Graham Ewing Mulberry House 6 Vine Farm Close Cotgrave Notts. NG12 3TU
[email protected]
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENTS Graham Ewing and Dr Elena Ewing are owners of Montague Diagnostics Ltd, the UK company established to promote Virtual Scanning outside the Russian Federation.
Dr Alex Hankey is acting as a scientific adviser to Montague Diagnostics Ltd.
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Y Borovleva PhD for personal tuition and continuing guidance in the use of the Virtual Scanning system.
REFERENCES Ewing G. Virtual Scanning: A Summary. Report submitted to NHS Health Technology Assessment Committee. December 2004. Available from the author on request (
[email protected]). Grakov I. Strannik Diagnostic and Treatment System; a Virtual Scanner for the Health Service. Minutes of Meeting No. 11 of the Praesidium of the Siberian of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (AMN) held in Novosibirsk 4 December 1985. 'The Science' 2001 (in Russian). Grakov I. Description of Virtual Scanning system for operators. Mimex, Sochi, Russia 2002a. English translation available at: http://www.montague-diagnostics.co.uk/files/Grakov/Article7.pdf Grakov I. Lectures for the Training of Virtual Scanning Practitioners (in Russian). Mimex. Sochi, Russia 2002b. Vyosochin Y. Methodology and Technology of Invigoration of Different Population Orders. In: Consolidated 5 year Research Plan of Physical Training, Sports and Tourism State Committee of the Russian Federation. 2000. English translation available at: http://www.montague-diagnostics.co.uk/files/Vysochin/Vysochin.pdf
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deviation from normality of test results on colour cognition, recognition, imagination, memory and so on.
For GP's, Virtual Scanning (a) enables them to improve diagnoses, and (b) avoid allegations of misdiagnosis It can provide them (c) with independent confirmation of a diagnosis, and (d) the option to issue a report to those tested. For patients, it produces a report on all aspects of their health, allowing them to make improvements in aevery part of their system before deterioration has become irreversible.
Virtual Scanning Health Assessment is based on the assumption that the physiology is constructed and regulated according to holistic principles, rather thant the merely reductionist ones at the basis of classical scientific thought and analysis. Its success suggests that brain processing is indeed holistically organised. Each aspect of cognitive processing can therefore be related to corresponding processes in the physiology, such as biochemical ones, which may have medical or behavioural implications. The integrated, holistic structure of brain data processing is the key to the Virtual Scanner's efficacy as a diagnostic tool.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Elena Ewing would like to thank IG Grakov DSc., Y Spassky PhD, I Plotnikova PhD and 18
scientific sense without several correlated assessments. In practice, Virtual Scanning is a qualitative or semi-quantitative system differentiating conditions into several stages of departure from health.
It addresses the problem of diagnosing the health of various parts of the system by measuring associated conditions of the brain's sensory data processing abilities, rather than by quantifying symptoms in terms of measured levels of e.g. biochemicals or blood pressure. Because brain processing depends on so many input variables in specific ways, Virtual Scanning is able to yield information about a large number of different physiological and psychophysiological variables in a single test, instead of one variable at a time, which conventional tests are designed to do. Because of the brain's sensitivity to physiological input information, the test is able to determine progressively deteriorating conditions of organs and functional systems in the physiology, which translate from the medical perspective into sensitivity to pre-symptomatic or pre-clinical conditions, and from the psychological perspective into behavioural issues. It is thus able to give early warning of the onset of potentially dangerous conditions, and has the potential to form the basis for radically new preventative health screening programmes.
These considerations make it clear why Virtual Scanning is so named: it provides a sophisticated tool of assessment of internal states of the system similar to an MRI or X-Ray Tomography requiring large quantities of computer analysis of received data. It does so in the virtual reality of information processing in the brain, which it analyses by means of
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medicine.
While the number of patients in some of the disease categories are small, the number of conditions reported and the low standard deviation indicate reliability values that may be expected for other similar comparison tests with further disease categories not tested by Vyosochin.
SPECIFIC UNIQUE DIAGNOSTIC CAPABILITIES In certain disease categories, Virtual Scanning has special advantages • Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia: in both categories , clear profiles are obtained indicating lack of compensatory response by the endocrine system. Identification of mechanism is of great value in both these pathologies.
•Migraine: it can detect differences between various conditions under the general category of migraine. Its analysis can wxplain the specific cause of each sufferer's problem.
