Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

A Low-Power Approach For Front End Biological Signal Conditioning, Logan Smith Taylor

Masters Theses

In a lab-on-a-chip (LOC) application, the measurement of small analog signals such as local temperature variation often involves detection of very low-level signals in a noisy micro-scale environment. This is true for other biomedical monitoring systems as well. These systems observe various physiological parameters or electrochemical reactions that need to be tracked electrically. For temperature measurement pyroelectric transducers represent an efficient solution in terms of speed, sensitivity, and scale of integration, especially when prompt and accurate temperature monitoring is desired.

The ability to perform laboratory operations on a small scale using miniaturized LOC devices is a promising biosensing technique. The …

Design Of A Passive Exoskeleton Spine, Haohan Zhang

Masters Theses

In this thesis, a passive exoskeleton spine was designed and evaluated by a series of biomechanics simulations. The design objectives were to reduce the human operator’s back muscle efforts and the intervertebral reaction torques during a full range sagittal plane spine flexion/extension. The biomechanics simulations were performed using the OpenSim modeling environment. To manipulate the simulations, a full body musculoskeletal model was created based on the OpenSim gait2354 and “lumbar spine” models. To support flexion and extension of the torso a “push-pull” strategy was proposed by applying external pushing and pulling forces on different locations on the torso. The external …