Poster Session

The patients with gingivitis, periodontal disease which devastate bone tissue perishing alveolar bone, like some-one who suffers from osteoporosis, might not have the ability to reestablish in clinical. As we know, self-regeneration and bone remodeling will be collapsed by increasingly severe bone loss that confront arduous chal-lenge in therapy. Thus, our study takes advantage of good biocompatible materials, gellan gum (GG), poly-glutamic acid (γ-PGA) and glycerol (Gly) producing com-posite film which significantly improves the weak me-chanical properties and degradability the hydrogel. In addition to biocompatibility, composite membrane repre-sents entirely no negative effect on cell compatibility, and maintain positive mineralization to induce bone cell re-generation. After all, advancing the elongation in strain appeared to be of great promise for application in guiding bone regeneration.

Sonodynamic therapy is a potential modality for the cancer treatments, which uses ultrasound to excite the sonosensitizers to kill the cancer cells. The treated sonosensitizers will have ultrasound cavitation effects and cause to an amount of energy which will lead to the generation of light, and this emission is termed as sonoluminescence. It further induce free radicals and reactive oxygen species to kill the cancer cells. Comparing with the other treatments, SDT is less invasive, its apparatus is so simple that having less cost and it also lowers the side effects, moreover, it has better ability of penetration in our body than light as a result of being able to treat deeply located cancers. We used calcium carbonate that has good biocompatibility and no bio-cytotoxicity as the host material, and doped with the ra-re-earth elements: cerium or europium which has remarkable luminescent properties. Spherical porous cerium-doped or europi-um-doped calcium carbonate have been successfully synthesized by adding calcium nitrate including cerium nitrate or europium nitrate into sodium carbonate with PVA and Tween 80. Through ISO10993 WST-1 and LDH test, both of materials are shown to be biocompatible. And the cancer cells killing in son-odynamic therapy group is significantly effective from the view of the result in in-vitro test. We also get the similar result in the in-vivo study, the tumor size in each group all enlarge in the end of the experiment, however, that of the sonodynamic therapy group get increasing slightly.

In recent years, the use of biopolymers as interface materials between inorganic electronics and biological tissues has increased, biological polymers offer new opportunities for flexible electronic devices by virtue of their biocompatibility, environmental benignity, and sustainability, as well as low cost. In medical terms, Traumatic peripheral nerve injury is also in high demand for medical treatment. Grafting with a nerve guidance artificial conduit to guide neuron regrowth can enhance nerve regeneration.However, the commonly used nerve conduit cannot provide a spaciotemporal regulation and in-situ monitoring for localized neurons. As an intriguing and abundant biomaterial, silk offers several ideal characteristics, include its biocompatibility, the ease with which it can be chemically modified, its slow rate of degradation in vivo, and its ability to be processed into multiple material formats from either aqueous solution or an organic solvent. These features facilitate the development of next-generation biocompatible electronic devices.In this study, neural implant device that is combined with regenerative tissue scaffolds and microelectrode arrays was developed to enhance cell growth through applying electrical stimulation and neural signals recording in a as-built tissues-mimicked micro environment ent. A new type of tissues scaffold, called Dopa-SFG in the composition of synthesized dopa-modified silk fibroin and gelatin was fabricated to exhibit tissue-mimic structural and mechanical peoperties, adhesive ability, and phase transition under a specific temperature. The aqueous Dopa-SFG precursors can be directly transformed to a gel bulk, in turn used to transfer print a complicated microelectrode structure that was pre-fabricated on PAA-Ca2+ sacrificial layer. After cooling transfer, an adhesive silk protein sleeve electrode having electrical stimulation and contact-guided growth and monitoring functions is produced. Such transfer printed scaffold-based neural microelectrode array enabled conformable adhesion on a moisture-rich curvilinear surface and electrical signals transduction from the tiny microelectrode site, which is expected to provide more efficient peripheral nerve regeneration.

