Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Raman Spectroscopy Detects Distant Invasive Brain Cancer Cells Centimeters Beyond Mri Capability In Humans, Michael Jermyn, Joannie Desroches, Jeanne Mercier, Karl St-Arnaud

Dartmouth Scholarship

Surgical treatment of brain cancer is limited by the inability of current imaging capabilities such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to detect the entirety of this locally invasive cancer. This results in residual cancer cells remaining following surgery, leading to recurrence and death. We demonstrate that intraoperative Raman spectroscopy can detect invasive cancer cells centimeters beyond pathological T1-contrast-enhanced and T2-weighted MRI signals. This intraoperative optical guide can be used to detect invasive cancer cells and minimize post-surgical cancer burden. The detection of distant invasive cancer cells beyond MRI signal has the potential to increase the effectiveness of surgery and directly …

A Fourier Description Of Covariance, And Separation Of Simultaneously Encoded Slices With In-Plane Acceleration In Fmri, Mary C. Kociuba

Dissertations (1934 -)

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies aim to identify localized neural regions associated with a cognitive task performed by the subject. An indirect measure of the brain activity is the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal fluctuations observed within the complex-valued spatial frequencies measured over time. The standard practice in fMRI is to discard the phase information after image reconstruction, even with evidence of biological task-related change in the phase time-series. In the first aim of this dissertation, a complex-valued time-series covariance is derived as a linear combination of second order temporal Fourier frequency coefficients. As opposed to magnitude-only analysis, …

Micellular Electrokinetic Chromatography For Studying Amyloid Beta Oligomer Membrane Affinity, Andrew Bryson

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Amyloid Beta (Aβ) was the major focus of this study. It is a peptide that is present in the brain with a high tendency to self-aggregate. When this protein aggregates, it forms oligomers and protofibrils which in turn are deposited as senile plaques in the brain. The reason for the concern with these plaques is their association with the neurological disorder Alzheimer’s disease. It has been found that the most dangerous oligomers are formed in a portion of the plasma membrane known as lipid rafts. The purpose of this study was to understand how micelles affect the aggregation properties of …

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 …

Exploring Oculomotor Trends In Collegiate Athletes, Brett Whorley, Julie A. Honaker

UCARE Research Products

Collaborative efforts to improve athlete safety without significantly hindering the rules of the games aim to develop a novel system to better measure and diagnose concussions. Provided that common signs of concussions include blurred vision, distant gaze, and dizziness, the Dizziness and Balance Disorders Lab at UNL believes that the simple oculomotor exam studied in this project may be applied to this procedure. Within the broader goal to better understand the causes, signs, symptoms, and prognosis of concussions, researchers desired to further investigate the results of this oculomotor test. The aim was to identify and interpret correlations between collegiate athlete …

Mri Signal Intensity Differentiation Of Brainstem Encephalitis Induced By Enterovirus 71: A Classification Approach For Acute And Convalescence Stages, Hongwu Zeng, Wenxian Huang, Feiqiu Wen, Yonker Wang, Yungen Gan, Weibin Zeng, Ranran Chen, Yanxia He, Zaiyi Liu, Changhong Liang, Kelvin K. L. Wong

Radiology Faculty Publications

Background: The objective of this study is to assess standardized histograms of signal intensities of T1 signal and T2 signal on sagittal view without enhancement during (1) acute stage, and (2) convalescence stage of pediatric patients with Enterovirus 71 related brainstem encephalitis (BE), and with respect to (3) healthy normal.

Methods: Our subjects were hospitalized between March 2010 and October 2012, and underwent pre- and post-contrast MRI studies. The research question to be answered is whether the comparison of the MRI image intensity histograms and relevant statistical quantification can add new knowledge to the diagnosis of BE patients. So, both …