Biomedical Instrumentation Engineering

Objective:The aim of this study was to evaluate the progression of arthritis in a complete Freund’s adjuvant (CFA)-induced Wistar rat model and to monitor inflammatory arthritis activity using thermal imaging compared with histopathology.Methodology: Fifteen adult male Wistar rats were studied in an adjuvant induced arthritis model by the injection of complete Freund’s adjuvant in the right hind limb and right forelimb, respectively, with the left limbs used as controls. Thermal image analysis based on skin temperature measurement, radiographic analysis based on erosion, limb circumference measurement, and histopathological evaluation were performed.Results. The average skin temperature difference on the arthritis-induced side and control for both the forelimb and hind limb were found to be 1.09 °C and 0.98 °C, respectively. Pearson correlation analysis revealed that skin surface temperature was positively correlated with the arthritis severity score (forelimb: r=0.64, hind limb: r=0.66, p<0.05).A significant correlation also existed between thermal imaging temperature and visual scoring of X-ray (forelimb: r=0.56, hind limb: r=0.67, p<0.05). Conclusion:Thermal imaging measurements correlated with arthritis severity score,radiological score, and ankle diameters. Hence, thermography could be used to diagnose and analyze inflammatory activity of arthritis at the preclinical stage.

This paper reviews recent achievements in quantitative analyses of modern research on Traditional Chinese Pulse Diagnosis (TCPD). In order to demystify TCPD and prove its efficiency, some fundamental knowledge such as concepts, diagnosis methods, and standard pulse patterns are discussed. We review the modern research on TCPD mainly from 4 aspects: objectification of TCPD, analyses of pulse waveform, research into the mechanism of pulse formation, clinic observations, and comparisons on pulse images. For each of these aspects, general background information and a brief explanation on them are given. It is especially important to distinguish the pulse images based on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and the sphygmogram based on Western medicine. Our pulse acquisition system is presented as an example. Furthermore, typical pulse waveforms in our pulse database and their results processed by modern signal processing methods such as cepstrum, short-time Fourier transforms (STFT), and wavelet transform are demonstrated. Finally, the prosperities and difficulties of modern research on TCPD are pointed out.

Blood pressure (BP) is one of the important vital signs that need to be monitored for personal healthcare. This paper describes the method developed by the authors to measure systolic blood pressure from pulse transit time (PTT) Pulse transit time is the time taken for the arterial pulse pressure wave to travel from the aortic valve to a peripheral site. It is usually measured from the R wave on the electrocardiogram to a photoplethysmography signal. PTT is inversely proportional to blood pressure. This method does not require an air cuff and only a minimal inconvenience of attaching electrodes and LED/photo detector sensors on a subject. Twenty three healthy subjects (age 18-60 yrs) were studied. Blood pressure measurement is carried out using pulse transit time and is compared with sphygmomanometry, the reference standard and the oscillometric based automatic BP measuring machine. The results show that the standard deviation of their differences was around 3 mmHg. The developed pulse transit time based method can be used as a noninvasive and cuffless alternative to the conventional occluding-cuff approaches for long-term and continuous monitoring of blood pressure.

—ECG is basically the graphical representation of the electrical activity of cardiac muscles during contraction and release stages. It helps in determination of the cardiac arrhythmias in a well manner. Due to this early detection of arrhythmias can be done properly. In other words we can say that the bio-potentials generated by the cardiac muscles results in an electrical signal called Electro-cardiogram (ECG). It acts as a vital physiological parameter, which is being used exclusively to know the state of the cardiac patients. Feature extraction of ECG plays a vital role in the manual as well as automatic analysis of ECG for the use in specially designed instruments like ECG monitors, Holter tape recorders and scanners, ambulatory ECG recorders and analyzers. In this paper the study of the concept of pattern recognition of ECG is done. It refers to the classification of data patterns and characterizing them into classes of predefined set. The analysis ECG signal falls under the application of pattern recognition. The ECG signal generated waveform gives almost all information about activity of the heart. The ECG signal feature extraction parameters such as spectral entropy, Poincare plot and Lyapunov exponent are used for study in this paper .This paper also includes artificial neural network as a classifier for identifying the abnormalities of heart disease.

