Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Multimode Point Spectroscopy For Food Authentication, Sayed Asaduzzaman, Nicholas Mackinnon, Hossein Kashani Zadeh

SDSU Data Science Symposium

Enhancing food quality measurement is a necessity to guarantee food safety and adherence to health regulations. Current methods involve lab testing which are time-consuming, costly, destructive and require skilled workers. Spectroscopy has the potential to overcome these challenges. This study employs a multi-mode point spectroscopy method to distinguish food products according to their spectral characteristics,. The system records fluorescence, excited at 365 and 405 nm, visible-near infrared (Vis-NIR) and short-wave infrared (SWIR) spectra. The three main subjects of the study are olive oil, milk, and honey. Samples were kept in a transparent cell culture pot, and Gray and White Spectralon …

Gesture-Based American Sign Language (Asl) Translation System, Kayleigh Moore, Stefano Pecile, Mahdi Yazdanpour

Posters-at-the-Capitol

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 5% of the world's population experiences severe hearing loss. Approximately 9 million people in the U.S. are either functionally deaf or have mild-to-severe hearing loss. In this research, we designed and implemented a translation interface which turns American Sign Language (ASL) gestures captured from a pair of soft robotic gloves into text and speech instantaneously.

We used a combination of flex sensors, tactile sensors, and accelerometers to recognize hand gestures and to record hand and fingers positions, movements, and orientations. The digitized captured gestures were then sent to our proposed translation interface …

Normative Joint Angles And Compensation During Fit-Hansa Test, Jennifer J. Villeneuve

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Imagine a world where no injuries occurred, muscular compensation was able to be detected early on and imbalances resolved before any risks appear. Muscular compensation can cause injuries, especially with repetitive motion or through activities of daily living. The study I conducted focuses on the compensation methods of shoulder abduction and trunk lean during the FIT-HaNSA series. Determining the normative ranges of motion can increase early detection of fatigue for all individuals. This can help make repetitive jobs such as working in a factory much safer for all employees, as they can switch tasks as soon as fatigue is identified. …

Tca Fabrication Devices, Brendan R. Difabio

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Twisted coil actuators are a recent technology that has different properties from popular actuators used today. Being so new, there is still much to learn about these actuators. This project aims to create devices that can be used to make the fabrication process simple and repeatable.

Tracking Simulated Somatosensory Deficiencies That Affect Postural Stability Through Detrended Fluctuation Analysis, Cameron Steele

Scholar Week 2016 - present

Falls are a prevalent problem within elderly populations. Falls also increase the cost of healthcare, since they cause severe injuries frequently and negatively affect quality of life. Lack of postural stability is the consequence of falls, and postural stability is defined as the correct biomechanical execution based on sensory feedback. The types of sensory feedback are vision, vestibular (ear), proprioceptive (body awareness), and somatosensory (sensation of the environment). This study focuses on the lack of postural stability in quiet standing due to somatosensory and vision deficiencies. To track these deficiencies, 51 subjects stood for 60 seconds on two force plates, …

Development Of A Low-Cost Algometer, Thomas D. Naish, Ana Luisa Trejos, Dave M. Walton

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

Many people suffer from chronic pain, the reasons for which are not always well understood. Algometers are instruments that can help clinicians understand the nature of pain by determining the force at which pain becomes noticeable or unbearable. Algometers can also be used to determine the effects that external influences can have on pain tolerance in healthy people.

The goal of this project was to develop an algometer that can measure the normal range of pain thresholds and tolerances of most patients, which ranges up to 35 lbs. Also, the result needed to be accurate to about 1% and made …

Foot Temperature Before And After Walking In Patients With Peripheral Artery Disease, Jose Anguiano-Hernandez

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) is a pathology that can decrease blood flow to the lower limbs, resulting in the inability to regulate body temperature [1]. The effects of impaired blood flow caused by PAD on body temperature are unclear. The purpose of this study is to compare foot temperature changes before and after walking in healthy people and in patients with PAD. We hypothesize that 1) feet affected by PAD will experience a greater increase in temperature than healthy feet during walking and 2) feet affected by PAD will experience a slower rate of temperature recovery after walking compared …

Low-Cost, Biomimetic, Vibrotactile Stimulation For Non-Invasive Sensory Feedback, Joe Kutteh, Alexander Kobilnyk

Summer Scholarship, Creative Arts and Research Projects (SCARP)

Prosthetic limbs provide individuals with amputations the ability to regain function in lost body parts. However, most prostheses are seen as tools rather than the embodiment of the user’s missing limb. To strengthen the connection between prosthesis and user, a sense of touch can be enabled via vibrotactile feedback. The goal of our experiment is to find the just-noticeable-difference (JND) in stimuli that an individual can distinguish while using two different waveforms: biomimetic and traditional. The biomimetic waveform mimics rapidly and slowly adapting receptors in the body by encoding rate-of-change in stimuli at the onset and offset of a more …

Etherapy: The Next Generation Of Physical And Occupational Therapy, Colin Elliott

