Engineering Commons^™

Transportation Needs Of Older Adults In Suburban And Rural Areas, Dahai Han

Theses and Dissertations

The fact that the average age of the world's population is increasing, which is more pronounced in developed countries, necessitates the understanding of the challenges faced by older adults in accessing transportation services. With advancing age, individuals may experience age-related changes that can notably affect their driving capabilities, emphasizing the importance of alternative transportation alternatives. This challenge is more evident in suburban and rural settings, where transportation choices are limited, and older adults often find themselves without access to suitable transportation alternatives. Given that mobility plays an essential role in maintaining social connections, accessing healthcare services, and fulfilling daily needs, …

Full-Body Biomechanical Characterization Of Children With Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome During Gait And Activities Of Daily Living, Anahita Alahmoradiqashqai

Theses and Dissertations

Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) is an inherited connective tissue disorder, often under-diagnosed, and presenting with frequent chronic pain and severe musculoskeletal symptoms that can drastically reduce the quality of life during one’s life span. While there are limited quantitative approaches in the literature on adult movements, the biomechanics of movements during activities of daily living (ADLs) in children have not been investigated comprehensively. Therefore, the primary purpose of this dissertation was to characterize the biomechanics of the musculoskeletal system and investigate the biomechanics of hEDS by quantifying joint dynamics and muscle activations during ADLs and gait in the pediatric population. …

Effects Of Seat And Axle Position On Pain, Pathology, And Independence In Pediatric Manual Wheelchair Users With Spinal Cord Injury, Hannah Frank

Theses and Dissertations

Manual wheelchair (MWC) users with spinal cord injury (SCI) rely heavily on their upperextremities to complete daily occupations. Due to repetitive shoulder use during wheelchair mobility and propulsion, MWC users are at greater risk of shoulder pain and shoulder pathology, and thus decreased independence, and lower quality of life. The relative fit of the wheelchair and its parameters are critical and can further impact the user’s propulsion biomechanics. Parameters such as seat angle and axle position may put the user in detrimental shoulder positions for longer periods of time, impacting health outcomes even more. Although the effects of wheelchair setup …

Patients’ Needs And Preferences Regarding Radiology Test Results On Patient Portals, Mansour Abdulaziz Almanaa

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction and significance: Radiology exams are an important part of health care. To enhance the quality of health care, health care services need to be delivered in ways that meet patients’ needs and preferences. Patients were found to be interested in the timely receipt of radiology test results. One of the easiest and fastest ways to deliver radiology test results to patients is via online patient portals. It seems, however, that the method of providing radiology test results through patient portals has not reached its full maturity; it still needs a great deal of improvement. Therefore, participation of the end-readers …

Quantitative Evaluation Of Geared Manual Wheelchair Mobility In Individuals With Spinal Cord Injury: An Integrative Approach, Omid Jahanian

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to quantify the effects of using geared wheelchair wheels on upper extremity biomechanics and energy expenditure during functional mobility tasks in individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI). The effects of using geared wheels on hand-rim biomechanics, glenohumeral joint dynamics, and shoulder muscle activity were investigated during manual wheelchair propulsion over tiled and carpeted level-floors and up a ramp in low gear (1.5:1) and standard gear (1:1) conditions. The results for the hand-rim biomechanics indicated that regardless of the terrain, using the geared wheels in the low gear condition significantly decreased the propulsion speed, stroke …

Improvement Of Speech Perception For Hearing-Impaired Listeners, Fang Du

Theses and Dissertations

Hearing impairment is becoming a prevalent health problem affecting 5% of world adult populations. Hearing aids and cochlear implant already play an essential role in helping patients over decades, but there are still several open problems that prevent them from providing the maximum benefits. Financial and discomfort reasons lead to only one of four patients choose to use hearing aids; Cochlear implant users always have trouble in understanding speech in a noisy environment.

