Engineering Commons^™

Interpatient Differences In Neural Recruitment Patterns During Pudendal Nerve Stimulation – A Computational Investigation, Amolak S. Jhand, Luis C. Ruiz, Nystha Baishya, Ehsan Mirzakhalili, Gaurang Shah, Priyanka Gupta, Tim M. Bruns, Scott F. Lempka

Medical Student Research Symposium

Bladder dysfunction impairs the quality of life for millions of individuals around the world. Common causes of bladder dysfunction include aging, trauma, and neurological disorders. Due to inadequacies in conventional treatments, neuromodulation therapies to address bladder dysfunction, such as sacral nerve stimulation, have emerged. However, patient needs still remain unmet. Pudendal nerve stimulation (PNS) has recently gained clinical interest as a promising treatment for bladder dysfunction. While PNS has been extensively investigated in preclinical settings, there is a gap in our understanding of the mechanisms of action and efficacy of PNS as limited studies of PNS have been performed on …

Lead Bioaccessibility And Commonly Measured Soil Characteristics (Detroit, Mi, Usa) – Phase 1, Sabrina R. Good, Allison R. Harris, Patrick Crouch, Conor T. Gowan, William D. Shuster, Shawn P. Mcelmurry

Open Data at Wayne State

Contaminated urban soil is one of the major contributors to child Pb exposure. To gain a better understanding of Pb risk in urban areas, composite samples were collected from 142 residential, privately owned, parcels in Detroit, Hamtramck, and Highland Park, Michigan, with approval from the property owners. The proximity of soil sampling and former smelter locations were also reported. Sample were collected from areas covered with turf grass. Four samples were collected, one from each cardinal direction (north, south, east, and west), 20 cm from an aluminum tent stake driven into the center of the sampling site. Soils were collected …

Assessing Boil Water Notices As Health-Risk Communication: Risk Perceptions, Efficacy, And Compliance During Winter Storm Uri, Ashleigh M. Day, Sydney O'Shay, Khairul Islam, Matthew W. Seeger, Shawn P. Mcelmurry

Open Data at Wayne State

Winter Storm Uri was an extreme disaster that impacted much of the United States during February of 2021. Texas and Oklahoma were generally not prepared for such an event and experienced massive power grid failures. This led to cascading risks including water system disruptions and many boil water notices (BWNs). The breakdown of some communication channels and the inability to enact protective actions due to power outages, as well as travel limitations on public roads, complicated both dissemination and implementation. Under these conditions, a non-representative, cross-sectional, survey was collected to assess individuals experience BWNs and how perceived efficacy impacts compliance. …

Differentiating Axonal From Demyelinating Neuropathies Using Multiparametric Quantitative Mri Of Peripheral Nerves, Jacob D. Baraz, Stephanie Xuan, Sadaf Saba, Xue Yang, Ryan Castoro, Yang Xuan, Alison Roth, Richard D. Dortch, Jun Li, Yongsheng Chen

Medical Student Research Symposium

Objectives: To develop a multiparametric quantitative MRI (qMRI) method to track pathological changes in the peripheral neuropathies.

Background: Irrespective of the causes or types of polyneuropathies, peripheral nerves are mainly afflicted by two kinds of pathologies – axonal loss and demyelination. It is critical to differentiate between the two as treatments are different for the two conditions. While nerve conduction studies (NCS) have been used to differentiate the two pathologies in the distal nerves, there are no tools to probe the pathologies in the proximal peripheral nerves. This is particularly needed when distal nerves become non-responsive in NCS.

Methods: We …

Evaluation Of A Portable Gynecological Examination Table On Increasing Access To Cervical Cancer Screenings, Brennan Burrows, Giuliana Motta, Vibhasri Davuluri, Urvee Deo, Aman Tahir, Brindha Rajakumar, Jacob Blumenstein, Eliza Steinberg, Mariam Tobia, Asmita Tuladhar, Abigail Ahn

Medical Student Research Symposium

Introduction: Cervical cancer is a preventable disease affecting millions of women worldwide, with higher prevalence and mortality in developing countries. One explanation of this disparity is due to reduced access to screenings, especially in rural communities where mobile health clinics are limited by what medical equipment they can bring. To address these barriers, an engineering team called Project MESA (Making Examinations Safe and Accessible) designed a gynecological examination table that is portable, lightweight, and easily sanitizable.

