Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

A Mechanistically Guided Approach To Treatment Of Multi-Wavelet Reentry: Experiments In A Computational Model Of Cardiac Propagation, Richard T. Carrick

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia in the United States today. However, treatment options remain limited despite the enormous magnitude of both AF prevalence and the associated economic cost. Of those treatment options that are available, ablation-based interventional methods have demonstrated the highest rates of long-term cure. Unfortunately, these methods have substantially lower efficacy in patients with heavier burdens of disease, thus leaving the most affected individuals with the least hope for successful treatment.

The focus of this research is to develop a mechanistically guided approach towards the treatment of multi-wavelet reentry (MWR), one of the primary …

Modeling The Spatiotemporal Dynamics Of Cells In The Lung, Joshua Jeremy Pothen

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Multiple research problems related to the lung involve a need to take into account the spatiotemporal dynamics of the underlying component cells. Two such problems involve better understanding the nature of the allergic inflammatory response to explore what might cause chronic inflammatory diseases such as asthma, and determining the rules underlying stem cells used to engraft decellularized lung scaffolds in the hopes of growing new lungs for transplantation. For both problems, we model the systems computationally using agent-based modeling, a tool that enables us to capture these spatiotemporal dynamics by modeling any biological system as a collection of agents (cells) …

Burst Pressure Properties And Ex Vivo Analysis Of Alginate-Based Hydrogels For Tissue Sealant Applications, Patrick Nelson Charron

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Lung diseases, cancers, and trauma can result in injury to the connective tissue lining the lung, i.e., the pleura. Pleural injuries lead to pneumothoraxes or pleural effusions, i.e., air or fluid leaking out of the lung respectively, and potential lung collapse - an immediately life threatening condition. While several bioengineered soft tissue sealants exist on the market, there is only one sealant FDA-approved for use in pulmonary surgery. In addition, very limited techniques are presented in the literature for characterizing the burst properties of hydrogel tissue sealants. For my thesis, I proposed to develop a protocol for characterizing the burst …