Engineering Commons^™

Detection Of Myofascial Trigger Points With Ultrasound Imaging And Machine Learning, Benjamin Formby

All Theses

Myofascial Pain Syndrome (MPS) is a common chronic muscle pain disorder that affects a large portion of the global population, seen in 85-93% of patients in specialty pain clinics [10]. MPS is characterized by hard, palpable nodules caused by a stiffened taut band of muscle fibers. These nodules are referred to as Myofascial Trigger Points (MTrPs) and can be classified by two states: active MTrPs (A-MTrPs) and latent MtrPs (L-MTrPs). Treatment for MPS involves massage therapy, acupuncture, and injections or painkillers. Given the subjectivity of patient pain quantification, MPS can often lead to mistreatment or drug misuse. A deterministic way …

Understanding The Role Of Interactivity And Explanation In Adaptive Experiences, Lijie Guo

All Dissertations

Adaptive experiences have been an active area of research in the past few decades, accompanied by advances in technology such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. Whether the currently ongoing research on adaptive experiences has focused on personalization algorithms, explainability, user engagement, or privacy and security, there is growing interest and resources in developing and improving these research focuses. Even though the research on adaptive experiences has been dynamic and rapidly evolving, achieving a high level of user engagement in adaptive experiences remains a challenge. %????? This dissertation aims to uncover ways to engage users in adaptive experiences by incorporating …

Adversarial Deep Learning And Security With A Hardware Perspective, Joseph Clements

All Dissertations

Adversarial deep learning is the field of study which analyzes deep learning in the presence of adversarial entities. This entails understanding the capabilities, objectives, and attack scenarios available to the adversary to develop defensive mechanisms and avenues of robustness available to the benign parties. Understanding this facet of deep learning helps us improve the safety of the deep learning systems against external threats from adversaries. However, of equal importance, this perspective also helps the industry understand and respond to critical failures in the technology. The expectation of future success has driven significant interest in developing this technology broadly. Adversarial deep …

Improving Inference Speed Of Perception Systems In Autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicles, Bradley Selee

All Theses

Autonomous vehicle (AV) development has become one of the largest research challenges in businesses and research institutions. While much research has been done, autonomous driving still requires extensive amounts of research due to its immense, multi-factorial difficulty. Autonomous vehicles rely on many complex systems to function, make accurate decisions, and, above all, provide maximum safety. One of the most crucial components of autonomous driving is the perception system.

The perception system allows the vehicle to identify its surroundings and make accurate, but safe, decisions through the use of computer vision techniques like object detection, image segmentation, and path planning. Due …

Large Genomes Assembly Using Mapreduce Framework, Yuehua Zhang

All Dissertations

Knowing the genome sequence of an organism is the essential step toward understanding its genomic and genetic characteristics. Currently, whole genome shotgun (WGS) sequencing is the most widely used genome sequencing technique to determine the entire DNA sequence of an organism. Recent advances in next-generation sequencing (NGS) techniques have enabled biologists to generate large DNA sequences in a high-throughput and low-cost way. However, the assembly of NGS reads faces significant challenges due to short reads and an enormously high volume of data. Despite recent progress in genome assembly, current NGS assemblers cannot generate high-quality results or efficiently handle large genomes …

Effects Of Surface Noise On Printing Artifacts: An Artistic Approach To Hiding Print Artifacts, Samuel New

All Theses

This research focuses on improving the quality of Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) 3D printing by using fractal noise to mask certain print artifacts (e.g. layer lines and stair-stepping). The use of textures is quite common in digital sculpting for aesthetic reasons. This study focuses on finding specific textures that minimize visible 3D print artifacts.

A Digital Healthcare Application For Patient Monitoring And Assessment, Brandon Shumin

All Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic strained our healthcare resources and exacerbated the existing issues of primary care shortages and burnout rates for healthcare professionals. Due in part to these factors, telehealth has seen more wide-spread use during this time. However, current asynchronous telehealth applications require stable Internet to function fully. Since many medically underserved populations in the United States lack Internet access in their homes, an application that offers patient monitoring and assessment could extend their access to medical resources. This work proposes such a digital healthcare application for iOS devices and evaluates it based on the system requirements of availability, data …

Digitalization Of Construction Project Requirements Using Natural Language Processing (Nlp) Techniques, Fahad Ul Hassan

All Dissertations

Contract documents are a critical legal component of a construction project that specify all wishes and expectations of the owner toward the design, construction, and handover of a project. A single contract package, especially of a design-build (DB) project, comprises hundreds of documents including thousands of requirements. Precise comprehension and management of the requirements are critical to ensure that all important explicit and implicit requirements of the project scope are captured, managed, and completed. Since requirements are mainly written in a natural human language, the current manual methods impose a significant burden on practitioners to process and restructure them into …