Drug Cytotoxicity Quantification With A Mathematical Model And Three-Dimensional Biomimetic Microfluidic, Maryam Moarefian, Caroline Jones, Luke Achenie, Danesh Tafti

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Extraction And Analysis Of Vector Flow Imaging Data In A Pediatric Population, Bailey Stinnett

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Vector flow imaging (VFI) is a new ultrasound technology that provides real time, angle-independent visualization of flow velocities in the heart and great vessels. Thus far, VFI has been used for superficial applications due to the limited penetration depth of available transducer probes; however, this depth in smaller pediatric patients enables adequate aortic views. In this project, VFI was used to study pediatric aortic stenosis (PAS)—a congenital heart defect that results in the narrowing of the aorta and/or aortic valve. The decision to refer PAS patients for surgical or catheter-based intervention is initially based on Doppler ultrasound. VFI ...

Pressure Acquisition System For In Vitro Mitral Valve Analysis, Laura Peck

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

In vitro testing of the mitral valve chordae tendineae is utilized to aid in the understanding of the stresses that occur in vivo and improve upon surgical solutions that exist for mitral valve repair. This project aimed to design the water control system for a left heart simulation chamber, as well as the pressure acquisition inside the chamber. A solenoid valve was utilized to control the water supply to the tank and was powered utilizing National Instruments software. National Instruments hardware and software was also used with the pressure transducer in order to obtain pressure readings from the chamber. The ...

Development Of Rule-Based Recognition Systems For Continuous Monitorization Of Pulse Oximetry, Brian Delehanty

Senior Theses

Pulse Oximeters provide a convenient, non-invasive method to quickly gather information about a patient's pulse rate (PR) and arterial blood oxygen saturation (SpO₂). Many pulse oximeters lack alert systems that notify caregivers if a patient's readings go outside the healthy range, and pulse oximeters that have these mechanisms are significantly more expensive. This project set out to write a program using LabVIEW that collects pulse oximeter data via Bluetooth and generates an alert when readings persist in the abnormal range for more than fifteen seconds. Due to privacy laws that allow pulse oximeter manufacturers to not disclose ...

A Strategic Audit Of Medtronic Plc, Jozzy Carter

Honors Theses, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Humans will always have a need for healthcare, and as the world continues to innovate in the tech space, consumers will demand advances in medicine and medical devices. Medtronic is at the forefront of this innovation but faces intense competition in the medical technologies industry. This poses the question: what can Medtronic do to continue its growth and stay competitive in this space? This paper offers an analysis of Medtronic as a medical device company by offering insight to its competitive advantage, financials, business mix, and value chain. It also analyzes the forces that affect Medtronic using SWOT, PEST, and ...

Investigation Of The Effects Of Prosthetic Knee Condition On Novice Transfemoral Amputee Runners, Natalie Nelson

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Some unilateral transfemoral amputees (TFAs) run in a prosthesis with an articulating prosthetic knee, others choose to run without a knee (prosthetic socket and foot are linked via a straight, non-articulating pylon) to increase stability. Research regarding unilateral TFA running with an unlocked versus locked prosthetic knee (approximately equivalent to the no-knee condition) with respect to energy cost and temporal metrics is limited; no studies have investigated the impact of knee condition on kinematic metrics. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the prosthetic knee of a running-specific prosthesis (RSP) should be unlocked or locked for unilateral TFAs ...

Optimization Of Microfluidic Chip Fabrication Via Femtosecond Laser Ablation, Kenneth Aycock

Senior Theses

Microfluidic devices have become staple tools in biomedical research and have a promising future as low cost, point-of-care (POC) diagnostic devices. Despite the advancements in microfluidic device technology, the manipulation and fabrication of these systems can be tedious and expensive. Repeatable techniques in which computer-aided designs are translated into microfluidic systems in a matter of minutes are highly desirable both for researchers and manufacturers. Laser ablation of tape substrates has shown promise in producing cost-effective, rapidly manipulable devices, but the work done thus far has utilized continuous wave lasers that perform suboptimally due to the relatively short wavelengths used and ...

Using Support Vector Machines On Photoplethysmographic Signals To Discriminate Between Hypovolemia And Euvolemia, Natasa Reljin, Gary Zimmer, Yelena Malyuta, Kirk Shelley, Yitzhak Mendelson, David J. Blehar, Chad E. Darling, Ki H. Chon

Open Access Articles

Identifying trauma patients at risk of imminent hemorrhagic shock is a challenging task in intraoperative and battlefield settings given the variability of traditional vital signs, such as heart rate and blood pressure, and their inability to detect blood loss at an early stage. To this end, we acquired N = 58 photoplethysmographic (PPG) recordings from both trauma patients with suspected hemorrhage admitted to the hospital, and healthy volunteers subjected to blood withdrawal of 0.9 L. We propose four features to characterize each recording: goodness of fit (r2), the slope of the trend line, percentage change, and the absolute change between ...

