Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Inference And Analysis Of Multilayered Mirna-Mediated Networks In Cancer, Duc Do

Dissertations (1934 -)

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding transcripts that can regulate gene expression, thereby controlling diverse biological processes. Aberrant disruptions of miRNA expression and their interactions with other biological agents (e.g., coding and noncoding transcripts) have been associated with several types of cancer. The goal of this dissertation is to use multidimensional genomic data to model two different gene regulation mechanisms by miRNAs in cancer. This dissertation results from two research projects. The first project investigates a miRNA-mediated gene regulation mechanism called competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) interactions, which suggests that some transcripts can indirectly regulate one another's activity through their interactions with …

Compressed Sensing For Few-View Multi-Pinhole Spect With Applications To Preclinical Imaging, Benjamin Michael Rizzo

Dissertations (1934 -)

Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) can be used to identify and quantify changes in molecular and cellular targets involved in disease. A radiopharmaceutical that targets a specific metabolic function is administered to a subject and planar projections are formed by imaging emissions at different view angles around the subject. The reconstruction task is to determine the distribution of radioactivity within the subject from the projections. We present a reconstruction approach that utilizes only a few view angles, resulting in a highly underdetermined system, which could be used for dynamic imaging applications designed to quantify physiologic processes altered with disease. …

Predoctoral Dental Students’ Perceptions Of Dental Implant Training: Effect Of Preclinical Simulation And Clinical Experience, Soni Prasad, Naveen K. Bansal

School of Dentistry Faculty Research and Publications

The aims of this study were to assess 1) differences in perceptions of dental implant training between dental students who received didactic training alone (control group) and those who received didactic plus simulation training (test group); 2) differences in response between students with and without clinical experience in implant dentistry; and 3) the interaction effect of simulation training and clinical experience on students’ satisfaction. A survey was distributed to the control group in 2014 and to the test group in 2015; both groups were at the same U.S. dental school. Data were collected on confidence levels with various implant restorative …

An Online Educational Program Improves Pediatric Oncology Nurses’ Knowledge, Attitudes, And Spiritual Care Competence, Cheryl L. Petersen, Margaret Callahan, Donna O. Mccarthy, Ronda G. Hughes, Rosemary White-Traut, Naveen K. Bansal

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

This study evaluated the potential impact of an online spiritual care educational program on pediatric nurses’ attitudes toward and knowledge of spiritual care and their competence to provide spiritual care to children with cancer at the end of life. It was hypothesized that the intervention would increase nurses’ positive attitudes toward and knowledge of spiritual care and increase nurses’ level of perceived spiritual care competence. A positive correlation was expected between change in nurses’ perceived attitudes toward and knowledge of spiritual care and change in nurses’ perceived spiritual care competence. A prospective, longitudinal design was employed, and analyses included one-way …

Accuracy And Precision Of Occlusal Contacts Of Stereolithographic Casts Mounted By Digital Interocclusal Registrations, Jason T. Krahenbuhl, Seok-Hwan Cho, Jon Patrick Irelan, Naveen K. Bansal

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Statement of problem

Little peer-reviewed information is available regarding the accuracy and precision of the occlusal contact reproduction of digitally mounted stereolithographic casts.

Purpose

The purpose of this in vitro study was to evaluate the accuracy and precision of occlusal contacts among stereolithographic casts mounted by digital occlusal registrations.

Material and methods

Four complete anatomic dentoforms were arbitrarily mounted on a semi-adjustable articulator in maximal intercuspal position and served as the 4 different simulated patients (SP). A total of 60 digital impressions and digital interocclusal registrations were made with a digital intraoral scanner to fabricate 15 sets of mounted stereolithographic …

Least-Squares Mapping From Kinematic Data To Acoustic Synthesis Parameters For Rehabilitative Acoustic Learning, Xiangyu Zhou

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Thousands of people suffer from dysarthria resulting from neurological injury of the motor component of the motor-speech system, and need to rely on alternative methods to communicate in daily life, such as body language or text-to-speech [1] . However, there are currently very few effective rehabilitative therapies for helping these patients improve their speech. Because of this, research is needed to develop better rehabilitative therapies. One such area of research is the use of involuntary acoustic learning. The Speech and Swallowing lab at Marquette University has an Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) system to collect kinematic data and a software system called …

Mcat: Development Of A Generic Mhealth Tool For Continuous Assessment, Automatic Intervention, And Analysis, A B M Kowser Patwary

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Use of mobile health (mHealth) technology for behavioral and psychological studies through continuous assessment and intervention is found to be effective. Also, the use of smartphone has increased rapidly last few years, as well as its uses for health support. mHealth research is applied for smoking cessation, motivating cancer survivors and mentoring peers for social engagement. While in most settings researchers are developing their own intervention and assessment tool for each different research. In this study mHealth research is applied and generalized across a range of applications, including smoking cessation, motivating cancer survivors and mentoring peers to improve social engagement. …

Towards Mhealth Solutions For Asthma Patients, Nahid Negar

Master's Theses (2009 -)

With the recent, rapid growth in mobile-computing technology, mobile health (mHealth) is becoming a popular research topic. mHealth is one of several examples of how using technology in the health sector is being more advanced every day. mHealth is being applied to the care of a broad spectrum of diseases from acute to chronic, such as the flu, asthma, and cancer. Due to the easy-to-understand and friendly user interfaces, mobility and cost effectiveness; a mobile application can be a powerful tool to collect patient information. Asthma is a common disease around the globe. Collecting the proper symptom, trigger, peak-flow and …

Lpcoms: Towards A Low Power Wireless Smart-Shoe System For Gait Analysis In People With Disabilities, Ishmat Zerin

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Gait analysis using smart sensor technology is an important medical diagnostic process and has many applications in rehabilitation, therapy and exercise training. In this thesis, we present a low power wireless smart-shoe system (LPcomS) to analyze different functional postures and characteristics of gait while walking. We have designed and implemented a smart-shoe with a Bluetooth communication module to unobtrusively collect data using smartphone in any environment. With the design of a shoe insole equipped with four pressure sensors, the foot pressure is been collected, and those data are used to obtain accurate gait pattern of a patient. With our proposed …

Pharyngeal And Cervical Cancer Incidences Significantly Correlate With Personal Uv Doses Among Whites In The United States, Dianne E. Godar, Rong Tang, Stephen Merrill

Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Because we found UV-exposed oral tissue cells have reduced DNA repair and apoptotic cell death compared with skin tissue cells, we asked if a correlation existed between personal UV dose and the incidences of oral and pharyngeal cancer in the United States. We analyzed the International Agency for Research on Cancer's incidence data for oral and pharyngeal cancers by race (white and black) and sex using each state's average annual personal UV dose. We refer to our data as ‘white’ rather than ‘Caucasian,’ which is a specific subgroup of whites, and ‘black’ rather than African-American because blacks from other countries …

3d Visualization Architecture For Building Applications Leveraging An Existing Validated Toolkit, David A. Polyak

Master's Theses (2009 -)

The diagnostic radiology space and healthcare in general is a slow adopter of new software technologies and patterns. Despite the widespread embrace of mobile technology in recent years, altering the manner in which societies in developed countries live and communicate, diagnostic radiology has not unanimously adopted mobile technology for remote diagnostic review. Desktop applications in the diagnostic radiology space commonly leverage a validated toolkit. Such toolkits not only simplify desktop application development but minimize the scope of application validation. For these reasons, such a toolkit is an important piece of a company’s software portfolio. This thesis investigated an approach for …