SUMMARY Virtual Scanning is the first comprehensive broad-spectrum means of health assessment giving a quantified report on all aspects of the health. In contrast, other comparable systems such as e.g. the various systems of pulse diagnosis of oriental medicine, yield a subjective assessment which, though invaluable, make them qualitative, and unquantifiable in the
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Chronic Hepatitis
5
4
80,0 %
21
Chronic Cholecystitis
46
39
84,8 %
22
Cholelithiasis
13
10
76,9 %
23
Diabetes Mellitus
17
15
88,2 %
370
305
82,4 %
TABLE CAPTION Clinical research by Y. Vysochin on 370 patients yielded confirmation by clinical diagnosis in 82.4% of cases, the extra 17.6% being preclinical - establishing a high degree of accuracy for Virtual Scanning diagnostics This demonstrates a 100% confirmation of clinical cases, while the descrepancy is due to differences in the criteria for each condition set by Virtual Scanning and the tests of the condition with which it was being conpared - formally, the 17.6% difference is a combination of false positives for virtaul scanning, andfalse negatives for the conventional test.
The above results were obtained by comparison with diagnostic methods and technologies which, though established, nevertheless themselves have inherent limitations and are not 100% reliable. A cross correlation Cab, such as the ones reported above, will not yield a value higher than squ.rt. (Caa x Cbb) the product of the aurocorrelations Caa and Cbb, the reliabilities of each diagnostic system taken seperately. Further reports by Grakov and research carried out at other medical institutes support the above findings - researchers at a variety of medical institutes and organizations have obtained similar results, confirming the general level of correlation found in this study (Grakov 1985/2001).
Montague Diagnostics have also found results of Virtual Scanning Health Assessment tests to be highly reproducible and reliable. First, results of two consecutive independent tests are in agreement, a fact guiding further research. Secondly, patient comments confirm that results are in agreement with confirmed diagnoses - they generally appear to be as accurate as existing test procedures. In particular, examples of cases like the Migraine example 1 have been obtained, where assessment has been superior to that given by conventional 15
and peripheral blood vessels (idiopathic hypotension). There is no evidence of a bacterial infection, although the kidney and liver are clearly stressed, presumably by the effect of antibiotics. In addition, increasing stress levels are indicated by pathological processes developing in heart, digestive system and pancreas.
CLINICAL ASSESSMENTS OF RELIABILITY Diagnosis
# of Patients
Confirmed
Effectiveness
1
Vegetative-vascular Distony
14
10
71,4 %
2
Encephalopathy
4
4
100,0 %
3
Cerebrovascular Disorders
28
22
78,6 %
4
Acute Bronchitis
12
10
83,3 %
5
Chronic Bronchitis
11
9
81,8 %
6
Acute Rhinitis
16
13
81,5 %
7
Tonsillitis
13
11
84,6 %
8
Chronic Otitis
3
3
100,0 %
9
Ankilosing Spondilitis
6
5
83,3 %
10
Vertebral Osteoarthrosis
34
30
88,2 %
11
Intercostal Neuralgia
11
8
72,7 %
12
Polyneuropathies
11
9
81,8 %
13
Ischaemic Heart Disease
9
7
77,8 %
14
Hypertension
33
27
81,8 %
15
Chronic Pyelonephritis
6
5
83,3 %
16
Nephrolithiasis
11
9
81,8 %
17
Chronic Gastritis
29
24
82,8 %
18
Peptic Ulcer Diseases
22
19
86,4 %
19
Chronic Pancreatitis
16
12
75,0 %
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EXAMPLE OF HEALTH ASSESSMENT RESULTS Results of a health assessment include: (1) assessment of the stability of 13 functional systems ordered according to degree of destabilization; (2) detailed reports on all 34 organs and systems in the body comprising an average of 15 medical conditions per report; (3) each medical condition is assessed in terms of (a) the pathological process, and (b) the compensatory process; (4) the stage of each medical condition classified as: presymptomatic, acute, chronic or irreversible.
Summary example: The patient, a 59 year old woman, had suffered from MIGRAINE attacks since the age of 11, worsening in recent years. Recently admitted to hospital in a semiconscious condition, she was given 7 different drugs (painkillers/NSAI) over a short period. Given antibiotics as a preventative measure. Previously diagnosed with spondilitis.