A hand-elevation study was carried out in the laboratory in order to alter peripheral blood flow with the aim of increasing understanding of factors affecting the morphology of peripheral photoplethysmographic signals. Photoplethysmographic (PPG) signals were recorded from twenty healthy volunteer subjects during a hand-elevation study in which the right hand was raised and lowered relative to heart level, while the left hand remained static. Red and infrared (IR) PPG signals were obtained from the right and left index fingers using a custom-made PPG processing system. PPG features were identified using a feature-detection algorithm based on the first derivative of the PPG signal. The systolic PPG amplitude, the reflection index, crest time, pulse width at half height, and delta T were calculated from 20 s IR PPG signals from three positions of the right hand with respect to heart level (-50, 0, ?50 cm) in 19 volunteers. PPG features were found to change with hand elevation. On lowering the hand to 50 cm below heart level, ac systolic PPG amplitudes from the finger decreased by 68.32 %, while raising the arm increased the systolic amplitude by 69.99 %. These changes in amplitude were attributed to changes in hydrostatic pressure and the veno-arterial reflex. Other morphological variables, such as crest time, were found to be statistically significantly different across hand positions, indicating increased vascular resistance on arm elevation than on dependency. It was hypothesized that these morphological PPG changes were influenced by changes in downstream venous resistance, rather than arterial, or arteriolar, resistance. Changes in hand position relative to heart level can significantly affect the morphology of the peripheral ac PPG waveform. These alterations are due to a combination of physical effects and physiological responses to changes in hand position, which alter vascular resistance. Care should be taken when interpreting morphological data derived from PPG signals and methods should be standardized to take these effects into account.

Deuterium (D) incorporation in GeO2/Ge structures following D2 annealing was investigated.
Higher D concentrations were obtained for GeO2/Ge samples in comparison to their SiO2/Si
counterparts annealed in the same conditions. Oxygen vacancies produced during the annealing
step in D2 constitute defect sites for D incorporation, analogous to defects at the SiO2/Si interfacial
region. Besides D incorporation, volatilization of the oxide layer is also observed as a consequence
of D2 annealing, especially in the high temperature regime of the present study (>450C). In
parallel to this volatilization, the stoichiometry and chemical structure of remnant oxide are
modified as well. These results evidence the broader impact of forming gas annealing in dielectric/
Ge structures with respect to SiO2/Si counterparts. VC 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.

Magnetic Induction Tomography (MIT) is a relatively new and emerging type of tomography techniques that is able to map the distribution of all three passive electrical properties (PEPs). Its non-invasive and contactless features make it an attractive technique for many applications compared to the traditional contact electrode based electrical impedance tomography. Recently, MIT has become a promising monitoring technique in industrial process tomography, and the area of the research interest has moved from 2D to 3D because of the volumetric nature of electromagnetic field. Three dimensional MIT images provide more information on the conductivity distribution, especially in the axial direction. However, it has been reported that the reconstructed 3D images can be distorted when the imaging object is located at a less sensitive region. Although this distortion can be compensated by adjusting the regularisation criteria, this is not practical in real life applications as the prior information about the object's location is often unavailable. This paper presents a memory efficient 4D MIT algorithm which can maintain the image quality under the same regularisation circumstances. Instead of solving each set of measurement individually, the 4D algorithm takes advantage of the correlations between the image and its neighboring data frames to reconstruct 4D of conductivity movements. The 4D algorithm improves the image qualities by increasing the temporal resolution. It also overcomes some sensitivity issues of 3D MIT algorithms and can provide a more stable result in terms of the size consistency of the reconstructed image. Several experimental results using real laboratory data are presented for validating the proposed algorithms.

