Engineering Commons^™

Diy Cell Incubator, Hayden James Jeanor

Electrical Engineering

The purpose of creating a cell Incubator is for the development of cell and tissue production in laboratory settings. Large scale research projects and the medical community grow cells for various reasons, including experiments and creating tissue for patients. However, they cannot simply depend on growing cells in a petri dish that sit on a rack at room temperature. To grow heathy cells in the fastest way possible, they use cell incubators. Cell incubators create an atmosphere within the incubation bay that is designed to promote cell growth. The three main components that need to be constantly regulated, using a …

Identifying And Minimizing Underspecification In Breast Cancer Subtyping, Jonathan Cheuk-Kiu Tang

Master's Theses

In the realm of biomedical technology, both accuracy and consistency are crucial to the development and deployment of these tools. While accuracy is easy to measure, consistency metrics are not so simple to measure, especially in the scope of biomedicine where prediction consistency can be difficult to achieve. Typically, biomedical datasets contain a significantly larger amount of features compared to the amount of samples, which goes against ordinary data mining practices. As a result, predictive models may fail to find valid pathways for prediction during training on such datasets. This concept is known as underspecification.

Underspecification has been more accepted …

Bicep Muscle Rep Counter With Semg, Matthew Max Garcia

Electrical Engineering

The Bicep Muscle Rep Counter with SEMG is a device that was made to develop three repetition thresholds or difficulty levels from a fully-flexed bicep brachii muscle and signal to the user when consequent bicep muscle contractions pass said thresholds or levels. This device can be used when performing a bicep-focused movement or when generally flexing the bicep muscle. Essentially, this device serves to make sure each repetition of a muscle contraction passes a percentage value calculated from the electrical activity outputted from a max contraction.

The device is not designed for and does not produce data for muscle growth, …

Smart Bottle Ble Integration, Joshua M. Rizzolo

Electrical Engineering

In 1975, four percent of children aged five to nineteen were categorized as overweight or obese. As of 2016, this figure climbed above 18 percent [1]. Researchers at California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) want to investigate the effect of overeating in early childhood on later childhood obesity. This research requires collecting feeding pattern data on infants, which proves challenging. Parents cannot be relied on to regularly collect clean data due to factors including work schedule, multitasking, and general exhaustion. Thus, we have developed a tool to automatically collect data on feeding frequency and duration, as well …

Neural Network Based Diagnosis Of Breast Cancer Using The Breakhis Dataset, Ross E. Dalke

Master's Theses

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in the world, and it is the second deadliest cancer for females. In the fight against breast cancer, early detection plays a large role in saving people’s lives. In this work, an image classifier is designed to diagnose breast tumors as benign or malignant. The classifier is designed with a neural network and trained on the BreakHis dataset. After creating the initial design, a variety of methods are used to try to improve the performance of the classifier. These methods include preprocessing, increasing the number of training epochs, changing network architecture, …

Insole Fall Prevention Device, Nick M. Hughes, Andrew M. Slaboda

Biomedical Engineering

Falls among the aging population occur every single day, with 1 in every 5 resulting in some injury and 300,000 hospitalized every year with a hip fracture [1]. The most popular and effective way to mitigate these falls is through physical therapist intervention. However, with the increased popularity in telerehab, many patients at risk for falls cannot accurately convey their gait tendencies to their physical therapists from the comfort of their home or while not in direct contact with the PT. A device like an insole, implanted with force sensors, which measures different parts of a patient’s foot, could convey …

Smart Motor Syringe System, Connor Wilson

Electrical Engineering

In this document a proof-of-concept design is developed and implementation to showcase the latest development in an ongoing effort to produce a series of automated syringe pumps.

Verification Of A Digital Microfluidics Platform, Karanpartap Singh

Electrical Engineering

The electrowetting effect describes the change in contact angle between a solid surface and electrolyte in response to an applied electric potential difference. Given a planar array of individually-actuated electrodes, electrowetting can be used to transport, mix, and separate picoliter to microliter-sized droplets of liquid on a dielectric layer. Applications of this phenomenon range from lab-on-a-chip and other microfluidic devices to liquid lenses capable of altering their topology and focus within milliseconds.