Results, by Virtual Scanning assessment, indicate that the cause of patient's condition determined as migraine and epilepsy - is associated with disorder in the functioning of the brain (vertebral artery syndrome), spinal cord (impaired spinal circulation), peripheral nervous system (osteochondrosis with neurological effects), skeletal and muscular system
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each colour coded by transmission of data to the brain. In health, the internal and external matrices permit full colour transmission, but deviations from health, up to fully developed pathology change their parameters so that specific insensitivities to colour and colour processing take place in colour perception and the ability to recover colours in the pictures presented by the programme.
Results reported in each health assessment provide unexpected detail considering that the test procedure is completely non-invasive, only involving interaction between patient and computer through an interactive colour-based programme, and the test mainly assesses memory, perception, imagination, associative thinking and decision-making.
Stress-induced production of biochemicals like corticosteroids lower levels of compensatory mechanisms, including those on the immune system. This in itself can help establish and develop pathological processes, which in their turn affect the brain's recuperative, reparative and compensatory processes. These are measured and listed as the neural parameters mentioned above.
Studies of brain plasticity indicate changes in brain structure arising as a result of associated mechanisms - production of stress-chemicals lowers immune system activation levels impacting the interconnectivity, activity and operability of component parts of the brain. These can be measured as changes to the neural parameters. In computational neuroscience this theoretical approach is referred to as 'brain wave synchronisation'.
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Virtual Scanning measures states of the external matrix, interpreting them either directly as a psychometric profile, or in terms of organ health i.e. the state of the internal matrix..
The external matrix continuously takes into account all parameters of the external environments. It is in a state of perpetual readiness to react to external information - or threats - fed into it through sense mechanisms. The internal matrix monitors the internal state of the organism, giving the brain a continuous assessment of the body's capability of acting or reacting physically; it sends a steady stream of such information to the external matrix. It receives a steady stream of information about the flow of information between the brain and each organ and organ system. On the one hand, information passing to the brain about the state of each organ and organ system, interpretable as degree of deviation from health (pathological processes), and the response of the brain to each organ and organ system which forms compensatory process to help deal with any abnormal function that has been detected.
Each pathological or compensatory process influences perception of colour which can be measured by the test procedure. They also influence all neural functions meaning that the psychometric profile is influenced to a significant extent by health. This of course is intuitively clear (even though the scientific connections may not yet have been rigorously established), because a person's behaviour and potential behaviour is affected by how they feel, and it is common place that feelings are connected to and depend on both the overall state of health, and the state of particular organs.
Grakov's Virtual Scanning analysis represents the neural matrices as a grid of colours with
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model from norms (normative data is based on weight, age and sex) to identify medical conditions of concern, which it assesses semi-quantitatively in the sense described previously. This permits identification of the development of medical conditions from the pre-symptomatic stage.
Normative data are based on weight, age and sex. For each sex, weight considered with respect to age can generate sufficiently accurate profiles of normal brain function. These are used in processing data. Grakov explains these factors in terms of an external matrix and an internal matrix in communication with each other, and inputs from the external and internal environments described according to the following schematic diagram:
FIGURE 1: SCHEMATIC REPRESENTATION OF THE MODEL
SENSORY INPUT from the ========> EXTERNAL MATRIX EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT
BEHAVIOURAL =========> PREDISPOSITION
INTERNAL MATRIX
INPUT from the INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT FIGURE 1: The external matrix receives information from both the senses and the internal matrix. It is responsible for cognitive processing and behavioural tendencies. The internal matrix receives information from internal physiological structures and is responsible for processes compensating for mild organ dysfunction. Information passed to the external matrix, modifies cognitive processing.
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related compensatory processes for each condition, and extent of pathology, for organs and categories of functional system, and the psychometric profile, present the physician easily administered broad-spectrum diagnostic tools.
In principle, any sense can be used for this kind of test analysis. Indeed, Grakov has reported that in previous versions the senses of hearing and smell have also been analysed in similar ways, with comparable results. However analysis of light and colour perception used in the test procedure to determine deviations of brain functions from their norms turn out to be sufficient, and to yield the best results in the shortest time. For most people, sight is the dominant sense, and, of all the senses, it produces the greatest amount of information. The brain's processing capacity is greater for the sense of sight, resulting in correspondingly greater control and fine tuning over cognition. The result is that sight is the most sensitive of the senses to changes in the health of organs and functional systems. In addition, light and, particularly, colour have unique regulatory functions in the organism. Developing medical conditions result in disruptions to the brain's regulation of cognitive processing - its control programmes. The resulting deviations from normal colour perception are measured by the neural simulator programme used in the test, which then identifies the conditions in the organs and organ systems causing the problem(s).