Objective: This study aims to (1) evaluate whether the implementation of this device improves the clinician’s ability to perform pap smears as opposed to …

Cardio-Net: A Matlab-Based Software For The Display And Diagnostic Utilization Of Vectorcardiograms, Ali H. Mannaa, Domenico Gatti

Medical Student Research Symposium

Background: The 12-lead technique is the standard in ECG, however alternate cardiography modalities such as vectorcardiography (VCG) exist . While the VCG modality offers unique clinical metrics and certain advantages over ECG, it is hardly utilized due to it being more difficult to obtain than ECG. Here we introduce Cardio-Net, a MATLAB-based software that uses standard 12-lead ECG data to generate and visualize VCGs. Furthermore, we demonstrate the diagnostic potential of VCG by utilizing a recurrent neural network (RNN) to accurately classify vectorcardiograms.

Methods: MATLAB version 2019b and the following toolboxes were used for data processing: Deep learning, …

Investigation Of Physiochemical Properties And Biocompatibility Of Amourphos Calcium Polyphosphate Hydrogel Doped With Antibiotics And Injectable Polymeric Dicalcium Phosphate Dihydrate Bone Cement, Yasaman Chehreghanianzabi

Wayne State University Dissertations

Amorphous calcium polyphosphate (ACPP) is an inorganic polymer ceramic. Here we use a simple method of preparing ACPP hydrogel in the presence of excess volume of water. Essentially, water availability to polyphosphate chains accelerates water molecule ingress and microstructural transformation of ACPP hydrogels. Antibiotic delivery capacity of ACPP hydrogel increases by the specific mixing and molding method, where the VCM has higher antibiotic encapsulation efficiency with the small burst release for the compressed discs. In part of this study, we investigate impact of ACPP hydrogel replacement by monomeric calcium phosphate on the quality of final product (dicalcium phosphate dihydrates (DCPD) …

Dynamic Resource Allocation For Coordination Of Inpatient Operations In Hospitals, Najibesadat Sadatijafarkalaei

Wayne State University Dissertations

Healthcare systems face difficult challenges such as increasing complexity of processes, inefficient utilization of resources, high pressure to enhance the quality of care and services, and the need to balance and coordinate the staff workload. Therefore, the need for effective and efficient processes of delivering healthcare services increases. Data-driven approaches, including operations research and predictive modeling, can help overcome these challenges and improve the performance of health systems in terms of quality, cost, patient health outcomes and satisfaction.

Hospitals are a key component of healthcare systems with many scarce resources such as caregivers (nurses, physicians) and expensive facilities/equipment. Most hospital …

Development Of A Novel Cardiac Ischemia-Reperfusion Model In The Axolotl, Jeremy Tolentino Llaniguez

Wayne State University Dissertations

The Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics data for mortality from diseases of the heart show the age-adjusted death rate has fallen from almost 600 deaths in the 1950s to just over 190 deaths per 100,000 U.S. residents today. With the recognized limitations of pharmacotherapy of myocardial infarction (MI), cell-based therapies have been undergoing rapid development and clinical testing. However, there is still no consensus about cell types, delivery routes, dosing and treatment schedules and pretreatment conditioning of cells prior to administration. Furthermore, a fundamental question remains unanswered about the reasons for the poor capacity for myocardial …

Communication Of Deaf People Based On Myoware Muscle Sensor, Mohamad Ataya

Research Opportunities for Engineering Undergraduates (ROEU) Program 2018-19

The current project aims to create a product that enhances communication of deaf people. The developed product has the following features:

• a muscle sensor that transcribes sign language into actual letters

• a voice detector that translates speech into actual words

• the ability to receive and send emergency alerts.

Prevalence Of Infection-Competent Serogroup 6 Legionella Pneumophila Within Premise Plumbing In Southeast Michigan, Brenda G. Byrne, Sarah Mccolm, Shawn P. Mcelmurry, Paul E. Kilgore, Joanne Sobeck, Rick Sadler, Nancy G. Love, Michele S. Swanson

Department of Pharmacy Practice

Coinciding with major changes to its municipal water system, Flint, MI, endured Legionnaires’ disease outbreaks in 2014 and 2015. By sampling premise plumbing in Flint in the fall of 2016, we found that 12% of homes harbored legionellae, a frequency similar to that in residences in neighboring areas. To evaluate the genetic diversity of Legionella pneumophila in Southeast Michigan, we determined the sequence type (ST) and serogroup (SG) of the 18 residential isolates from Flint and Detroit, MI, and the 33 clinical isolates submitted by hospitals in three area counties in 2013 to 2016. Common to one environmental and four …

Optical Coherence Tomography Application To Alopecia In The Scalp, Elizabeth Melcher

Research Opportunities for Engineering Undergraduates (ROEU) Program 2017-18

Alopecia is the loss of hair, whether it be from the scalp or other regions of the body. Current techniques used to best diagnose and track alopecia are often invasive, requiring a biopsy for results. The use of the OCT, or optical coherence tomography, could drastically improve a patient’s experience in undergoing a diagnosis while proving accurate results. The objective of this study is to develop diagnostic algorithms for the rapid, non-invasive diagnosis of alopecia with OCT. The first step is collecting OCT images of a healthy scalp to understand the anatomical structures with the imaging technique.