Summer Scholarship, Creative Arts and Research Projects (SCARP)

The purpose of the research is to create software capable of revolutionizing the way physical and occupational therapy is done by utilizing wireless inertia sensors. The inertia sensors themselves can accurately identify their exact position in space. Hence, when they are attached correctly to a patient requiring therapy, they can provide precise data on the patient’s real-time motions. It is the goal of the software to leverage the power of the sensors to provide real-time feedback to the patient and to the therapist to ensure patients are performing prescribed exercises correctly and are restoring their range(s) of motion. For ease …

Improve The Prototype Of Low-Cost Near-Infrared Diffuse Optical Imaging System, Chen Xu, Mohammed Z. Shakil

Publications and Research

Diffuse Optical Tomography (DOT) and Optical Spectroscopy using near-infrared (NIR) diffused light has demonstrated great potential for the initial diagnosis of tumors and in the assessment of tumor vasculature response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The aims of this project are 1) to test the different types of LEDs in the near-infrared range, and design the driving circuit, and test the modulation of LEDs at different frequencies; 2) to test the APDs as a detector, and build the receiver system and compare efficiency with pre-built systems. In this project, we are focusing on creating a low-cost infrared transmission system for tumor and …

From Soap Bubbles To Cell Membranes, Peter Beltramo

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

Have you ever blown a soap bubble and wondered - what causes the bubble to be so stable and produces those colorful reflections of light? The answer lies in a class of molecules known as surfactants, and they have remarkable similarities with the molecules that comprise the cell membrane of all living organisms. In this workshop, we will use the analogy of a soap bubble to describe cellular membrane properties such as chemistry, structure, membrane transport, and ion channel formation. The goals of this workshop are to 1) link initially intractable concepts in biology like intracellular transport to the intuitive …

Visual Contributions To Balance Control During Gait, Kyle Brozek

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

We propose to isolate the contributions of continuous OF to the orthogonal relationship between balance and gait control during treadmill walking using a series of conditions. Manipulating the direction of OF using a CAREN (Motek Medical, Amsterdam, Netherlands) virtual reality treadmill environment will isolate these visual contributions in human subjects as they walk. We plan to tease out the effect of OF direction on the relationship between gait and balance control by having healthy young adults perform a series of treadmill walking trials while immersed in a VR environment. This will be done by manipulating the direction of walking and …

Estimating Variations In Metabolic Cost Within The Stride Cycle During Level And Uphill Walking, Arash Mohammadzadeh Gonabadi

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Indirect calorimetry provides the average cost of a stride cycle and prevents from identifying which part of the gait cycle causes increased metabolic cost in patients, however, recent simulation methods allow estimating the time profile of metabolic cost within the stride cycle. In this study, we compare the estimations of the time profile of the metabolic cost of two simulation methods for level and uphill walking. We used kinematic, kinetic and electromyography data from level and uphill walking (one participant) to estimate the time profiles of metabolic cost using the muscle-level metabolic model of Umberger using electromyography and kinematic data …

Bimanual Coordination Assessment Using Prosthetic Simulators, Chris Copeland

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

There were a total of 1.6 million people living with loss of a limb in 2005. This number is projected to double to 3.6 million by 2050 [1]. While prosthetics aim to enhance the function of these individuals, it is estimated that 45% of pediatric prosthetic users reject their prosthesis [2]. The literature which describes the motor control mechanisms of prosthetic use is sparse and often low-powered due to inadequate number of subjects. However, prosthetic simulators may be a solution to chronically low-powered prosthetic studies by serving as functional homologues. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the efficacy …

The Energy Paradox Of The Ankle-Foot Complex During Human Walking, Nikolaos Papachatzis, Kota Takahashi

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Flexor hallucis longus (FHL) is a multiarticular muscle that possesses the potential to alter foot’s functional and mechanical behavior, since it performs multiple significant functions during walking (e.g supports the medial longitudinal arch of the foot).The purpose of this study was to determine if the functional changes of the FHL are associated with the foot’s adaptations to the mechanical demands of walking. Backward walking is an experimental method capable of altering how the forces propagate underneath the foot and disrupting the mechanical function of the FHL muscle. We hypothesized that: (1) the muscle activity of the FHL will increase during …

Mobility-Based Models For Advancing Diagnostic/Predictive Healthcare, Elham Rastegari

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Functional ability has been always considered as one of the important determining factors of individuals’ health and quality of life. Traditional movement analysis systems require expensive facilities and frequent visits for patients to specialized laboratories. Portability and affordability of wearable sensors along with their improved accuracy and capability of monitoring movement during daily activities make them a potential alternative for analyzing mobility patterns for clinical and health assessment purposes. Wearable-based movement data, when combined with other relevant clinical or laboratory data, could enhance evidence-based healthcare and data-driven Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS). Utilizing the data from wearable devices, many researchers …

A Comparative Study For Feature Selection Algorithms To Analyze Gait Patterns For Health Purposes, Donovan Orn