THE MATHEMATICAL MODEL By means of its algorithms Virtual Scanning technology analyses the data from each test to construct a biomathematical model unique to each person. It then uses deviations of the
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(d) it would best be treat them to prevent further development, or (e) they are of no concern for the timebeing, and finally (f) the organ concerned is completely healthy.
As health professionals will readily recognise, the potential utility of such an assessment made in little more than 15 minutes by means of a test, which can be supervised by a trained ancillary worker such as a nurse, has immense potential value in helping determine the best course of action for any patient.
THE VIRTUAL SCANNING TEST PROCEDURE In the test procedure, patients are given 15 seconds to memorise the colour balance of a colour photo or short movie on a computer screen. The colour balance is then distorted and patients use colour controls provided by the programme to return the pictures as closely as they can to their original colour schemes. The psychometric test also uses varying time constraints. The test's interactive, colour-based programme thus forms an interesting and entertaining game. By means of it, parameters of perception, imagination, memory, associative thinking and decision-making are established through the neural simulation programme carried out by the computer. One important feature is that the data is also analysed in a way that reveals whether or not the subject was taking the test seriously or not. A rerun can be demanded if this turns out to be the case.
Virtual Scanning's health assessment including tendencies towards medical conditions,
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Virtual Scanning makes use of the parallel between (a) the brain as a biochemical system and (b) the brain as a computing system. It considers medical conditions as deviations from the psychophysiology's control programme i.e. 'programming errors' in the homeostatic and allostatic mechanisms, which subsequently manifest themselves through excessive release of stress chemicals, disturbing regulatory systems and lowering activation of the immune system, so that pathological processes result. In keeping with moedern aetiology, it sees stressors arising from the external environment as the fundamental causes of disease.
The brain is treated as an interactive organ with input from the external environment through sense perception, and the internal environment from the nervous system. The brain's information processing is modelled by interactive neural matrices, quantified by various algorithms, which are then used to determine the health and behavioural profiles. The various measures in each profile are assessed semi-quantitatively in a manner that yields excellent qualitative results. That is to say, despite inevitable finite but small errors in assessing the condition of each aspect of a person's organs or other body parts, Virtual Scanning can determine whether: (a) a pathological condition is present, or (b) such a condition is imminent, (c) preclinical conditions are present,
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and 1996, by Grakov (1985/2001). The latest version was released in late 2004, and the system is undergoing further development. Grakov developed computer models of neural networks connecting sensory processes on one side, and the activity of the autonomic nervous system and inner organs on the other. He was able to simulate the influence on sensory data processing by neural processes deep within the physiology. Changes in the condition of inner organs result in changing patterns of neural impulse long before pathology actually occurs. Furthermore, any degeneration in the condition of an organ stimulates a reaction in which the brain provides compensatory energy and neural signals exerting a similar influence on sensory processing.
The result is a matrix interconnecting various properties of organ health, pathology, and compensation, with corresponding aspects of the processing of sensory data - a biomathematical model for all these processes. The model is used to transform data from sensory tests measuring sensory processing abilities into an identification of pathological processes developing within the body and the corresponding neural activities compensating for them.
Key parameters result in a unique mathematical model for each patient yielding three completely different kinds of output: 1.a broad-spectrum health assessment: qualitative or semi-quantitative (example 1); 2. a treatment plan: employing the concept of neural synchronization (Part II). 3. a psychometric profile (Part III);
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the details of the example.
VIRTUAL SCANNING METHODS In carrying out such a programme of analysis, Virtual Scanning is the first commercialised application of computational neuroscience. Although it is a product of conventional science, it has been hitherto been treated as part of complementary medicine for three reasons. First it does not use methods on which western biomedicine has become dependent and with which it is increasingly identified. Secondly, it accurately identifies preclinical conditions so that they can be treated to 'avert the danger that has not yet come'. As such it is closer in spirit to traditional systems such as Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine where signs of imbalance are detected and treated before pathology manifests. Thirdly, its analysis is carried out making what are effectively holistic assumptions about the integration of body function. These are similar in spirit to the way most traditional and complementary systems of medicine approach the psycho-physiology.