In India, number of people with type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (DM) would be 87 million by the year 2030. DM disturbs autonomic regulation of skin microcirculation, and causes decrease in resting blood flows through the skin. The skin blood flow has a major effect on its temperature. The aim of the study was to evaluate changes of skin temperature of all parts of the body and serum asymmetric dimethylarginine, ADMA (μmol/L) in type-2 DM Indian patients. Group-I: Normal (n=17; M/F: 10/15, mean±SD= 43.2±9.4 years); Group-II: Type-2 DM without cardiovascular (CV) complications (n=15; M/F: 10/7, mean±SD= 46.3 ± 14.0 years); Thermograms of all parts of the body were acquired using a non-contact infrared (IR) thermography camera (ThermaCAM T400, FLIR Systems, Sweden). Blood parameters and thyroid hormone were measured biochemically. Indian diabetic risk score (IDRS) was calculated for each subject. In type-2 DM patients without CV group (n=15), there was a statistically significant (p=0.01) negative correlations between HbA1c and skin temperature of eye and nose (r= -0.57 and r= -0.55 respectively). ADMA was correlated significantly (p=0.01) with HbA1c (r=0.65) and estimated average glucose, eAG (r=0.63). In normal subjects, mean minimum and maximum values of skin temperatures were observed at posterior side of sole (26.89°C) and ear (36.85°C) respectively. In type-2 DM without CV, mean values of skin temperature in different parts of the body from head to toe were lesser than those values in control group; but this decreases were statistically significant in nose (32.66 Vs 33.99°C, p=0.024) as well as in tibia (32.78 Vs 33.13°C, p=0.036) regions.

The aim of this work was to evaluate low bone mass using the feed-forward neural network (NN) with good accuracy
taking into account the forearm and heel bone mineral density (BMD) as well as total body composition variables. A total
number of 162 subjects including 88 women (mean 􀁲 SD age = 37.7 􀁲 15.2 years) and 74 men (mean 􀁲 SD age=31.3 􀁲 10.9
years) were studied. In each subject, BMD (g cm-2) at forearm and heel using peripheral dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry
(pDXA) and total body composition variables by multifrequency bioelectrical impedance analyzer were measured. The
measured forearm BMD was used to estimate femur neck BMD by DXA using the published formula. Based on its T-score
value, subjects were classified as normal and low bone mineral mass groups separately. In women, it was found that the
forearm BMD was positively correlated with body fat percentage (r=0.327; p<0.001). It was observed that 27% of women
and 15% of men were affected by low bone mass. In the NN modelling, the following 10 measured variables were used in
men and women separately: i) BMI ((kg/m2); ii) average forearm BMD (g/cm2); iii) average heel BMD (g/cm2); iv) body fat
(%); v) muscle mass (kg); vi) visceral fat index; vii) bone mineral mass (kg); viii) total body water, TBW (%); ix) basal
metabolic rate, BMR (kCal); and x) metabolic age (years). Analysis of low bone mineral mass evaluation using NN
projected an accuracy of 87.5% and 85.1% in women and men population, respectively. With the aid of BMD at peripheral
skeletal sites and total body composition variables, low bone mass can be evaluated with good accuracy.

Robotic exoskeleton is getting important to human in many aspects such as power assist, muscle training,regain motor function and rehabilitation. The research and development towards these functions are expected to be combined and integrated with the human intelligent and machine power, eventually becoming another generation of robot which will enhance the machine intelligent and human power. This
paper reviews the upper extremity exoskeleton with different functions, actuators and degree of freedom (DOF). Among the functions, rehabilitation and power assist have been highlighted while pneumatic actuator, pneumatic muscle, motor and hydraulic actuator are presented under the categories of actuator.In addition, the structure of exoskeleton is separated by its DOF in terms of shoulder, elbow, wrist and
hand.

