A system for storage and retrieval of medical records by digital computer was designed and real operation of it was experimentally conducted with a relatively small sample with success. In the system, only summary of the medical records was stored into the computer memory, and, meanwhile, the whole sheets of the records were taken picture on microfilm which was to be refered to when a more detailed information than stored in the computer memory was required. In view of limitation in cost, the system was designed on the basis of off-line operation and the batch processing.
A computer, HITAC 3010 of Hitachi, Ltd. was employed. For programming, the assembler for the computer was used. As language for retrieval, SIR in the library for the computer was utilized.
The summaries of the medical records of 207 cases of the test sample were stored on magnetic tape where the summary of one case occupied a field of fixed-length of 675 characters. Then, various sets of conditions for retrieval and print-out were given to the computer and the output responding to them was obtained from the computer. By checking through the output, it was observed that pertinent cases to the given set of conditions were extracted from the computer memory without any fault and they were printed out, arrayed in the proper format in a very short time.
As for cost of operating the system, an amount of 400 yen ($1.10) per case was considered to be a good estimate for compensating expense for storage and retrieval of the medical records if conducted as elaborately as in this series.
Merits and problems with the system and a vision in the further stages were commented.

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Characteristics of the spatial VCG was examined for the purpose of application to automatic diagnosis of the ECG. The analysis aimed at improvement of the diagnostic logics and parameters reported previously. Spatial VCG data series were obtained by the same procedure and analysed by the same on-line system as reported previously.
The relationship between the time interval of the beginning of QRS vector to the maximum magnitude vector and that of the maximum magnitude vector to the end of QRS vector was very effective for differential diagnosis of intraventricular conduction disturbances.
It was confirmed by frequency distribution of maximum QRS vectors that many false positive cases were included in the cases with left ventricular hypertrophy diagnosed by the conventional ECG lead system. Polar vector of an approximated plane of the initial QRS vectors was an useful parameter in diagnosing anterior myocaldial infarction. If an increase in the included angle between the maximum vectors of QRS and T is attended with an increase in the included angle between polar vectors of those planes, myocardial damage will be certainly diagnosed. Planarity of an approximated plane was represented by RMS of angles between instantaneous vectors and a plane. It was inevitably favorable in normal QRS vector.
Coordinate of the lead axes was transformed to patient's own heart axes. New coordinate was framed by maximum magnitude vector (X), polar vector (Y), and orientation at the right angle to both the former two (Z). Another attempt was made to establish the magnitude normalized VCG, whereby orientation of the spatial vector was extracted. An accurate pattern recognition of the spatial vector loop was successfully performed by the above procedure, because the electrical orientation of the heart displayed in a patient's peculiar frame was independent of anatomical heart position.

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Man has an excellent function of pattern recognition, where as he has an undesirable function such as optical illusion. These excellence and defect are supposed to be the double faced characteristics derived from the nervous configuration of the visual system. Therefore, if the quantitative analysis into the relation between the optical illusion and the nervous configuration is possible, a clue will be obtained to the specific mechanism of human pattern recognition.
In this paper, Müller-Lyer and Poggendorff optical illusions are examined as examples and quantitative measurements are performed for the extent of illusion in about a hundred human subjects. A mathematical model for the mechanism of the optical illusion is also proposed here and its validity is discussed on the basis of the results of subjective measurement.
The concept of this model consists of two parts. The first is a spatial filter which picks up the properties of two dimensional optical images and the second is the constitution to perform higher recognition. The former corresponds to the retina and the lateral geniculate body in the physiological field, and the function is simulated by a constitution of the lateral inhibition according to the physiological results. The latter corresponds to the visual cortex, in which patterns may be recognized by the maximum output of the spatial filter.
The value of each parameter of this model is given to fit the results of subjective measurement. Comparison of the present results with these from a different method of parameter decision using gratings of sinusoidal brightness level as stimulus reported by the other authors is also discussed.

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The precordial low-frequency vibrations have long been recognized to hold valuable informations on various cardiac diseases, and many attempts to record the vibrations have been made by a variety of techniques. Nevertheless, there are as yet many controversies among the results obtained by different investigators.
The purpose of this paper is to establish a standardized recording procedure to obtain the Kinetocardiogram (KCG). Using the photoelectric transducer and studying the averaged tracing by analog computer, the author obtained the curve of precordial movements as KCG without any distortions. The following results were obtained : (1) the photoelectric method gave a precise recording of KCG, (2) the transducer should not be fixed onto the surface of the subject, (3) the recording positions proposed by Eddlemann were preferable for the clinical purpose, and (4) a new system of nomenclature of the deflections was proposed.

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Recently queuing problem in the outpatient department of the hospital has been noticed in Japan. For the attempto reduce the waste time by prolonged waiting, fundamental data were collected in the University of Tokyo Hospital.
Every outpatient was followed during his stay at the hospital and the waiting time was recorded every time he passed the admitting section, examining room, central laboratories and the pharmacy. As the result it was found that main causes of undue crowdimg of patients were the long waiting lines at the admitting section and at the clinical section. The distribution of the arrival time interval at any section was of Poisson type and that of the service time was mostly of Erlang type or constant type. On the basis of these data, queuing system simulation is being carried out to reduce the whole waiting time. The detailed analyses are to be reported in the subsequent paper.

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