Increasingly it is recognised that the biochemistry of the brain and signal processing within its structure are interdependent. Virtual Scanning uses this, but sidesteps the difficulties of identifying all in detail with its analyses of sensory data and skills based on computational neuroscience. It is thus a potentially ideal partner to modern medicine, the techniques of which identify and assess many biochemical processes in the body and brain.
Virtual Scanning was initially developed at the University of Krasnoyarsk between 1980
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health of body parts. Virtual Scanning's data analysis uses Grakov's computational neuroscience models of colour information processing to determine the state of body parts based on the way the test reveals them to be influencing brain function. On this basis the test classifies the health of each organ and organ system into one of several groupings: pathological, pre-pathological and requiring treatment, needing less urgent attention, out of balance, or healthy - like other scanning systems mentioned above, which can similarly detect various stages of pathological development (Grakov 2002a).
Extensive research has been carried out in medical research institutes in Russia, and major studies published by Vyosochin (2000) at the University of St Petersburg. In the UK over 400 case studies over the last two years indicate it to be qualitatively extremely accurate and of great potential value to any clinic or GP practice. In several cases conditions not revealed by conventional tests have been discovered and subsequently confirmed (Ewing 2004).
Virtual Scanning's systems of medical assessment and therapy are already in wide-spread use in Russia and other Eastern block countries where it is marketed under the name Strannik - a proprietary programme used under Windows. This paper provides a qualitative overview of Virtual Scanning medical assessment, including as an example a detailed report from a particular case. The methods of treatment developed by Grakov will be described in Part II. The next section describes the methods involved in the test, and the following sections describe the actual test procedure, reasons for the test being visual, and
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favoured because they avoid the dangers of high Roentgen dosage, and yield information of potentially vital importance to the physician.
Virtual Scanning's system of medical assessment is similar. Intensive data processing yields key information about the state of internal organs. It is uniquely different however, in that it uses computational neuroscience to make its analysis in the virtual reality of the brain's own data processing systems - it uses the brain's virtual reality to provide a complete body scan.
Virtual Scanning's models of brain function were developed by Grakov (1985/2001) at the University of Krasnoyarsk. Specifically they presuppose an integrated structure of brain function to model how physiological states of varying degrees of health and pathology impact sensory perception. The result is a powerful, non-intrusive system of analysis of the state of health of internal physiological structures, based on their state of neural control (Ewing 2004).
The medical assessment uses a test of colour cognition administered in 15-20 minutes by a trained ancillary such as a nurse; detailed evaluation is made by medically qualified professionals trained in its use (Grakov 2002b). Colour cognition, like all processes of sense perception, is influenced in precise ways by signals reaching the brain from different parts of the body, its organs and organ systems. By analysing a person's cognition of sensory information, it is therefore, in principle, possible to determine the kinds of neural signal being produced by different parts of the body. Such signals accurately reflect the 3
VIRTUAL SCANNING: A NEW SYSTEM OF MEDICAL ASSESSMENT AND TREATMENT PART I: ASSESSMENT by Graham Ewing BSc, Elena Ewing MD and Alex Hankey PhD
ABSTRACT Virtual Scanning is based on computational neuroscience developed in Russia since the mid 1980's. Using models of brain function, its system of medical assessment tests colour perception, memory, and imagination, to identify influences on colour cognition from the autonomic nervous system and other sources. By these means it assesses the condition of different parts of the body including all organs and organ systems. It can even give early warning of preclinical conditions before conventional tests show that a problem is present. It effectively provides a complete body scan in virtual reality. Data from the same test procedure also yields a psychometric analysis of the subject. Though new to the West, Virtual Scanning is used extensively throughout the former Soviet Union for medical assessment and treatment - the latter being the subject of Part II.
INTRODUCTION Modern medicine has become familiar with systematic ways to assess the internal state of the physiology by methods which require many megaflops of data processing to analyse raw input. Computer aided tomography allowing sophisticated images of internal structures to be constructed from initial data provides a suitable example. MRI scans are highly
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VIRTUAL SCANNING: A NEW SYSTEM OF MEDICAL ASSESSMENT AND TREATMENT PART I: ASSESSMENT
by Graham Ewing BSc, Elena Ewing MD and Alex Hankey PhD Mulberry House, Vine Farm Close, Cotgrave, Notts. NG12 3TU, UK Tel. +44 115 989 9618 Fax. +44 115 989 96826 Email
[email protected]
Key Words: Virtual Scanning, Strannik, computational neuroscience, assessment, diagnosis 1
