts approved by ANVISA.Literature and papers in Portuguese and English were selected,prioritizing the years 2010 to 2020.Results:The diuretic class of antihypertensive drugs causes decreases glucose tolerance,thus resulting in an increase in triglycerides.In long-term use,the drug captopril can increase serum levels of potassium,creatine kinase and decreases blood sodium.Methyldopa causes an increase in AST levels.Propranolol is associated with an increase in triglyceride levels and a decrease in HDL and glucose levels.The constant use of losartan results in an increase in HDL,a decrease in uric acid levels and a slight and transient increase in transaminases.In the Gold Analisa,Bioclin and Labtest reagent kits,most of the alterations occur due to the increase in levels of serum biomarkers according to the class of the antihypertensive drug.Conclusions:Biochemical alterations in serum can result in false-positive or false-negative reports,since it can be observed that most of the dosages caused increases due to the physiological effect of the drugs.The antihypertensive drugs that showed the highest incidence of interference were captopril,atenolol,losartan and propranolol.

Accuracy of a new rapid diagnostic test for urinary antigen detection and assessment of drug treatment in opisthorchiasis

Background Screening for opisthorchiasis,a parasitic worm infection affecting many millions of people in Southeast Asia,has traditionally relied on faecal egg examination such as the formalin-ethyl acetate concentration technique(FECT)and Kato-Katz method.Although the urinary enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA)has been used more recently,we developed a urinary antigen-based rapid diagnostic test(RDT)to simplify diagnosis and as a point-of-care testing(POCT)and field applications for surveillance and control of opisthorchiasis.Methods A urinaryOpisthorchis viverrini(OV)-RDT was developed using immunochromatographic methodology with a specific monoclonal antibody against OV.The diagnostic performance of the urinary OV-RDT was compared to that of quantitative faecal FECT and urinary antigen ELISA(n=493).Cross-reactivities of urinary OV-RDT with other helminthiases coexisted withO.viverrini were determined(n=96).A field trial in the application of urinary OV-RDT was compared with urinary antigen ELISA at baseline screening and assessment of drug treatment outcomes in opisthorchiasis(n=1629).The McNemar chi-square,Kruskal-Wallis and Cohen’s kappa coefficient(κ-value)tests were used for statistical analyses.Results Urinary OV-RDT had sensitivity of 94.2%and specificity of 93.2%,compared to faecal FECT.Urinary OV-RDT had high diagnostic agreement(Kappa=0.842-0.874,P<0.001)and quantitative correlation with urinary antigen ELISA(Kruskal-Wallis tests=316.2,P<0.0001)and faecal FECT(Kruskal-Wallis tests=362.3,P<0.0001).The positive rates by OV-RDT,ELISA and FECT were 48.9%,52.5%and 49.3%,respectively.Cross-reactions of urinary OV-RDT with other helminthiases were few(2%).Field trials of urinary OV-RDT yielded comparable prevalence ofO.viverrini between urinary OV-RDT(53.2%)and urinary antigen ELISA(54.0%).OV screening showed high diagnostic agreement(kappa>0.8,P<0.0001)between urinary OV-RDT and urinary antigen ELISA.The cure rates of opisthorchiasis at 1 month post-praziquantel treatment determined by urinary OV-RDT(86.6%)and urinary antigen ELISA(80.5%)were similar(P>0.05).Conclusions The urinary OV-RDT test has high potential as a new tool for screening and evaluating treatment outcomes in opisthorchiasis.The ease of sample collection and simplicity of urinary OV-RDT may facilitate mass screening,control and elimination of opisthorchiasis,thereby contributing to a reduction in the disease burden in Southeast Asia.

Test sequencing problem arising at the design stage for reducing life cycle cost

Previous test sequencing algorithms only consider the execution cost of a test at the application stage. Due to the fact that the placement cost of some tests at the design stage is considerably high compared with the execution cost, the sequential diagnosis strategy obtained by previous methods is actually not optimal from the view of life cycle. In this paper, the test sequencing problem based on life cycle cost is presented. It is formulated as an optimization problem, which is non-deterministic polynomial-time hard （NP-hard）. An algorithm and a strategy to improve its computational efficiency are proposed. The formulation and algorithms are tested on various simulated systems and comparisons are made with the extant test sequencing methods. Application on a pump rotational speed control （PRSC） system of a spacecraft is studied in detail. Both the simulation results and the real-world case application results suggest that the solution proposed in this paper can significantly reduce the life cycle cost of a sequential fault diagnosis strategy.