Perineural invasion (PNI) has been defined as the ability of cancer cells to invade in, around, and through nerves. PNI is considered as a pathway for cancer cells to spread. To investigate the relationship between PNI and the neural microenvironment, a hydrogel biochip was developed to provide a nerve tissue-mimicked platform for investigating the interaction between schwann cells and cancer cells. A new type of conductive tissue scaffold was developed via conjugating gelatin with poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (PEDOT), within which a naturally occurring polymer, melanin was incorporated to improve electrical properties. The resultant composite exhibited elastic conductive compound with porous 3D structure with high chemical stability. FTIR was used to analyze the bonding in order to prove the existence of Melanin and PEDOT. Through SEM image we observed 300 nm spherical Melanin nanoparticles and PEDOT polymer both embedded in the hydrogel pore walls. The physicochemical characteristics were analyzed and the results indicates that the incorporation of melanin and PEDOT into hydrogel increased the electrical and mechanical properties. Moreover, the in vitro biodegradation of compound showed a decreasing current as the conductive materials increases. Finally, we utilize transfer printing technique to transfer our compound into hydrogel-based Electrode texture. The outcome product is a degradable nerve-mimicking biochip that is expected to probe PNI.

Brain injury usually causes physical and emotional problems for patients, resulting in great social cost. The main reasons are inflammatory and immune response, which increases the difficulty of angiogenesis and neuronal growth, leading to a cavity devoid of normal tissue. In this study, microfluidic was adopted to fabricate flowable microspheres made of PEGDA and dextran. By encapsulating the microspheres with drug and cells, immune response can be relieved in favor of the repair of neuron cells. In addition, by combining microspheres with Au-Ag nanoparticles, the growth of neuron cells can be further stimulated by applying an external magnetic field. Through this adaptable mesoporous hydrogel based on a unique type of moon-like microbeads that can spontaneously form 100% interconnected pores, propagate the gradients of neuron growth factors, tailor the stiffness, and control the pore sizes in nerve conduits for directing peripheral nerves regeneration. Such a 100% interconnected porous scaffold with suitable micropore-size also offers mechanical support for prompt cell migration and transports bio-molecular cues to manage cell adhesion and growth. The injectable moon-like beads also allows the incorporation of living cells and ulti-mately assembles in the complexly shaped cavity where it is injected, repairing the traumatic brain injury.

Nowadays, tissue-engineering was important and popular which combine medical applications and engineering materials knowledge, just like cell extraction process was employed to remove the cellular components from porcine dermal, leaving a framework of largely insoluble collagen, elastin, and tightly bound glycosaminoglycans (GAGs). A cell extraction process was used to remove cellular components by porcine dermal. Varying pore sizes and porosities of the acellular tissues were then created using enzymes and collagenase. The porcine dermal must remove fat and other impurities almost by supercritical fluid(SCF), otherwise adipose tissue will become rot immediately. For collagen scaffold samples, dermis were hydrolyzed by enzymes of different concentration, in this way it can gain state completely and clearly. Electron microscopy revealed effect in ECM of porcine dermal tissue via supercritical fluid and different concentrations enzymes. This suggests the enzymes concentration and when you put porcine dermal in SCF was mightily important for effect of the collagen.

The purpose of this study was aimed to develop a new wound dressing with antibacterial properties. Some of the preliminary results were discussed in this work. The polyacrylonitrile fiber film containing silver ions was mainly prepared by electrospin-ning, and ascorbic acid was used as a reducing agent. Finally, high temperature calcination carbonization was carried out to convert the composite material into carbon nanofibers containing silver nanoparticles. The prepared film was characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). The antibacterial properties of the material were tested using Gram-positive bacteria Staphylo-coccus aureus.

In our previous study, ultrasound mediated drug loaded microbubbles (US-MBs) was as a tool to increase the local intra-tumoral CDDP level, while decreasing systemic CDDP cytotoxicity in an experimental animal model of head and neck cancer. Recently, statins, 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme, a reductase inhibitor, was re-ported induction of tumor apoptosis through activation of the JNK-signaling pathway.[1] Since inhibition of JNK activation is a major mechanism behind tumor resistance to cisplatin. Therefore, the addition of statins to CDDP might help overcome any chemoresistance. Moreover, some previous studies investigated the protective effect of simvastatin and rosuvastatin on CDDP-induced ne-phrotoxicity. In our present study, we investigated the treatment effects of head and neck cancer by using US mediated CDDP loaded MBs[2] cavitaion and co-administration of atorvastatin. In our preliminary results, co-administration of CDDP-MBs and atorvastatin com-bined with US can enhance against tumor survival more significantly than group CDDP-MBs+US. Co-administration of CDDP-MBs and atorvastatin combined with US could be expected for head and neck cancer treatment in clinical in the near future.