Microfluidic Technology And Application In Urinal Analysis, Jiwen Xiang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Microfluidic technology offers numerous advantages in minimizing and integrating the traditional assays. However, the lack of efficient control components of the microfluidic systems has been hindering the widely commercialization of the technology. The research work in this dissertation focused on the development of effective control components for microfluidic applications.

A linear peristaltic pump was firstly designed, fabricated, and tested for conventional microfluidics by synchronously compressing the microfluidic channel with a miniature cam-follower system in Chapter 2. The miniature cam-follower system and microfluidic chip was prototyped using three-dimensional (3D) printing technology and soft lithography technology. Results from experimental test showed that ...

The Kinematic And Biomechanical Effects Of Bracing On The Rehabilitation Of The Lcl Injured Elbow, Sara M. Banayan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Lateral collateral ligament (LCL) injuries are often treated non-operatively or with surgical repair. If instability persists, hinged elbow orthoses (HEOs) are often recommended. However, these orthoses are designed as a straight hinge, which does not account for the native carrying angle of the elbow. A custom HEO was designed to adjust the orthosis valgus angulation to measure in vitro elbow kinematics and biomechanics. An in vitro study investigated the effect of HEO valgus angulation during simulated active and passive flexion, in the vertical dependent and varus positions, with the forearm pronated and supinated. In the vertical dependent position, the orthosis ...

Embedded Smart-Polymer Sensor Arrays For Elucidating Load Distributions In Orthopaedic Implants, Carolina Micolini

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The long-term outcomes of orthopaedic joint implants are only beginning to be understood, making it imperative to monitor the contact loads across the entire implant interface. This capability will elucidate the force transmission and distribution mechanisms exhibited by these implants in-service over time. This study explores the design and implementation of 3D-printed smart-polymer force sensor arrays, consisting of piezoresistive polyaniline (PANI) structures embedded within a polymeric parent phase. This unique multi-material additive manufacturing process was then employed to realize transducers embedded in the humeral component of a replacement prosthetic device conventionally used to restore the functionality of the shoulder joint ...

Usability And Reliability Of Smart Glasses For Secondary Triage During Mass Casualty Incidents, John Broach, Alexander Hart, Matthew Griswold, Jeffrey T. Lai, Edward W. Boyer, Aaron B. Skolnik, Peter R. Chai

Emergency Medicine Publications and Presentations

Wearable smart glasses like Google Glass provide real-time video and image transmission to remote viewers. The use of Google Glass and other Augmented Reality (AR) platforms in mass casualty incidents (MCIs) can provide incident commanders and physicians at receiving hospitals real-time data regarding injuries sustained by victims at the scene. This real-time data is critical to allocation of hospital resources prior to receiving victims of a MCI. Remote physician participation in real-time MCI care prior to victims' hospital arrival may improve triage, and direct emergency and critical care services to those most in need. We report the use of Google ...

Wearable Biosensors To Evaluate Recurrent Opioid Toxicity After Naloxone Administration: A Hilbert Transform Approach, Keerthi Kumar. Chintha, Premananda Indic, Brittany Chapman, Edward W. Boyer, Stephanie Carreiro

UMass Center for Clinical and Translational Science Supported Publications

Opioid abuse is a rapidly escalating problem in the United States. Effective opioid reversal is achieved with the antidote naloxone, but often does not last as long as the offending opioid, necessitating in-hospital observation. Continuous physiologic monitoring using wearable biosensors represents a potential option to extend monitoring capability outside the clinical setting across the spectrum of opioid abuse including post- naloxone administration. The present study aims to identify the physiologic change that marks the cessation of naloxone's effect. Eleven participants were recruited in the Emergency Department after naloxone administration for an opioid overdose and continuously monitored using a wearable ...

Multimodal Noncontact Diffuse Optical Reflectance Imaging Of Blood Flow And Fluorescence Contrasts, Daniel Irwin

Theses and Dissertations--Biomedical Engineering

In this study we design a succession of three increasingly adept diffuse optical devices towards the simultaneous 3D imaging of blood flow and fluorescence contrasts in relatively deep tissues. These metrics together can provide future insights into the relationship between blood flow distributions and fluorescent or fluorescently tagged agents. A noncontact diffuse correlation tomography (ncDCT) device was firstly developed to recover flow by mechanically scanning a lens-based apparatus across the sample. The novel flow reconstruction technique and measuring boundary curvature were advanced in tandem. The establishment of CCD camera detection with a high sampling density and flow recovery by speckle ...