In this dissertation, we addressed the hearing aids limitations by proposing a new hearing aid signal processing system named Open-source Self-fitting Hearing Aids System (OS SF hearing …

Sensitivity Analysis Of Geometry Changes In The Simulation Of Basilar Aneurysms, Paul Eserkaln

Theses and Dissertations

Computer simulation is a useful tool in the research and treatment of basilar aneurysms. Current technology allows researchers to create 3D models from cerebral vasculature in-vivo, allowing for the investigation of surgical options with minimal risk to the patient. The method used to construct these models overlooks smaller lateral arterial branches which are difficult to discern due to resolution limits of the imaging process. These lateral branches have minimal impact on the overall blood flow through the basilar artery, but they play a significant role in the health of the patient, so it is important to ensure sufficient blood will …

The Effectiveness, Efficiency, And Appeal Of Pediatric Echocardiography Protocol Training For First Year Pediatric Cardiology Fellows, Lynne M. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Echocardiography training for pediatric cardiology fellows is complex and academic hospitals strive to provide high-quality training using limited resources. The purpose of this embedded single case study design was to evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency, and appeal of a newly developed 10-day echocardiography protocol learning module for first year pediatric cardiology fellows. Using blended learning methods that included didactic lectures, online learning activities, and interactive games, the learning module was the first step in the process of training pediatric cardiology fellows to perform echocardiograms independently with limited supervision during their first year of fellowship. At the end of the 10-day module, …

Coding Strategies For Cochlear Implants Under Adverse Environments, Qudsia Tahmina

Theses and Dissertations

Cochlear implants are electronic prosthetic devices that restores partial hearing in patients with severe to profound hearing loss. Although most coding strategies have significantly improved the perception of speech in quite listening conditions, there remains limitations on speech perception under adverse environments such as in background noise, reverberation and band-limited channels, and we propose strategies that improve the intelligibility of speech transmitted over the telephone networks, reverberated speech and speech in the presence of background noise. For telephone processed speech, we propose to examine the effects of adding low-frequency and high- frequency information to the band-limited telephone speech. Four listening …

Biomechanical Joint Demands And Functional Outcomes During Manual Wheelchair Use In Pediatric Patients With Spinal Cord Injury, Christine M. Aurit

Theses and Dissertations

The biomechanical demands of the upper extremities (UEs) during pediatric manual wheelchair (MWC) use have not been fully explored. Children who use MWCs for mobility engage in a range of functional activities that may place large biomechanical demands on the UEs leading to a high risk on overuse injuries. This study aims to analyze the kinematics and kinetics of pediatric manual wheelchair use during propulsion, starting, stopping and weight relief tasks. Fourteen pediatric patients with spinal cord injury were recruited and data were collected using a 14-camera Vicon MX motion analysis system (Oxford Metric Group, Oxford, UK) and a SmartWheel …

Improving Mri Surface Coil Decoupling To Reduce B1 Distortion, Christian K. Larson

Theses and Dissertations

As clinical MRI systems continue to advance, larger focus is being given to image

uniformity. Good image uniformity begins with generating uniform magnetic fields, which

are easily distorted by induced currents on receive-only surface coils. It has become an

industry standard to combat these induced currents by placing RF blocking networks on

surface coils. This paper explores the effect of blocking network impedance of phased array surface coils on B1 distortion. It has been found and verified, that traditional approaches for blocking network design in complex phased arrays can leave undesirable B1 distortions at 3 Tesla. The traditional approach of …

Citefinder: A System To Find And Rank Medical Citations, Seyed Soheil Moosavinasab

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents CiteFinder, a system to find relevant citations for clinicians' written content. Inclusion of citations for clinical information content makes the content more reliable through the provision of scientific articles as references, and enables clinicians to easily update their written content using new information. The proposed approach splits the content into sentences, identifies the sentences that need to be supported with citations by applying classification algorithms, and uses information retrieval and ranking techniques to extract and rank relevant citations from MEDLINE for any given sentence. Additionally, this system extracts snippets from the retrieved articles. We assessed our approach …

Patient-Oriented Evidence-Based Treatment Decision Support System (Treatquest®) For Lung Cancer, Danqing Hu

Theses and Dissertations

Involving patients in healthcare decisions makes a significant and enduring difference to healthcare outcomes. One challenge for patients is the lack of evidence-based information and tools to support their decision making. Although patients have access to significant information through internet and other sources, it is not personalized for their specific situation. This dissertation attempts to help patients acquire evidence-based information relevant to their own situation, so they can make a more informed decision in co-operation with their physicians. Lung cancer has been selected as a focus for this study because lung cancer presents very complex decision making situation and is …