""Se presenta el diseño y construcción de un sistema mecatrónico automatizado para el crecimiento de películas delgadas por la técnica de recubrimiento por inmersión. El sistema consta de un porta sustrato que realiza desplazamientos verticales entre dos posiciones ajustables. El movimiento del porta sustrato es controlado por una cadena de transmisión accionada por un motor de corriente continua. Los finales de recorrido del porta-sustrato son sensados por micro-switchs colocados en los extremos del intervalo de movimiento. La adquisición de la señal de los micro-switchs y la generación de la señal de control para el motor son realizadas por una tarjeta de adquisición de datos National Instruments USB 6353. Desde una interfaz gráfica desarrollada en LabVIEW el usuario puede programar todos los parámetros del reactor, entre ellos las velocidades de inmersión y extracción de los sustratos y el tiempo de secado. Se presentan detalles de la construcción y operación del sistema.

PACS: 81.15.-z, 84.30.-r""

This paper presents an electrocardiogram acquisition system course design project for an upper year bioinstrumentation course. The objective of this design project is to provide students an opportunity for an integrative learning, enhancing their educational experience. Unlike similar electrocardiogram instrumentation projects, this project is based on a commercially available instrumentation amplifier enabling better systems-level thinking. The project is described along with observations made from our pilot implementation of the project. The initial offering of the project is considered a success with positive feedback from students. Recommendations for improvements are also discussed.

The  process  of  glycation  is  a  non  -  enzymatic  reaction  between  sugar  and  free  amino  group  of  proteins,  leading  to  skin  aging.  In  this  sense, the present study aimed to analyze the changes resulting from glycation in the dermis by Confocal Raman spectroscopy. The analysis was performed with 30 patients with skin types I and II, divided into 3 groups: 10 healthy young women aged 20-33 years, 10 healthy elderly women and 10 elderly women with diabetes type I and II in the age group of 65-80 years. Raman spectra were collected from 70-130 microns in depth and the data were analyzed. It was observed that the amide I band was centered at 1664 cm-1 for the young participants and healthy elderly  which  may  be  due  to  the  presence  of  water  and  change  in  the  direction  of  the  shorter  wavelength  was  observed  which  is  centered  around 1662 cm-1. Considerable changes were observed for the elderly participants with diabetes and the peak was centered around 1658 cm-1. Thus, it is inferred that hyperglycemia in elderly subjects with diabetes mellitus accelerate the formation of advanced glycation end products, which increase the type I collagen degradation in human skin. The  effects  of  the  glycation  reaction  in  the  skin`s  proteins  at  cellular level accelerate the aging process and results in wrinkling and stiffness. Without the action of an enzyme, protein reacts with reducing  sugar  and  [1-4]  give  rise  to  Advanced  Glycation  End-products (AGEs). These AGEs cause degradation of type I collagen and apoptosis of fibroblasts, resulting in alterations of the amide I  bands  which  correspond  to  the  secondary  structure  of  this  protein [5-12]. The Confocal Raman spectroscopy is a non invasive technique  which  uses  a  laser  of  785  nm  as  an  excitation  source,  with  the  ability  to  measure  the  biochemical  composition  of  the  skin, without causing damage and does not need the preparation of material for analysis [13-17]. By the objective lens of the inverted microscope, the laser is guided to the skin and collects the inelastic scattering of light in real time and at different depth profile [17-22] making it a suitable tool to probe human skin.

In designing a classification system, one of
the most important considerations is how optimal the
classifier will adapt and give best generalization when it
is given data from unknown model distribution. Unlike
linear regression, logistic regression has no simple
formula to assess its generalization ability. In such cases,
bootstrapping offers an advantage over analytical
methods thanks to its simplicity. This paper presents an
analysis of bootstrapped multinomial logistic regression
applied on apnea detection using ECG data. We examine
multinomial logistic regression to detect or recognize
multi-class apnea categories (heavy, middle, healthy).
We show that for generally complex and highly
unstructured medical data such as ECG for apnea
detection, bootstrapping gives more meaningful
assessment to detect over-fitting than k-fold cross
validation. The bootstrapping also gives higher
classification accuracy prediction over k-fold cross
validation for the same training data proportion.

