Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Nebulizer-Based Systems To Improve Pharmaceutical Aerosol Delivery To The Lungs, Benjamin M. Spence

Theses and Dissertations

Combining vibrating mesh nebulizers with additional new technologies leads to substantial improvements in pharmaceutical aerosol delivery to the lungs across therapeutic administration methods. In this dissertation, streamlined components, aerosol administration synchronization, and/or Excipient Enhanced Growth (EEG) technologies were utilized to develop and test several novel devices and aerosol delivery systems. The first focus of this work was to improve the poor delivery efficiency, e.g., 3.6% of nominal dose (Dugernier et al. 2017), of aerosolized medication administration to adult human subjects concurrent with high flow nasal cannula (HFNC) therapy, a form of continuous-flow non-invasive ventilation (NIV). The developed Low-Volume Mixer-Heater (LVMH) …

Quantitative Optical Studies Of Oxidative Stress In Rodent Models Of Eye And Lung Injuries, Zahra Ghanian

Theses and Dissertations

Optical imaging techniques have emerged as essential tools for reliable assessment of organ structure, biochemistry, and metabolic function. The recognition of metabolic markers for disease diagnosis has rekindled significant interest in the development of optical methods to measure the metabolism of the organ.

The objective of my research was to employ optical imaging tools and to implement signal and image processing techniques capable of quantifying cellular metabolism for the diagnosis of diseases in human organs such as eyes and lungs. To accomplish this goal, three different tools, cryoimager, fluorescent microscope, and optical coherence tomography system were utilized to study the …

Femtosecond Laser Beam Propagation Through Corneal Tissue: Evaluation Of Therapeutic Laser-Stimulated Second And Third-Harmonic Generation, William R. Calhoun Iii

Theses and Dissertations

One of the most recent advancements in laser technology is the development of ultrashort pulsed femtosecond lasers (FSLs). FSLs are improving many fields due to their unique extreme precision, low energy and ablation characteristics. In the area of laser medicine, ophthalmic surgeries have seen very promising developments. Some of the most commonly performed surgical operations in the world, including laser-assisted in-situ keratomileusis (LASIK), lens replacement (cataract surgery), and keratoplasty (cornea transplant), now employ FSLs for their unique abilities that lead to improved clinical outcome and patient satisfaction.

The application of FSLs in medical therapeutics is a recent development, and although …

Monitoring Changes In Hemodynamics Following Optogenetic Stimulation, Seth Thomas Frye

Theses and Dissertations

The brain is composed of billions of neurons, all of which connected through a vast network. After years of study and applications of different technologies and techniques, there are still more questions than answers when it comes to the fundamental functions of the brain. This project aims to provide a new tool which can be used to gain a better understanding of the fundamental mechanisms that govern neurological processes inside the brain. In order for neural networks to operate, blood has to be supplied through neighboring blood vessels. As such, the increase or decrease in the blood supply has been …

Extracting The Structure And Conformations Of Biological Entities From Large Datasets, Ali Dashti

Theses and Dissertations

In biology, structure determines function, which often proceeds via changes in conformation. Efficient means for determining structure exist, but mapping conformations continue to present a serious challenge. Single-particles approaches, such as cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and emerging "diffract & destroy" X-ray techniques are, in principle, ideally positioned to overcome these challenges. But the algorithmic ability to extract information from large heterogeneous datasets consisting of "unsorted" snapshots - each emanating from an unknown orientation of an object in an unknown conformation - remains elusive.

It is the objective of this thesis to describe and validate a powerful suite of manifold-based algorithms …

Optical Cryoimaging Of Celular Redox In Kidneys From Diabetic Mice, Sepideh Maleki

Theses and Dissertations

Diabetic Nephropathy (DN) is the major single cause of end stage renal diseases (ESRD) in the United States. Diabetes is the third leading fatal disorder after cancer and heart disease. It is affecting 8.3% of the residents of the United States, with a total healthcare cost of $174 billion/yr by 2010.

There currently exists a need for a sensitive and specific diagnosis for temporal detection of oxidative stress (OS) in cellular metabolic levels, which plays an early role in the development of DN. The objective of this research is to use a fluorescence optical imaging technique in order to delineate …

Computer-Aided Diagnosis Of Mammographic Masses, William E. Polakowski

Theses and Dissertations

A new Model-Based Vision algorithm was developed to find possibly cancerous regions of interest (ROIs) in digitized mammograms and to correctly identify the malignant masses. This work has shown a sensitivity of 92 percent for locating malignant ROIs. The database contained 272 images (12 bit, 1OO microns) with 36 malignant and 53 benign mass images. Of the 53 biopsied benign cases, 74 percent were correctly classified. The Focus of Attention (segmentation) Module algorithm used a physiologically motivated Difference of Gaussians (DoG) filter to highlight mass-like regions in the mammogram. The Index Module labeled the regions by their hypothesized class: large …