Design And Development Of An Emergency System For Children In A Hot Car At Risk Of Heatstroke, Nathan Kisha

Research Opportunities for Engineering Undergraduates (ROEU) Program 2017-18

Since 1998, an average of 37 children have died every year due to heat-related deaths after being stuck in a vehicle, making it the leading cause of non-crash-related fatalities among children. This creates an opportunity to create a system which will be able to detect this danger and do something in order to prevent it. There are 4 main objectives for the system to be able to accomplish: 1) determine if the temperature in the car poses a risk, 2) use an alarm to provide a warning and wake up a sleeping child, 3) determine if someone is in the …

Proactive Coordination In Healthcare Service Systems Through Near Real-Time Analytics, Seung Yup Lee

Wayne State University Dissertations

The United States (U.S.) healthcare system is the most expensive in the world. To improve the quality and safety of care, health information technology (HIT) is broadly adopted in hospitals. While EHR systems form a critical data backbone for the facility, we need improved 'work-flow' coordination tools and platforms that can enhance real-time situational awareness and facilitate effective management of resources for enhanced and efficient care. Especially, these IT systems are mostly applied for reactive management of care services and are lacking when they come to improving the real-time "operational intelligence" of service networks that promote efficiency and quality of …

Data-Driven Modeling For Decision Support Systems And Treatment Management In Personalized Healthcare, Milad Zafar Nezhad

Wayne State University Dissertations

Massive amount of electronic medical records (EMRs) accumulating from patients and populations motivates clinicians and data scientists to collaborate for the advanced analytics to create knowledge that is essential to address the extensive personalized insights needed for patients, clinicians, providers, scientists, and health policy makers. Learning from large and complicated data is using extensively in marketing and commercial enterprises to generate personalized recommendations. Recently the medical research community focuses to take the benefits of big data analytic approaches and moves to personalized (precision) medicine. So, it is a significant period in healthcare and medicine for transferring to a new paradigm. …

The Impact Of Machine Learning Algorithms On Benchmarking Process In Healthcare Service Delivery, Egbe-Etu Emmanuel Etu

Wayne State University Theses

Currently, organizations have adopted and implemented a variety of innovative quality management philosophies, approaches, and techniques to stay competitive in an ever-changing global economy. Benchmarking is one of such techniques deployed by organizations to stay competitive. The motivation for this research stems from a real-world problem being faced by hospitals in the healthcare industry who have amassed a ton of data and want to embark on benchmarking project to assess the performance of the emergency departments due to challenges faced with poor management of operations which has led to high patient boarding rates, high patient wait-times, poor quality service, low …

Venous Thromboembolism (Vte) Harm Measurement And Risk Assessment In Real-Time Using Electronic Health Records(Ehr), Seyed Mani Marashi

Wayne State University Dissertations

Venous Thromboembolism (VTE) is a deadly disease and is considered as one of the top reasons for avoidable hospital deaths in the United States and around the world. Patients who survive this disease often must face life-long complications such as Post-thrombotic syndrome (PTS), Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTPH), etc. Therefore, it is important to monitor and reduce the number of VTE instances in hospitals. This study shows how Electronic Health Records (EHRs) can be utilized to achieve this goal.

First, a new near real-time VTE harm measurement model was developed. Not only the developed model can deliver near real-time results, …

Utility Of Ultrasound/Photoacoustic Imaging For Accurate Catheter Tracking And Temperature Monitoring During Endovenous Laser Ablation, Ayushi Jharia, Keerthana Palani, Yan Yan

Research Opportunities for Engineering Undergraduates (ROEU) Program 2016-17

Laser ablation is a treatment method that uses light energy through a catheter inserted into a vein to induce localized heat to close the diseased blood vessels. Ultrasound (US) imaging has been used for catheter visualization and tracking. US has limitations for tracking the accurate location of the fiber tip inside small perforating veins such as angular dependency and comet tail artifacts. We propose a robust and accurate method for fiber tip tracking using combined US and Photoacoustic (PA) imaging to overcome the existing limitations.