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

A Comparative Study for Feature Selection Algorithms to Analyze Gait Patterns for Healthcare Purposes

Donovan Orn

Abstract

With the explosive use of wearable devices, there is an urgent need to find ways to utilize the data collected by such devices. In many cases, wearable devices contain accelerometers that collected different types of data. It is not always clear which data points can be used to extract information that can be used to provide useful knowledge about the health of the individuals. In this study, we proposed to research, implement, and comparing various feature selection techniques used for analyzing on gait …

Can The Presence Of A 1/F Structure In Stride-To-Stride Variability Enable Us To Withstand Falls?, Jenny A. Kent, Andreas Skiadopoulos, Jordan Wickstrom, Nikolaos Stergiou

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Falls are a persistent threat to longevity and quality of life, affecting 1/3 of older adults living in the community each year. There is strong evidence suggesting that a particular pattern within our walking reflects an ability to adapt to a continually changing environment. Specifically, the stride-to-stride patterns of healthy walking have a 1/f frequency spectrum. This has been observed to degrade to varying extents with aging and pathology. The aim of this study was to determine whether the presence of this structure of variability is related to an increased ability to withstand perturbations. We hypothesized that individuals who demonstrated …

Electrochemical And Spectroscopic Study Of Peptide-Template Melanins, Daniel Courter, Olivia Rossi, Zhen Tian

Honors Theses and Capstones

Melanins are organic polymers made up of 5,6-dihydroxyindole carboxylic acid (DHICA) and 5,6-dihydroxyindole (DHI). Biochemical systems synthesize melanins through a complex reaction pathway. Previous research exhibited that naturally-occurring melanins (NatMel) and their synthetic analogues (SynMel) can potentially serve as electrode materials for aqueous charge storage devices. Small surface area creates technical challenges for these melanins as charge storage materials. This research herein demonstrates that the structure of melanins can affect the charge storage capacities of monovalent Na⁺cations and divalent Mg²⁺ cations. 2-D sheet-like peptide melanins (PepMel) were synthesized into tripeptides consisting of aspartic acid (D), phenylalanine (F), …

Validation Of Postural Sway Measurements Using Wii Balance Board, Zachary Meade

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

Standing balance measurements, such as postural sway, are vital for determining functional ability, risk of falling and recovery of injuries. Often the need to collect data outside of the typical clinical or research setting arises. However, obtaining these measurements outside of a laboratory setting can be very difficult, as the mobility of a laboratory-grade force plate (FP) is minimal, and its cost can be upwards of $20,000. The purpose of this study is to create a cheaper alternative by validating the Wii Balance Board’s (WBB; Nintendo, Redmond, Washington, USA) ability to measure postural sway patterns. The WBB can be acquired …

On Utilizing Big Data To Assess Health Levels, Elham Rastegari

UNO Student Research and Creative Activity Fair

The general relationship between mobility/gait patterns and health conditions, has been established by many research studies. Gait patterns have been used in predicting fall incidents, assessing the movement of people with Parkinson disease and assessing gait characteristics of patients with major depression. However, not much has been reported in terms of how to utilize mobility data along with gait patterns to assess health levels and to identify early stages of certain diseases or conditions that impact mobility/gait patterns. In this project, we propose to develop a population analysis system based on recent Big Data technologies that relies on different types …

A Collagen Based Tissue Engineered Heart Valve Shows Excellent Functionality And Remodelling After Dynamic Conditioning, Claire Brougham, Ricardo Moreira, Tanya J. Levingstone, Stefan Jockenhoevel, Petra Mela, Fergal J. O'Brien

Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

Nanotechnology Overview Powerpoint, Mark Tuominen

Nanotechnology Teacher Summer Institutes

Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of matter at dimensions of roughly 1 to 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications. This PowerPoint gives an overview of the field and introduces the teacher summer institute.

Transtibial Prosthesis, Hossein Gholizadeh

Hossein Gholizadeh

No abstract provided.

Amputee’S Satisfaction With Two Different Transfemoral Suspension Systems And The Experienced Problems, Hossein Gholizadeh

Hossein Gholizadeh

No abstract provided.

Hir Prosthetics Research Group Achievements: Road To Success, Hossein Gholizadeh

Hossein Gholizadeh

No abstract provided.

Teaching Physiology To Biomedical Engineers Using Team-Based Learning And Inquiry Research, Trevor R. Cardinal

Biomedical Engineering

Presentation given at conference.

The Impossible Dose - How Can Something Simple Be So Complex? , Lars Hode

Light Activated Tissue Regeneration and Therapy

No abstract provided.

Effect Of 655 Nm Diode Laser On Dog Sperm Motility , M. I. Corral-Baqués, T. Rigau, M. Ribera, J. E. Rodríguez, J. Rigau

Light Activated Tissue Regeneration and Therapy

No abstract provided.

Treating Lymphoedema With Low Level Laser Therapy, Sandy Anderson, Neil Piller, Colin Carati, Bren Gannon, Ann Angel

Light Activated Tissue Regeneration and Therapy

No abstract provided.