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Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering

Multi-Classifier Fusion Strategy For Activity And Intent Recognition Of Torso Movements, Abhijit Kadrolkar Nov 2016

Multi-Classifier Fusion Strategy For Activity And Intent Recognition Of Torso Movements, Abhijit Kadrolkar

Doctoral Dissertations

As assistive, wearable robotic devices are being developed to physically assist their users, it has become crucial to develop safe, reliable methods to coordinate the device with the intentions and motions of the wearer. This dissertation investigates the recognition of user intent during flexion and extension of the human torso in the sagittal plane to be used for control of an assistive exoskeleton for the human torso. A multi-sensor intent recognition approach is developed that combines information from surface electromyogram (sEMG) signals from the user’s muscles and inertial sensors mounted on the user’s body. Intent recognition is implemented by following …


Adaptive Kernel Estimation For Enhanced Filtering And Pattern Classification Of Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Novel Techniques For Evaluating The Biomechanics And Pathologic Conditions Of The Lumbar Spine, Nicholas Vincent Battaglia May 2016

Adaptive Kernel Estimation For Enhanced Filtering And Pattern Classification Of Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Novel Techniques For Evaluating The Biomechanics And Pathologic Conditions Of The Lumbar Spine, Nicholas Vincent Battaglia

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the contribution the lumbar spine musculature has on etiological and pathogenic characteristics of low back pain and lumbar spondylosis. This endeavor necessarily required a two-step process: 1) design of an accurate post-processing method for extracting relevant information via magnetic resonance images and 2) determine pathological trends by elucidating high-dimensional datasets through multivariate pattern classification. The lumbar musculature was initially evaluated by post-processing and segmentation of magnetic resonance (MR) images of the lumbar spine, which characteristically suffer from nonlinear corruption of the signal intensity. This so called intensity inhomogeneity degrades the efficacy of traditional intensity-based segmentation algorithms. Proposed …


Inter-Droplet Membranes For Mechanical Sensing Applications, Nima Tamaddoni Jahromi May 2016

Inter-Droplet Membranes For Mechanical Sensing Applications, Nima Tamaddoni Jahromi

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation combines self-assembly phenomena of amphiphilic molecules with soft materials to create and characterize mechanoelectrical transducers and sensors whose sensing elements are thin-film bioinspired membranes comprised of phospholipids or amphiphilic polymers. We show that the structures of these amphiphilic molecules tune the mechanical and electrical properties of these membranes. We show that these properties affect the mechanoelectrical sensing characteristic and range of operation of these membrane transducers. In the experiments, we construct and characterize a membrane-based hair cell embodiment that enables the membrane to be responsive to mechanical perturbations of the hair. The resulting oscillations of membranes formed between …