A Machine Learning Approach To Assess The Separation Of Seismocardiographic Signals By Respiration, Brian Solar

Honors in the Major Theses

The clinical usage of Seismocardiography (SCG) is increasing as it is being shown to be an effective non-invasive measurement for heart monitoring. SCG measures the vibrational activity at the chest surface and applications include non-invasive assessment of myocardial contractility and systolic time intervals. Respiratory activity can also affect the SCG signal by changing the hemodynamic characteristics of cardiac activity and displacing the position of the heart. Other clinically significant information, such as systolic time intervals, can thus manifest themselves differently in an SCG signal during inspiration and expiration. Grouping SCG signals into their respective respiratory cycle can mitigate this issue ...

Wearable Hearing Accessory Technology, Tyler Cindea, Jaime Alcorn, Brooke Draper, Kyle Glascott, Ben Hanna, Robert Thoerner

Honors Research Projects

We set out in August 2017 to develop an active noise suppressing device that would be usable both in military and civilian activities. Due to constraints in knowledge and time, we decided our best course of action was to divide the project into two equal projects with the hope to be able to combine them into a single project at the end of the allotted time. This consisted of an active noise suppression device and a passive noise suppression device. The passive device would have no electronic components and the active device would be pure circuitry with no housing. This ...

Electrochemical And Spectroscopic Study Of Peptide-Template Melanins, Daniel Courter, Olivia Rossi, Zhen Tian

Honors Theses and Capstones

Melanins are organic polymers made up of 5,6-dihydroxyindole carboxylic acid (DHICA) and 5,6-dihydroxyindole (DHI). Biochemical systems synthesize melanins through a complex reaction pathway. Previous research exhibited that naturally-occurring melanins (NatMel) and their synthetic analogues (SynMel) can potentially serve as electrode materials for aqueous charge storage devices. Small surface area creates technical challenges for these melanins as charge storage materials. This research herein demonstrates that the structure of melanins can affect the charge storage capacities of monovalent Na⁺cations and divalent Mg²⁺ cations. 2-D sheet-like peptide melanins (PepMel) were synthesized into tripeptides consisting of aspartic acid (D), phenylalanine ...

Investigation Of Shape, Position, And Permeability Of Shielding Material In Quadruple Butterfly Coil For Focused Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Priyam Rastogi, Bowen Zhang, Yalun Tang, Erik G. Lee, Ravi L. Hadimani, David C. Jiles

Electrical and Computer Engineering Publications

Transcranial magnetic stimulation has been gaining popularity in the therapy for several neurological disorders. A time-varying magnetic field is used to generate electric field in the brain. As the development of TMS methods takes place, emphasis on the coil design increases in order to improve focal stimulation. Ideally reduction of stimulation of neighboring regions of the target area is desired. This study, focused on the improvement of the focality of the Quadruple Butterfly Coil (QBC) with supplemental use of different passive shields. Parameters such as shape, position and permeability of the shields have been explored to improve the focus of ...

A Bluetooth Low-Energy Wireless Sensor Platform For Continuous Monitoring Of A Bioreactor Environment During Cell Manufacturing, Brad Nelson

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

A wireless sensor platform based on Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) technology was designed and prototyped for continuous monitoring of physical conditions and chemical analytes, which could be applied to bioreactors during the cell manufacturing process. Controlling environmental conditions such as pH, oxygen, glucose, temperature, and pressure is vital to ensure the consistency of the manufactured cells and maintain the potency of the product. Current methods to control bioreactor conditions focus only on monitoring the cell culture environment during cell growth, but there is a lack of direct quantification of cell properties to provide an integrated feedback system that can also maintain ...

Optical Fibre-Based Force Sensing Needle Driver For Minimally Invasive Surgery, Pouya Soltani Zarrin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Minimally invasive surgery has been limited from its inception by insufficient haptic feedback to surgeons. The loss of haptic information threatens patients safety and results in longer operation times. To address this problem, various force sensing systems have been developed to provide information about tool–tissue interaction forces. However, the provided results for axial and grasping forces have been inaccurate in most of these studies due to considerable amount of error and uncertainty in their force acquisition method. Furthermore, sterilizability of the sensorized instruments plays a pivotal role in accurate measurement of forces inside a patient's body. Therefore, the ...