Engineering Commons^™

Risk Estimation Toward A Natural History Model For Low Grade Glioma Patients, Anh Thi Hoang Pham

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Glioma is a common type of primary brain tumor that represents 28% of all brain tumors and 80% of malignant tumors. According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), gliomas account for 53%, 35% and 29% of all brain tumors (68%, 74% and 81% of malignant brain tumors) among children (aged 0-14), teenagers (aged 15-19) and young adults, respectively. Gliomas are often diagnosed through radiological imaging and histopathology. There are two main groups of gliomas following World Health Organization’s classification: Low grade gliomas (LGG), or grade I and II gliomas; and high grade gliomas …

Preventive Maintenance Decision Modeling In Health And Service Systems, Mahboubeh Madadi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on the preventive maintenance decision modeling in healthcare and service systems. In the first part of this dissertation, some issues in preventive health decisions for breast cancer are addressed, and in the second part, the required characteristics for preventive maintenance of an unreliable queuing system are derived.

Adherence to cancer screening is the first issue that is addressed in this dissertation. Women’s adherence or compliance with mammography screening remained low in the recent years. In this dissertation, we first develop a design-based logistic regression model to quantify the probability of adherence to screening schedules based on women’s …

Numerical Simulation Of Terahertz Wave Interaction With Breast Cancer Tumor Tissue Sections, Abayomi Omotola Omolewu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents numerical simulation of terahertz (THz) wave interaction with breast cancer tumor tissue sections. The obtained results are expressed in THz images of heterogeneous material that mimics the excised breast cancer tissue sections. The finite-element software package ANSYS High Frequency Structural Simulator (HFSS) was used in this work. HFSS is a full wave frequency domain three-dimensional (3D) electromagnetic simulation package. In this work, four breast cancer tissue models based on pathology images were simulated and images of the models were obtained at 1 THz. An incident Gaussian beam was raster scanned over tissue model configurations and the reflected …

Feasibility Of Pulsed Proton Induced Acoustics For 3d Dosimetry, Fahed M. Alsanea

Open Access Theses

Proton therapy has the potential to deposit its energy in tissue with high conformity to the tumor and significantly reduced integral dose to normal tissue compared to conventional radiation, such as x-rays. As a result, local control can be enhanced while reducing side-effects and secondary cancers. This is due to the way charged Particles deposit their energy or dose, where protons form a Bragg peak and establish a well-defined distal edge as a function of depth (range). To date, the dose delivered to a patient from proton therapy remains uncertain, in particular the positioning of the distal edge of the …

Design And Fabrication Of Nanofluidic Systems With Integrated Sensing Electrodes For Rapid Biomolecule Characterization, Taylor Bradley Busch

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A transparent nanofluidic system with embedded sensing electrodes was designed and fabricated by integrating Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) nanolithography, Focused Ion Beam (FIB) milling and metal deposition, and standard microfabrication processing. The fabrication process started with the evaporation of chrome/gold (Cr/Au) onto a Pyrex 7740 wafer followed by photolithography and wet etching of the microchannels. The wafer was patterned a second time to form Au microelectrodes with 15-45 micrometer separation gaps in the nanochannel region. Sensing electrodes (up to one micron wide) were then deposited using FIB to bridge the gaps. The nanochannels were realized through both AFM nanolithography and …

Peptoid Based Slide Coatings For Disease Detection Via Elisa Microarray Analysis, Melissa Lea Hebert

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Poly-N-substituted glycines (peptoids) are a very versatile family of synthetic molecules that can be customized for any number of applications. In this study, we chose to use peptoids as a foundation for sandwich ELISA microarray analysis with a long term goal of creating an early detection device for complex diseases such as cancer. The peptoids were designed to self-assemble into microspheres to be used in coatings on the surface of the microarray substrates to increase the surface area available for antibody attachment. This increased antibody density would lead to an increase in the microarray analysis sensitivity and dynamic range. Studies …

Fabrication And Characterization Of Thinner Solid-State Nanopores, Denis Forbi Tita

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Solid State nanopores that are fabricated by the ion beam sculpting process and electron beam drilling have shown great promise as a sensing device for DNA and protein molecules. Even though biological pores such as the alpha-Haemolysin have been in use for quite some time, the use of solid state Nanopores in single biomolecule detection has been on the rise since the mid 1990s. Solid State nanopores have an advantage over biological pores in that they are more robust, stable, and can be sculpted to any desired size for use in translocation experiments. One of the major challenges in Nanopore …

Development Of A Microfluidic Device Coupled To Microdialysis Sampling For The Pre-Concentration Of Cytokines, Randy Francisco Espinal Cabrera

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A proof-of-concept microfluidic device combined with heparin-immobilized magnetic beads was created to concentrate cytokine proteins collected from microdialysis samples. Cytokines are known to be related to several diseases such as cancer, and Parkinson's diseases, so to be able to develop more effective diseases treatments their interactions have to be well understood. Amine-functionalized polystyrene and carboxyl-functionalized magnetic microspheres of ~6.0 ìm in diameter were used to immobilize heparin. The amount of heparin immobilized on polystyrene beads was 5.82 x 10-8 ± 0.36 x 10-8 M per 1.0 x 106 beads and for magnetic beads was 0.64 x 10-8 ± 0.01 x …