Brain Connectivity After Concussion, Armin Iraji

Wayne State University Dissertations

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) accounts for over one million emergency visits in the United States each year. While most mTBI patients have normal findings in clinical neuroimaging, alterations in brain structure and functional connectivity have frequently been reported. In this study, we investigated the large-scale brain structural and functional connectivity using diffusion MRI and resting-state fMRI data. Data from 40 mTBI patients was acquired at the acute stage (within 24 hrs after injury). 35 patients returned for data acquisition at a follow-up (4-6 weeks after injury). Data was also collected from a cohort of 58 healthy subjects, 36 of …

Pet Imaging Of Early Therapeutic Response In Solid Tumors, Stephanie J. Blocker

Wayne State University Dissertations

An important pillar of precision medicine for oncology is the ability to identify patients who respond to treatment early into their therapy. Positron emission tomography (PET) allows physicians and researchers to measure changes in tumor behavior prior to noticeable differences in morphology.

Objective: Determine the utility of multiple tracers for PET in assessing early changes in tumor activity that result from treatment.

Methods: Two tracers for PET were studied. 64Cu-labeled liposomes were used to assess changes in liposome delivery two solid colon tumors early into treatment with bevacizumab (Bev). 18F-FMAU thymidine analog (1-(2'-deoxy-2'-fluoro-beta-D-arabinofuranosyl)thymine), was utilized to detect early response to …

Reusable Medical Equipment Inventory Assessment At A Detroit Medical Center, Tannaz Khaleghi

Wayne State University Theses

In recent years an outstanding growth has been observed in utilizing various medical devices due to growing demand. When both the quantity and quality into account, the price of medical devices becomes a critical factor to maintain cost/profit balances in financial systems. As a result healthcare systems should put more emphasis on how many of the trays they buy and store as their inventory due to high costs. Adequate levels of reusable medical equipment (RME) inventory is crucial for many healthcare systems

due to the RME equipment being expensive. On the other, the RME availability for vital departments such as …

The Connectivity Domain: Analyzing Resting State Fmri Data Using Feature-Based Data-Driven And Model-Based Methods, Armin Iraji, Vince D. Calhoun, Natalie M. Wiseman, Esmaeil Davoodi-Bojd, Mohammad R. N. Avanaki, Zhifeng Kou

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research Publications

Spontaneous fluctuations of resting state functional MRI (rsfMRI) have been widely used to understand the macro-connectome of the human brain. However, these fluctuations are not synchronized among subjects, which leads to limitations and makes utilization of first-level model-based methods challenging. Considering this limitation of rsfMRI data in the time domain, we propose to transfer the spatiotemporal information of the rsfMRI data to another domain, the connectivity domain, in which each value represents the same effect across subjects. Using a set of seed networks and a connectivity index to calculate the functional connectivity for each seed network, we transform data into …

An Analysis Of Plasticity In The Rat Respiratory System Following Cervical Spinal Cord Injury And The Application Of Nanotechnology To Induce Or Enhance Recovery Of Diaphragm Function, Janelle Lorien Walker

Wayne State University Dissertations

Second cervical segment spinal cord hemisection (C2Hx) results in ipsilateral hemidiaphragm paralysis. However, the intact latent crossed phrenic pathway can restore function spontaneously over time or immediately following drug administration.

WGA bound fluorochromes were administered to identify nuclei associated with diaphragm function in both the acute and chronic C2Hx models. WGA is unique in that it undergoes receptor mediated endocytosis and is transsynaptically transported across select physiologically active synapses. Comparison of labeling in the acutely injured to the chronically injured rat provided an anatomical map of spinal and supraspinal injury induced synaptic plasticity. The plasticity occurs over time in the …

Toward Magnetic Resonance Only Treatment Planning: Distortion Mitigation And Image-Guided Radiation Therapy Validation, Ryan Glen Price

Wayne State University Dissertations

While MR-only treatment planning has shown promise, there are still several well-known challenges that are currently limiting widespread clinical implementation.

Firstly, MR images are affected by both patient-induced and system-level geometric distortions that can significantly degrade treatment planning accuracy. . In addition, the availability of comprehensive distortion analysis software is currently limited. Also while many groups have been working toward a synthetic CT solution, further study is needed on the implementation of synCTs as the reference datasets for linac-based image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) to help determine their robustness in an MR-only workflow.

A 36×43×2 cm3 phantom with 255 known landmarks …

Modeling And Optimization Of Non-Profit Hospital Call Centers With Service Blending, Yanli Zhao

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the operations problems in non-profit hospital call centers with inbound and outbound calls service blending.