Anaemia is a common disorder in which the percentage of haemoglobin in a person's blood decreases below a certain level. Sometimes in medical emergency, it is necessary to know the percentage of haemoglobin of a patient and it is usually done by laboratory testing of blood drawn from a vein, which is semi-invasive and time consuming. Doctors can make a quick approximate assessment from the redness of the inner lower eyelid, but it is not quantitative. However, it suggests that quantitative values may be obtained analyzing an optical image of the same, and was the aim of the present work. As a preliminary study, images of inner lower eyelids of 7 persons were obtained using two digital cameras (Nikon DSLR and Nokia phone) under a fixed lighting condition and the haemoglobin counts in their blood were obtained using standard blood tests. Using software developed for this work, several regions of size 10x10 pixels were manually chosen to avoid areas giving strong reflections of the incident light and the average red pixel values for all of these regions were determined. These values were plotted against the percentage of haemoglobin for the two cameras separately. Both the graphs showed similar behavior and respective linear trend lines were fitted to each which gave good correlations, the coefficients being 0.83 and 0.81 respectively. The green and blue pixel values did not give any reasonable trend and so were not studied further. If other variables, such as lighting and camera exposure can be kept fixed, it may be possible to improve the accuracy further.

Usage of intravenous (IV) saline solution been a rudimentary task for each patient in the context of modern clinical practice. Having a wide range of diversity in IV saline solution main intention of injecting IV saline includes recovering dehydration and loss of electrolytes from body, flush wounds and so on. Despite injecting saline to a patient seemingly easy task but it may have dangerous consequences if not properly monitored. Excessive or inadequate flow-rate of saline both can end up to the same result which is death of the patient. Due to insufficient healthcare professionals, many patients die for an imbalance of saline flow-rate. Controlling the saline flow-rate automatically, taking heart rate as a parameter and to ensure safety for patients is the main intention of this research work. To accomplish this task pulse sensor, a customized device (combination of gear motor and screw gauge), motor driver and Arduino is used. Based on the data from pulse sensor, Ardunio controls the motor driver and it results in the manipulation of flow-rate which unit is drops/min by the compression and relaxation of spindle of the screw gauge. In this particular task, three patient's data is taken under consideration and error from these data had been calculated to justify the authenticity of this research.

Silver Nanoparticles have been synthesized by many techniques. Green synthesis of nano particle is a novel technique to synthesis nano particles by using plant sources. It is gaining attention because it is cost effective, eco-friendly and large scale production is possible. In this present study, Silver Nano particles are synthesized biologically by using plant extract. The silver nano particles synthesized are confirmed by their change of color to dark brown due to the phenomenon of surface Plasmon resonance. The Silver nano particles produced were characterized by UV-vis spectroscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). After the synthesis and characterization of silver Nano particles, the antimetastic properties of Ag Nano-particles were studied on Osteosarcoma cancer cell lines. The application of Ag Nano-particles to Osteosarcoma cancer cell lines produces anticancer activity and show good antimicrobial activity. Nanoparticles serve as the fundamental building blocks for many nanotechnology applications. Nanotechnology and nano structured materials play an ever increasing role in science, research and development as well as also in every day’s life. Nanotechnology deals with materials with dimensions of nanometers, i.e. nano structured materials. In recent years, nanotechnology has induced great scientific advancement in the field of research and technology. Nanotechnology is the study and application of small object which can be used in all fields such as chemistry, biology, physics, material science and engineering. Nano-particle is a core particle which can perform as a whole unit in terms of transport and property. As the name indicates nano means a billionth or 10-9 unit. Its size range is usually from 1-100nm [1].