In this study, sodium alginate containing Disulfiram and superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) was prepared by electrospray in calcium chloride solution by ion gelation. This particle is intended to be used in the treatment of ovarian cancer, under a way of applying the external magnetic field to make the internal iron oxide friction with each other and increasing temperature to achieve hyperthermia effects, as well as their own chemotherapy drugs can reach the effect of chemohyperthermia.

A natural substance, hyaluronic acid (HA), is an anionic, nonsulfated glycosaminoglycan found in the human dermis. Our skin ability to produce HA declines with age, which can lead to increased dryness, fine lines, wrinkles and sagging. Currently, HA is used as a dermal filler in cosmetic surgery and is used to treat knee pain caused by osteoarthritis. There are very few side effects of using hyaluronic acid. However, natural HA can be rapidly degraded by enzymes and radicals existing in the human body. The effect of the treatment for dermal defects such as wrinkles via the injection of free HA into injections skin only lasts for less than a week. Cross-linked fillers consist of a homogeneous mixture of high- and low-molecular weight HA, making their application easier. This study is mainly to assess the efficiency of a safer and longer lasting filler, cross-linked filler containing gold particles, for the proliferation of subcutaneous collagen fiber. To estimate the feasibility of the cross-linked filler containing gold particles provided by Gold NanoTech Inc. (GNT), in vivo small animal study would be performed to evaluate the optimal condition of cross-linked filler containing gold particles.

Controlled extracellular chemical and topographical cues can generate physicochemical changes that influence the proliferation and differentiation of neural cells; external electrical stimulation (ES) via conductive bioelectrodes can promote neural differentiation by increasing neurite outgrowth. Because rat pheochromocytoma (PC12) cells tend to differentiate into neuron-like cells upon treatment with nerve growth factor (NGF), we used PC12 as a model to explore the possibility of using a well-designed poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO)/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrenesulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) blend solution to fabricate functional bioelectrodes presenting biological fouling/antifouling surfaces, thereby regulating the cell adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation properties. In this study, we found that a flat PEO/PEDOT:PSS composite film, fabricated through spin-coating, operated through a contact repulsion mechanism that limited cell attachment and proliferation; in contrast, the aligned and random PEDOT:PSS nanofibers fabricated through electrospinning promoted neuron adhesion efficiently and allowed manipulation of the cell morphology. Furthermore, we performed ES of PC12 cells to investigate the influence of the conductive random and aligned PEO/PEDOT:PSS composite nanofiber mats on the enhancement of neurite outgrowth, as well as the relative gene expression of Nestin, Tuj1, and MAP2. The PC12 cells on the aligned topography displayed predominantly bipolar neurites along the direction of the nanofibers; PC12 cells on the random nanofibers produced a greater number of neurites than did those on the aligned nanofibers; the neurite length and neuronal gene expression level were enhanced by greater than 60% relative to those of control tissue culture polystyrene plate (TCPS) substrates under ES. Therefore, combining this unique PEDOT:PSS blend solution with various fabrication processes appears to be a facile approach toward bioelectronic interface coatings displaying tunable surface properties for manipulating the cellular behavior of neurons during ES.