This project extends prior work simulating the dependence of droplet velocity on actuation voltage and demonstrates observed physics on a physical platform. The simulation portion of this project …

Integration Of Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy For Multichannel Cell Culture Measurement, Conard Chan

Master's Theses

ELECTROCHEMICAL IMPEDANCE SPECTROSCOPY (EIS) has been widely used to study the electrical properties of biological material due to its non-invasive nature and experimental reliability. However, most of the precision impedance analyzers used in EIS only provide single- or two-channel measurements which are inadequate for larger-scale multiplexed measurements, such as those found in modern microfluidic cell culture experiments. The Biomedical Microsystems Laboratory has developed a 16-channel cell culture platform with integrated electrode arrays for monitoring cell growth and electrical properties (i.e., the so-called “electrical phenotype”). In this paper, a system consisting of a 16-channel solid-state analog multiplexer (MUX)paired with a low-cost, …

Classifying Electrocardiogram With Machine Learning Techniques, Hillal Jarrar

Master's Theses

Classifying the electrocardiogram is of clinical importance because classification can be used to diagnose patients with cardiac arrhythmias. Many industries utilize machine learning techniques that consist of feature extraction methods followed by Naive- Bayesian classification in order to detect faults within machinery. Machine learning techniques that analyze vibrational machine data in a mechanical application may be used to analyze electrical data in a physiological application. Three of the most common feature extraction methods used to prepare machine vibration data for Naive-Bayesian classification are the Fourier transform, the Hilbert transform, and the Wavelet Packet transform. Each machine learning technique consists of …

Portable Ventilator, Bradley C. Weeks, Jack W. Brewer, Sanders Sanabria

Electrical Engineering

The current COVID-19 pandemic has heavily impacted the healthcare system in the United States and elsewhere. The need for patients to have access to a hospital with a ventilator along with a shortage of ventilators for recovery and at-home care as a result of minimal hospital vacancy for patients has been greatly stressed. The presented problem is both an unmet demand and supply of portable and effective ventilators. Existing ventilators have many shortcomings that should be addressed: size, weight, cost, and complexity of current ventilators confines users to stay in a medical facility whilst being monitored by professionals. This both …

Biological Semantic Segmentation On Ct Medical Images For Kidney Tumor Detection Using Nnu-Net Framework, Andres Bergsneider

Master's Theses

Healthcare systems are constantly challenged with bottlenecks due to human-reliant operations, such as analyzing medical images. High precision and repeatability is necessary when performing a diagnostics on patients with tumors. Throughout the years an increasing number of advancements have been made using various machine learning algorithms for the detection of tumors helping to fast track diagnosis and treatment decisions. “Black Box” systems such as the complex deep learning networks discussed in this paper rely heavily on hyperparameter optimization in order to obtain the most ideal performance. This requires a significant time investment in the tuning of such networks to acquire …

Smart Motor Syringe System, Conard Chan, Jenny Chiao

Electrical Engineering

Syringe pumps are widely used in many research applications especially in the applications that need precise control. Today most medical research utilizes syringes to control the fluid being pumped to the experiment objects. In most cases microscopic or nano-scopic motion control is required to acquire optimal results, such application includes purification of DNA/RNA from contaminants[1]. The high precision required to control the syringe pump makes it difficult to perform manually. This paper focuses on the design of an intelligent syringe pump motor control system to achieve reliable and precise control for biomedical experiments. This project improves medical research quality with …

Neural Network Pruning For Ecg Arrhythmia Classification, Isaac E. Labarge

Master's Theses

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are a widely accepted means of solving complex classification and detection problems in imaging and speech. However, problem complexity often leads to considerable increases in computation and parameter storage costs. Many successful attempts have been made in effectively reducing these overheads by pruning and compressing large CNNs with only a slight decline in model accuracy. In this study, two pruning methods are implemented and compared on the CIFAR-10 database and an ECG arrhythmia classification task. Each pruning method employs a pruning phase interleaved with a finetuning phase. It is shown that when performing the scale-factor pruning …

Pulsed Electrical Field Ablation Modulation, Camille Lousie Dozois, Jason Tyler Arias, Courtnee Lin Madsen

Biomedical Engineering

This document comprises the steps taken by the senior project team to create a Proof-of-Concept Review for a Variable Pulsed Electric Field Ablation Catheter. First, the team did a significant amount of background research on related literature to better understand the current status of the project topic. After sufficient background information was obtained, project objectives and deliverables were finalized. Once customer requirements and the indications for use were completed, engineering specifications for the product and project were documented. All key customer requirements and engineering specs were related to the variable pulse functionality, maneuverability, as well as overall dimensioning of the …

Blood Glucose Predictor, Jessica Patterson

Electrical Engineering

For my senior project, I perform data analysis using statistical methods to determine body metrics that correlate with blood glucose levels. Working with Dr. Tina Smilkstein, I take repeat measurements from 6 different volunteers to establish trends in bodily metric data. The data taken includes weight, body fat, pulse rate, VO2, blood glucose, blood pressure, hours slept, and quality of sleep. Using these values, I use the program MiniTab to view results.

