Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

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 …

Three-Dimensional Printing And Nanotechnology For Enhanced Implantable Materials, Karthik Kumar Tappa

Doctoral Dissertations

Orthopedic and oro-maxillofacial implants have revolutionized treatment of bone diseases and fractures. Currently available metallic implants have been in clinical use for more than 40 years and have proved medically efficacious. However, several drawbacks remain, such as excessive stiffness, accumulation of metal ions in surrounding tissue, growth restriction, required removal/revision surgery, inability to carry drugs, and susceptibility to infection. The need for additional revision surgery increases financial costs and prolongs recovery time for patients. These metallic implants are bulk manufactured and often do not meet patient's requirements. A surgeon must machine (cut, weld, trim or drill holes) them in order …

Detecting, Segmenting And Tracking Bio-Medical Objects, Mingzhong Li

Doctoral Dissertations

"Studying the behavior patterns of biomedical objects helps scientists understand the underlying mechanisms. With computer vision techniques, automated monitoring can be implemented for efficient and effective analysis in biomedical studies. Promising applications have been carried out in various research topics, including insect group monitoring, malignant cell detection and segmentation, human organ segmentation and nano-particle tracking.

In general, applications of computer vision techniques in monitoring biomedical objects include the following stages: detection, segmentation and tracking. Challenges in each stage will potentially lead to unsatisfactory results of automated monitoring. These challenges include different foreground-background contrast, fast motion blur, clutter, object overlap and …