Dental hypersensitivity (DH) is a very common oral disease in Taiwan, but most of the DH patients have no idea that they're suffering this oral disease. The current treatment for DH is usually through filling the exposed dentin pores with synthetic polymers such as polylactic acid (PLA). However, this treatment could not completely fill the exposed dentin pores. In this case, we developed a core-shell nanoparticle composed of alginate and gelatin hydrogel for DH therapeutics. We examined the material’s characteristics with FTIR and TGA to confirm the composition of the nanoparticle. In animal model, we randomly seperated the mice into 5 groups including “no-erosion control”, “erosion positive control”, “10 days treatment”, “20 days treatment”,and “30 days treatment”. We quantified the level of pain with mouse grimace scale and the data showed the significant effect after treated with the core-shell nanoparticle. The SEM data also confirmed the filling efficiency under the core-shell nanoparticle treatment. All data represented the mean±SD of every independent experiments (n ≥ 6). Statistical significances were determined using ANOVA for comparison, and differences were considered significant when p<0.05. We expected that this core-shell nanoparticle could be a long-term treatment for DH.

The aims of this study are to develop a prototype of scaffold has good biocompatibility and can be incorporated with hollow tubular fabrics. Poly(vinyl alcohol) and gelatin with good biocompatibility are selected as materials to manufacture opti-mum PVA/gelatin membranes, and we plan to combine PVA/gelatin membranes with hollow tubular fabrics as the precursor of scaffolds. The optimum hollow weft knitting fabrics are manufactured via weft-knitting processes. The optimum PVA/gelatin membranes are winded around the three types of hollow tubular fabrics and sealed via electrospinning technique with optimal parameters. According to the results, the proper multi-scale scaffolds are expected to be applied in clinical domains.

The damaged articular cartilage is one of major health problem due to its difficulty to treat and a poor tendency of self-repair. The limited efficacy of conventional treatment strategies for cartilage regeneration has thus inspired the development of biomaterials-based tissue engineering. In this regard, we aimed to develop and implant the biomaterial mixtures including platelet-rich plasma (PRP), adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs), and hyaluronic acid (HA) into the defected knees of rabbit model. The PRP, a material containing many autologous growth factors, was known to enhance the repairing wound for patients. On the other hand, the mesenchymal stem cells such as ASCs have an effective chondrogenesis and osteoinduction potential that may help to rehabilitate the damaged articular function, while the HA is a cell delivery vehicle for intra-articular injection of ASCs and/or PRP. In this study, the defects were performed at femoral side patella of the knee joint. The PRP was collected from the rabbit’s peripheral blood, while the ASCs were obtained from the inguinal fat of animals. Further, the articular defected rabbits were divided into four treatment groups: HA treatment (control group), PRP+HA treatment, ASCs+HA treatment, and PRP+ASCs+HA treatment. After 90 days of post-treatment, the results of X-Ray and µCT analysis demonstrated that the PRP+ASCs+HA treatment group has the best articular improvement, indicated by approximately complete wound closure in the remaining treatment period. Moreover, the molecular biology studies performed by luminex assay and immunohistochemistry showed the persistence of the beneficial effects of this treatment. Taken together, our findings represented that the combination treatment of PRP and ASCs is more effective than the separate treatment of PRP or ASCs and are considered to enhance the cell-growth factor-based therapies in the knee articular defect field.

The aim of this study was to develop a biodegradable three-dimensional-printed polylactide (PLA) cage for promoting fracture fixation and an antibiotics-embedded poly(D,L)-lactide-co-glycolide (PLGA) nanofibrous membrane for infectious prophylaxis during treating the comminuted metaphyseal fracture in a rabbit femoral model. The in vitro studies included measuring the mechanical properties of the 3D printed cage and determining release activities of vancomycin and ceftazidime from the nanofibers. The in vivo study included comparisons of rabbits of the femoral metaphyseal comminuted fracture treated with or without the combined biodegradable polymers. The results showed that vancomycin and ceftazidime were sustainably detected above the effective levels for 3 weeks. The animal studies showed that rabbits with the 3D cage implantation possessed better cortical integrity, leg length ratio, and maximal bending strengths. The study results indicate that these combined polymers may promote fracture fixation during treating the rabbit femoral metaphyseal comminuted fracture.