A few examples of correlations with blood glucose found in this project are:

• Systolic blood pressure for females had a regression line of 124.0 -0.3366*Blood Pressure. This indicates …

Left Atrial Model, Borna Sobati, Sarah Porello, Tess Pate

Biomedical Engineering

The objective is to produce an electrophysiological model of an adult human left atrium. This model will be used to test mapping probe catheters used for locating cardiac arrhythmias against current technology used in practice. Dr. Chris Porterfield requested this model and other physicians or probe catheter manufacturers may also use this product in the future. Dr. Porterfield also discussed the possibility of future senior project groups using the model as a bench test for designing new catheter tips. The model will precisely simulate electrical behaviors of the heart in normal as well as arrhythmic conditions. Ideally, the model will …

Development Of A Myoelectric Detection Circuit Platform For Computer Interface Applications, Nickolas Andrew Butler

Master's Theses

Personal computers and portable electronics continue to rapidly advance and integrate into our lives as tools that facilitate efficient communication and interaction with the outside world. Now with a multitude of different devices available, personal computers are accessible to a wider audience than ever before. To continue to expand and reach new users, novel user interface technologies have been developed, such as touch input and gyroscopic motion, in which enhanced control fidelity can be achieved. For users with limited-to-no use of their hands, or for those who seek additional means to intuitively use and command a computer, novel sensory systems …

Microfluidic Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy, John J. Foley

Master's Theses

The goal of this study is to design and manufacture a microfluidic device capable of measuring changes in impedance valuesof microfluidic cell cultures. Tocharacterize this, an interdigitated array of electrodes was patterned over glass, where it was then bonded to a series of fluidic networks created in PDMS via soft lithography. The device measured ethanol impedance initially to show that values remain consistent over time. Impedance values of water and 1% wt. saltwater were compared to show that the device is able to detect changes in impedance, with up to a 60% reduction in electrical impedance in saltwater. Cells were …

Adaptation Of Vt-Dbr Lasers For Lidar, Luke Horowitz

Master's Theses

Vernier Tuned Distributed Bragg Reflector (VT-DBR) lasers have had great success in the field of Swept-Source Optical Coherence Tomography (SS-OCT) due to their continuous and nearly 40 nm wavelength tuning range in a single longitudinal mode. Fast sweeps allow for real time imaging with micrometer resolution at a distance of a few centimeters. While this laser has proven quite useful as a medical imaging tool via OCT, it has yet to similarly prove itself for general light detection and ranging (LIDAR) applications due to range limitations that arise from a finite laser coherence length. The goal of this thesis is …

Extended-Use Ecg Monitor, Daniel Aaron Soski

Master's Theses

In this thesis, a prototype ECG monitor was developed that is integrated into an elastic shirt and takes a 3-lead ECG for over 5 days. The high-quality measurements can be used to identify markers indicative of various detrimental heart conditions. Measurements recorded by the device are encrypted and stored onto a micro-SD card. Current Holter monitors are expensive and have functional lives less than 48 hours; however, extended duration monitoring has been proven more useful in diagnosis. The device designed demonstrates that ECG measurements can be taken over longer durations without sacrificing quality, comfort, or device cost.

Portable 6 Lead 4 Electrode Ekg, Cody Magnuson, Wes Archbold

Electrical Engineering

This project focused on designing a small, portable, 6 lead 4 electrode electrocardiogram (EKG) machine with enough accuracy and resolution to successfully diagnose clinical issues. The electrical design used to measure signals originating from the heart can be broken up into three stages. The first stage is the human device interface. Next, is the analog block that filters out common mode noise and conditions the signal for digital encoding using instrumentation amplifiers, a right leg circuit, high pass, low pass, and an amplifier. This circuit filters all frequencies above and below the frequency band of meaningful data (1-160Hz), rejects signals …

Computer-Aided Diagnoses (Cad) System: An Artificial Neural Network Approach To Mri Analysis And Diagnosis Of Alzheimer's Disease (Ad), Berizohar Padilla Cerezo

Master's Theses

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a chronic and progressive, irreversible syndrome that deteriorates the cognitive functions. Official death certificates of 2013 reported 84,767 deaths from Alzheimer’s disease, making it the 6th leading cause of death in the United States. The rate of AD is estimated to double by 2050. The neurodegeneration of AD occurs decades before symptoms of dementia are evident. Therefore, having an efficient methodology for the early and proper diagnosis can lead to more effective treatments.

Neuroimaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can detect changes in the brain of living subjects. Moreover, medical imaging techniques are the …

Skin Tone Tracking Device (Chromaband), Ziyang Bian

Computer Engineering

It’s long been said that your skin is a window into your health and with many illnesses the first signs of trouble actually show up in your skin. So if we have this natural warning system, then why isn’t anyone able to effectively use it to predict changes in our health? The problem is that currently there is no reliable way to accurately measure the change in skin tone and how these changes may or may not change with variations in health. This project’s aim is to design and develop a device that will record the changes in a user’s …

Poly Drop, Zachary T. Scott, Lilly J. Paul

Computer Engineering

Poly Drop is a software interface to control an Open Drop digital micro-fluidics system. We obtained a hardware system from Gaudi labs. Our task was to create a Graphical User Interface that made the control of the device easier and more automated for better testing. We created software that had 3 parts: a control GUI, arduino code to control the hardware, and Image Analysis that gives the user information such as location and color of liquid drops as they move across the electrode grid of the Open Drop system. The GUI was developed using Java Swing. The communication between the …

Wax Bee Gone: A Safe, Effective Solution To Ear Wax Removal, Robert G. Shenon, Shanvir S. Dhinsa

Electrical Engineering

This project sought to combine conventional methods such as scraping and water pressure to removal ear wax, but with electronic automation to removal the potential for human error as much as possible. Through the use of a 9V battery, and Arduino microcontroller, DC motors, and other circuitry, this project has developed a prototype for a device that can properly remove ear wax without any discomfort or risk to the user. Much of this project involved learning how to properly manipulate and provide the necessary power requirements DC motors from an Arduino and a 9V battery. Additionally, creating a 3D printed …

Ecg Classification Using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System, Jason N. Rivera, Kelsey C. Rodriguez

Electrical Engineering

ECG classification using Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS), sponsored by Professor Yu, involves the diagnosis of six cardiovascular conditions by analyzing one single neural network. Today’s ECG signal instrumentation does not have the ability to characterize cardiovascular diseases without a doctor’s complete evaluation and diagnosis. Our project gives a promising solution to the inability in the current market’s ECG signal instrumentation to correctly evaluate and diagnose cardiovascular diseases. ECG signal reportings is a non-invasive process that will lead to many more applications of advanced signal processing and data analysis/diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. The inputs to the ANFIS are annotations of …

Hand (Motor) Movement Imagery Classification Of Eeg Using Takagi-Sugeno-Kang Fuzzy-Inference Neural Network, Rory Larson Donovan

Master's Theses

Approximately 20 million people in the United States suffer from irreversible nerve damage and would benefit from a neuroprosthetic device modulated by a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). These devices restore independence by replacing peripheral nervous system functions such as peripheral control. Although there are currently devices under investigation, contemporary methods fail to offer adaptability and proper signal recognition for output devices. Human anatomical differences prevent the use of a fixed model system from providing consistent classification performance among various subjects. Furthermore, notoriously noisy signals such as Electroencephalography (EEG) require complex measures for signal detection. Therefore, there remains a tremendous need to …

Silent Communication Device, Christopher Wayne Schutter

Master's Theses

Oral communication has constituted as a necessary aspect of how people interact with one another, but there are always situations where this form of communication can create distractions, irritation, or even danger. Take for example, a student in a laboratory who needs to communicate effectively with a lab partner without creating a distraction to those trying to work around said student or a soldier on a battlefield who needs to relay information effectively to his or her comrades without revealing his or her position to the enemy. It becomes apparent that people need a more exclusive form of communication in …

A Stroke Therapy Brace Design, Evan Kirkbride

Electrical Engineering

Victims of stroke often have difficulty with rehabilitation. With limited movement on their affected arm, patients often do not want to move much for physical therapy. In this project, we design a robotic brace that helps stroke patients move their arm more effectively in a reaching or pulling motion. By giving patients more movement in their affected arm than they would have otherwise, patients gain more from rehabilitation. The brace also adapts to the patient’s needs, providing more inclination or resistance as needed for their physical therapy. This kind of therapy engages patients rather than relying on their likely dwindled …