HP-02-003 The Leuven Vulvalgesiometer: Improved Device to Measure Genital Pain-Pressure Thresholds in Clinical Practice and Research
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The vulvalgesiometer is a set of devices that is used to measure genital pressure-pain thresholds. While the vulvalgesiometer has shown its usefulness in several studies in vulvodynia patients and has potential for clinical application, it is, in its current form, not easy to use and apply in a standardized manner. The combination of its small size and large number of pressure levels, which have to be determined and visually selected during application, increase the risk of measurement error. We aimed to improve the original vulvalgesiometer and to develop a version that is easier to use and standardize. We developed a new vulvalgesiometer that differs from the original instrument in terms of its dimensions, materials used, and its functionality. As in the original version, the vulvalgesiometer requires the insertion of a cotton swab into the inner tube of the device. The presence of markings on the outside of the instrument indicates the amount of pressure in grams, which are identical to those used in the original instrument. The device also includes a non-magnetic spring to make it MR-compatible. In contrast to the original device, which looks like a small syringe, the Leuven vulvalgesiometer consists of longer, pen-shaped devices, which enable users to read the amount of pressure more easily, without risking that the user’s fingers will cover the pressure level markings. Furthermore, the new device is made of Polyphenylsulfone (PPSU) and Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) instead of plastic, allowing it to be cleaned using liquid sterilization methods (e.g., CIDEX). Also, cotton tip applicators do not need to be cut at different lengths, and we added a rotating mechanism which enables users to correctly align the inner tube with one of the desired pressure levels and hold it in that position. Thus, the desired number of grams of pressure can be determined in advance, removing the need to read the number of grams of pressure during threshold determination and pressure-pain administration.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.033 | 0.034 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".