In this report, a novel biodegradable nanofibrous bifurcation stent that provides a sustainable and sequential release of rosubastatin and paclitaxel was developed. Biodegradable bifurcation stents, consisted of a double-slit tubular main vessel and two spiral branches, were first manufactured by a solvent casing method. The stents were then covered by bi-layered poly[(d,l)-lactide-co-glycolide] (PLGA) nanofibers containing rosuvastatin and paclitaxel by electrospinning. Scanning electron microscopy was utilized to observe the surface morphology of the electrospun nanofibers. Various properties of the fabricated stents, including compression strengths, collapse pressures, water contact angle and flow pattern in a circulation test, were also characterized. An in vitro elution method and a high performance liquid chromatography analysis were employed to characterize the release behaviors of pharmaceuticals from the drug-eluting bifurcation stents. In addition, the eluted drugs could effectively inhibit the proliferation of smooth muscle cells. The developed biodegradable nanofibrous bifurcation stents here may provide a promising strategy for the treatment of cardiovascular bifurcation lesions.

“Cable-tie” type biodegradable stents with drug-eluting nanofiber were developed to treat rabbit denuded arteries in this study. Biodegradable stents were fabricated using poly-L-lactide film following being cut and rolled into a cable-tie type stent. Additionally, drug-eluting biodegradable nanofiber tubes were electrospun from a solution containing poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid), rapamycin, and hexafluoroisopropanol, and then mounted onto the stents. The fabricated rapamycin-eluting cable-tie stents exhibited excellent mechanical properties on evaluation of compression test and collapse pressure, and less than 8% weight loss following being immersed in phosphate-buffered saline for 16 weeks. Furthermore, the biodegradable stents delivered high rapamycin concentrations for over 4 weeks and achieved substantial reductions in intimal hyperplasia associated with elevated heme oxygenase-1 and calponin level on the denuded rabbit arteries during 6 months of follow-up. The drug-eluting cable-tie type stents developed in this study might have high potential impacts for the local drug delivery to treat various vascular diseases.

The aim of this work is to produce a rapidly curable, biocom-patible and biodegradable cohesive plug. Recently, a number of studies have demonstrated that tyrosine-rich proteins mixed with sodium persulfate and ruthenium (II) trisbipyridyl chlo-ride under low-dosage light irradiation can crosslink via di-tyrosine bonds. In the present work, we mixed gelatin and reconstituted collagen in various ratios to investigate the effects on the rate of photocrosslinking and on the optimal cohesive strength. The results showed that collagen molecules reconsti-tuted during gelatin process has higher cohesive strength com-pared with fibrils collagen used. The adhesive strength of the photocrosslinking cohesive plug is also higher than fibrin glue. We also demonstrated the cohesive plug has no significant cytotoxicity. In conclusions, the new cohesive plug based on gelatin/collagen showed excellently adhesive strength and bio-compatibility.

Introduction: Silver nanoparticle has been well known for its antimicrobial activity. However, the preparation usually involves organic solvent and limit its biomedical use. Here we present a green process-Electrical Spark Discharge Method (ESDM) to fabricate nano metal particles and test their antimicrobial ability. Method: Nano metals are produced by ESDM and the physical properties are analyzed by UV-Visible Spectroscopy (UV-Vis), Zetasizer, and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Aspergillus niger and E. coli are the biological models for antimicrobial experiment. The colony density of Aspergillus niger was analyzed by Image J and the suspension growth of E. coli was measured by OD 600 . Results: UV-Vis analysis of absorption peaks for individual nanoparticles are as follows nano-Au: 527(nm), nano-Ag: 399 (nm), nano-Cu: 278 (nm), nano-Al: 290 (nm) and nano-Ti: 245(nm). The zeta potential analyses show nano-Au: -34.6mV, nano-Ag: -35mV, nano-Cu: 28.8mV, nano-Al: 49.5mV and nano-Ti: -44mV. SEM analyses show the geometrics of nanoparticles are as follows: nano-Au and nano-Ti are mainly circular, nano-Ag, nano-Cu and nano-Al are irregular. We establish an image-based quantification to investigate fungal growth. All of nano metals have no effect on antifungal growth. Theses nano-metal cannot synergize with amphotericin b, hydrogen peroxide, acidic and ionic strength. However, nano silver and nano platinum show an antibacterial effect on E. coli growth. Conclusion: ESDM is able to fabricate nano-metals without the need of organic solvents. Nano silver and nano platinum fabricated by this process are able to inhibit E. coli growth but not A. niger. Our results support ESDM is a promising green method to fabricated nano metals for biomedical use.

