Engineering Commons^™

Development Of A Portable Device For Quantifying Internal-External Rotational Laxity Of The Knee In Vivo, Haley Kuralt

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the leading cause of mobility-related disability. Post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA) is a form of OA that occurs after an acute injury to the affected joint. In the case of the knee, rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is the most common acute injury. ACL injury occurs in sports that involve cutting and pivoting motions, such as soccer, football, and skiing. Many patients opt to undergo ACL reconstructive surgery (ACLR) so that they may return to their sport with restored knee stability and function. Unfortunately, ACLR does not completely restore the knee to its original state, resulting in …

Quantifying Cartilage Composition And Arthrokinematics: Application To Short-Term Biomechanical Outcomes After Sports-Related Knee Injury And Surgery, John Curtis Ramsdell

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The long-term consequence for many individuals who suffer ACL injury, especially when the meniscus suffers injury as well, is the development of early-onset osteoarthritis (OA), commonly referred to as post-traumatic OA (PTOA). Target therapies to reduce PTOA incidence are desperately needed, as upwards of 200,000 ACL injuries occur each year in the United States; however, therapeutic advancements are hindered by the lack of understanding for the mechanisms that drive PTOA onset and progression. A prevailing hypothesis is that post-surgical alterations to the injured knee’s arthrokinematics (the way the cartilage surfaces of the femur and tibia articulate) introduce an unusual loading …

Investigating The Mechanical Properties Of Different Types Of Phospholipids, A Molecular Dynamics Study, Atena Farhangian

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Around 54.4 million ) of the US population is suffering from arthritis. It is one of the main contributors to activity limitations and is imposing a great cost on society. The main reason behind the lack of a cure for arthritis is the incomplete understanding of the lubrication of the joint. A critical question is the role of phospholipids, especially their mechanical role in relation to cartilage and other molecules present in synovial fluid.

The main type of load a joint like a knee endures is compressive forces. The present work is an effort to better understand the molecular-level interactions …

Leveraging Domain Specific Knowledge To Classify Indeterminate Lung Nodules In Ct Images Using Machine Learning Methodologies, Axel Herve Masquelin

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

The adoption of Deep neural networks for lung cancer screening has been shown to improve detection of malignant nodules in sequential scans and to reduce the screening time1,2. However, DNNs fail to properly classify images when applied only to single low-dose computed tomography scans on indeterminate pulmonary nodules (4mm – 20mm in diameter). In addition, the limited size of most medical data sets utilized for deep learning leads to network overfitting and poor performance, making it difficult to translate to clinical settings3,4. The limited size of most medical dataset means that DNNs have difficulty identifying and evaluating features of interest …

Applications Of A Wearable Sensor Platform For Remotely Monitoring Impairment In Persons With Multiple Sclerosis, Brett Matthew Meyer

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Multiple sclerosis is an immune-mediated disease of the central nervous system that commonly results in impaired sensory function, balance, coordination, and fatigue. Persons with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) experience high rates of falls, with over half experiencing a fall in any three-month period. Presently, fall risk is assessed at biannual office visits, but symptoms are known to fluctuate and it is not clear that these assessments provide an adequate picture of a patient’s fall risk. Remote monitoring of a patient’s balance and mobility with wearable sensors may provide a way to better characterize fall risk, but technologies for making these measurements …