First, the routing policy for inbound and outbound calls is considered. The objective is to improve the system utilization under constraints of service quality and operators' quantity. A collection of practical staffing assignment methods, separating and mixing staffing policy are evaluated. Erlang C queuing model is used to decide the minimum number of operators required by inbound calls. Theoretical analysis and numerical experiments illustrate that through dynamically assigning the inbound and outbound calls to operators under optimal threshold policy, mixing staffing …

Predictive Analytics For Disease Condition Of Patients In Emergency Department, Azade Tabaie

Wayne State University Theses

Emergency Departments (EDs) in hospitals are experiencing severe crowding and prolonged patient waiting times. The reported crowding in hospitals shows patients in hospital hallways, long waiting times and full occupancy of ED beds. ED crowding has several potential unfavorable effects including patients and staff frustration, lower patient satisfaction and poor health outcomes. The primary motivations behind this study are shortening the patients’ waiting time and improving patient satisfaction and level of care.

The very initial interaction between clinicians and a patient is recorded on nurse triage notes which contain details of the reason for patient’s visit including specific symptoms and …

An Investigation Of The Relationship Between Axonal Injury, Biomarker Expression And Mechanical Response In A Rodent Head Impact Acceleration Model, Yan Li

Wayne State University Dissertations

In the United States 1.4 million people sustain traumatic brain injury (TBI) each year, resulting in 235,000 hospitalizations and 50,000 fatalities annually. Traumatic axonal injury (TAI) is a serious outcome of TBI that accounts for 40-50% of hospitalizations due to head injury and one third of the mortality due to TBI, and it is difficult to diagnose and evaluate. The purpose of this dissertation is to determine mechanical injury predictors for TAI and identify potential biomarkers to evaluate TAI.

In this dissertation, a modified Marmarou impact acceleration injury model was developed to allow the monitoring of velocity of the impactor …

Novel Incorportation Of Biomedical Engineering Algorithms (Bispectral Index Guided Or Anesthetic Concentration Guided) In Real-Time Decision Support To Prevent Intraoperative Awareness Using An Electronic Anesthesia Information Mananagement System, Amy Melanie Shanks

Wayne State University Dissertations

Background: Intraoperative awareness with explicit recall (AWR) is a feared complication of surgery that can lead to significant psychological distress. Several large prospective trials have been completed comparing two methods of monitoring anesthetic depth [minimum alveolar concentration (MAC) or electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring using the bispectral index (BIS)] for the prevention of AWR. However, these trials were conducted in high risk populations, limiting generalizability.

Research Hypothesis: Real-time decision support with Anesthesia Information Management System alerts based on a novel anesthetic concentration algorithm (incorporating the use of intravenous anesthetics) or an EEG-guided algorithm will reduce the known incidence of AWR.

Methods: First, …

Dendrimer Based Nanotherapeutics For Ocular Drug Delivery, Siva Pramodh Kambhampati

Wayne State University Dissertations

PAMAM dendrimers are a class of well-defined, hyperbranched polymeric nanocarriers that are being investigated for ocular drug and gene delivery. Their favorable properties such as small size, multivalency and water solubility can provide significant opportunities for many biologically unstable drugs and allows potentially favorable ocular biodistribution. This work exploits hydroxyl terminated dendrimers (G4-OH) as drug/gene delivery vehicles that can target retinal microglia and pigment epithelium via systemic delivery with improved efficacy at much lower concentrations without any side effects.

Two different drugs Triamcinolone acetonide (TA) and N-Acetyl Cysteine (NAC) conjugated to G4-OH dendrimers showed tailorable sustained release in physiological relevant …

Hyperglycemia Induces Differential Change In Oxidative Stress At Gene Expression And Functional Levels In Huvec And Hmvec, Hemang Patel, Juan Chen, Kumuda C. Das, Mahendra Kavdia

Wayne State University Associated BioMed Central Scholarship

Abstract

Background

Endothelial dysfunction precedes pathogenesis of vascular complications in diabetes. In recent years, the mechanisms of endothelial dysfunction were investigated to outline strategies for its treatment. However, the therapies for dysfunctional endothelium resulted in multiple clinical trial failures and remain elusive. There is a need for defining hyperglycemia-induced endothelial dysfunction with both generic and specific dysfunctional changes in endothelial cells (EC) using a systems approach. In this study, we investigated hyperglycemia-induced endothelial dysfunction in HUVEC and HMVEC. We investigated hyperglycemia-induced functional changes (superoxide (O₂‾), and hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) production and mitochondrial membrane polarization) …