Type II diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is the most common form of diabetes, accounting for 90-95% of diabetics, and is a chronic disease often preceded by a long asymptomatic period. Most of T2 diabetics suffer with delay wound healing resulted from poor blood circulation, prolonged inflammation and lack of growth signal due to disordered metabolism, and it may severely affect patients’ life quality and even cause death. To overcome the aforementioned issues, a synthetic chitosan-based hydrogel containing silver ions and growth factor-entrapped nanoparticles that may provide both antibacterial and would healing-enhanced functionalities was developed in this study. As being the preliminary investigation, the bovine serum albumin (BSA) was employed as the model protein molecule to substitute the practical growth factor protein in this study. Furthermore, the BSA-encapsulated chitosan nanoparticles were fabricated by using the polyanion tripolyphosphate as the coacervation crosslink agent. Through the DLS analysis, the size and surface charge of the BSA-loaded nanoparticles were 265 ± 26 nm and 30.02 ± 1.42 mV, respectively. The encapsulation efficiency and the loading rate of the BSA in the nanoparticles were 70.47 ± 7.62% and 1.11 ± 0.35%, respectively. In terms of the mechanical properties of the hydrogel, the tensile strength is about 2.98 ± 2.73 MPa whereas the elongation at break (E%) is ~144.42 ± 9.64%. In addition, the release rate of BSA from the nanoparticles was 80% within 4 h, while that from the synthetic hydrogel was about 50% within the same time couse. The toxicity and antibacterial .capability of the synthetic hydrogel will be examined next and efforts are currently in progress.

With the advancement of technology, cancer has become one of the human civilization diseases of today. Among them, skin cancer is one of the cancers that cause a high rate of human mortality. Our experimental team has a certain level of understanding of melanoma cells that are also skin cancer.

Gelatin and chitosan are two kinds of natural materials widely used in the field of biomedical. Gelatin can be applied to wound dressings, drug carriers and tissue engineering, and chitosan has antibacterial and chelation properties, so It is applied to the materials of dressings or health food. In recent years, due to the development of 3D printing technology, many clinical researchers are also actively trying to apply 3D bioprinting technology, but the biocompatible material may not be suitable for the current 3D printing process requirements. This would limit the application of 3D printing in biomedical applications. Therefore, this study hopes to use gelatin, which is widely used in the fields of people's livelihood and biomedicine, as a substrate. The addition of chitosan is expected to improve the mechanical properties, forming performance and antibacterial properties of gelatin. The experimental parameters of this study include the addition ratio of chitosan, the dose of microwave irradiation, and the dose of ultraviolet light. The power of microwave is 1400W, the wavelength of ultraviolet light is 185cm, and the proportion of chitosan is 0wt%~2wt%. The fluidity, swelling, strength and hardness of the samples were measured, so as the physical properties of the gelatin materials with different process parameters were realized, as a reference for the 3D printing process with gelatin as the wire.

An acid-labile core cross-linked micelle system of amphiphilic triblock copolymer of poly(oligo(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate)-block-poly(styrene-alt-maleic anhydride)-block-poly(styrene) (POEGMA-b-PSMA-b-PS) was prepared. The POEGMA-b-PSMA-b-PS triblock copolymers were synthesized by the reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization. Doxorubicin (DOX) was entrapped into micellar structure with POEGMA block as a shell and PSMA-b-PS block as a core. Then, core cross-linking was carried out by amidation reaction between 2,2-bis(aminoethoxy)propane and maleic anhydride group inner core. The drug loading content (DLC) and the drug loading efficiency (DLE) of DOX-loaded cross-linked micelles were calculated to be 18 and 90 (wt. %), respectively. Core crosslinked micelles illustrated good stability under physiological condition but disassociated rapidly under acidic pH. The DOX release experiments indicated a rapid DOX release at pH 5.0 compared to pH 7.4.