Mathematics is the only word that conquers the whole world. Mathematics comprises each and every concept that exists in this world. Statistics and probability are the two main concepts that are dealing with the statistical survey of this world. Of these two concepts, Probability has one of the Main applications of dealing with mathematics that is very much useful in real life applications. In this paper, Bayes’ Theorem and its applications are discussed deeply with its application problems using the data which was collected for the company named Appin Technology during the industrial exposure training. This application helped me to give some useful ideas to the company to improve their production level.

This project focuses on old age people or people who suffer from serious eye problems who are not able to deliver the drug
into eye by themselves (in cases of muscle dystrophy), and is case of blepharospasm. The dispensing of drugs into eye are less efficient and lead to loss of drug and also may lead to unwanted infections, and in cases of glaucoma where the patient has to put drug of specific amount daily in the eye. The main idea is to make a system which is simple and deliver the drug easily with maximum accuracy.

The goal of this project is to develop and utilize a microfluidic device to isolate and enrich tumor cells circulating in peripheral blood. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have been used as biomarkers for cancer diagnostics and prognosis. However, the rarity of these cells (roughly 1 in a billion) poses a technological challenge to sort and concentrate them. CTCs hold potential sources for early detection, characterization, monitoring of cancers, and development of personalized treatment. The project is currently funded by the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Recent days Computer-aided design and image processing techniques are one of the most emerging useful tools for analysis of models in various medical, industrial and research areas. In medical field for the diagnosis of various diseases in vivo techniques including biochemical test, enzymatic tests are needed for continuous monitoring of patients. These diagnosis procedures are time consuming and inconvenient for patients. Therefore Computer assisted designing and image processing techniques are most promising non invasive tools for faster diagnosis and useful tool for designing of biomedical implants. In this paper portal vein was segmented from patient’s Liver computed tomography (CT) image by dedicated software. A Liver’s CT image of 38 year old Indian male patient’s was collected and by using imaged based software MIMICS (Materialise’s Interactive Medical Image Control System, Belgium) 3D model of HPV (hepatic portal vein) was obtained and Solid Work Professional (Dassault Systems Solid Works Corporation, USA) software was used for designing of normal portal vein’s 3D model and various portal vein diseased models including minor right portal vein thrombosis ( 19-20% reduction in medial region of vein), severe right portal vein thrombosis (20-22% reduction in medial and distal region of vein), minor left portal vein thrombosis (19-20% reduction in medial region of vein, severe right portal vein
thrombosis(20-22% reduction in medial and distal region of vein), left aneurysm (150-200 % increase of medial region).These models can be used for designing for implants and analysis of portal vein’s disorder like portal thrombosis, and portal aneurysm which are main cause of portal hypertension and also useful for surgeon for planning surgery and also helpful for understanding of portal vein hemodynamic (pressure, velocity, wall shear force)

"Osteoporosis is more common in India. The prevention of ‘first’ osteoporotic fracture is better than cure. The central dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) bone densitometer is not widely available, and is expensive. The aim of this study was to screen south Indian rural population aged ≥50 years, for predicting future osteoporotic fracture risk using a simple online FRAX® Calculator. A total number of 48 rural populations (male:female= 25:23), aged ≥ 50 years, residing at Potheri Village, Kattankulathur, Chennai, India, were studied. The forearm bone mineral density (BMD, g cm-2) of each subject was measured using a peripheral DXA (pDXA) densitometer.Using the value, the femur neck BMD was predicted using the published regression equation with good sensitivity. The 10-year probability of future osteoporotic fracture risk was evaluated using a FRAX calculator. It was found that, both major osteoporotic fracture risk as well as hip fracture risk was 1.8 folds greater in osteoporotic females than in osteoporotic males. Further, when applying threshold value (FRAX Score >3%), it was found that 20% (5/25) and 26.1% (6/23) of the males and females were found to be at greater risk for future osteoporotic hip fracture, and hence a suitable personalized preventive treatment is to be started in order to prevent their future bone mineral loss."