The use of antibiotics in the treatment of acne in specific group (pregnant women) of patients can lead to serious complications. We have previously demonstrated that the nanoparticles made of block copolymers of poly(ethylene glycol) and poly(-caprolactone) can inhibit the growth of Propionibacterium acnes (P. acnes), a bacterium highly associated with the progress of acne vulgaris in the human skin [Polymers 2016; 8, 321]. To reduce the amount of antibiotics used in the treatment of skin acne, we have further demonstrated that a bacterium in the human skin microbiome can utilize PEG-based polymers to produce various short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) which suppressed the growth of P. acnes. PEG-based polymers were chosen as selective fermentation initiators which specifically induced the fermentation of the skin commensal bacterium but not P. acnes. Interestingly, PEG-based polymers can efficiently suppress the growth of P. acnes. An acne ex vivo explant was established by using acne biopsies collected from patients with acne vulgaris at the early and middle stages. The levels of pro-inflammatory interleukin (IL)-8 cytokine in early- and middle-staged acnes were significantly higher than those in healthy skins. Incubation of acne ex vivo explants with sucrose remarkably reduced the level of IL-8 and the number of P. acnes. Results from mouse studies revealed that PEG-based polymer functions as antibiotic adjuvants which can considerably reduce the effective doses of clindamycin, a clinically-used acne antibiotic.

Hepatic toxicity of candidate drug in the clinical trials is often a major cause of failure in the new drug development, which leads to huge costs of R&D expenses and precious time to market [1]. Therefore, the screening of drug candidates in different stage of drug development plays a crucial role. Currently, human primary hepatocyte cells are mostly used for in-vitro drug screening research [2, 3]. Mono-layer culture of hepatocyte cells is frequently used as the in-vitro model. However, it is too simple to represent the complicated anatomical structure of human hepatic tissue [4]. More specifically, mono-layer culture of hepatocyte cells limits the growth of hepatocyte cells and the metabolism of the cells is far different from the three-dimensional structure of human hepatic tissues. To address this issues, three-dimensional culture of hepatocyte cells is of primary concern. In this study, a microfluidic perfusion system was fabricated for three -dimensional culture of HepG2 cell spheroids. The microfluidics made of polydimethyle siloxane (PDMS) elastomer was fabricated by lithography technology. Two kinds of microfluidics were made which is micro-column microfluidic channel; the other is micro-well chip. Micro-column microfluidic was used to trap HepG2 cell spheroids for the purpose of candidate drug screening; the other was used to grow cell spheroids. The average diameter of cell spheroid was 259 ± 61μm in 3 days and 164 ± 37 µm in 7 days. Since the microfluidic system is limited to oxygen and air, we have utilized Hypoxyprobe™-1 Plus kit to evaluate whether the spheroids were cultured under oxygen enriched environment. The results indicated that the spheroids were in good condition; the albumin secretion of 3D cell culture was higher than 2D cell culture in day 3 and day 7. The spheroids were also explored with the secretion function of albumin and metabolic function of CYP450. In the functional test of drug screening, 20 candidate drugs were used. Toxicity test (LDH assay) showed that the candidate drugs a/b/b-1/b-2/c have significant toxicity compared to the others. In addition, In the micro-column microfluidic system, HepG2 spheroids have higher cell viability compared to 2D cell culture when treated with 10 μg/mL of drugs for 3 days. The present study shows that micro-column microfluidic system could be further evaluated for the practical application of in-vitro drug screening.

Conducting polymers have been the focus of many research teams over past decades. Among them, the properties of high conductivity, good thermal and environmental stability, polypyrrole (PPy) is considered as an excellent candidate for conductive composites for bio-application. In this study, a polymer composites thin films with high temperature response rapidity and electric heating efficiency after the electric heating performance were be proposed. Polycaprolactone/polypyrrole (PCL/PPy) thin films were prepared using PCL semi-crystalline polymer as the first step, and the prepared thin films were immersed in a solution containing a pyrrole monomer and an oxidizing agent, polypyrrole polymerization was carried out at room temperature. Morphological feature, electrical property, and electric heating behavior of the PCL/PPy films with different PPy thicknesses of 5–25 μm were investigated. The electric heating behaviors of composites were investigated as functions of the amounts of PPy thickness. It was observed that the electrical resistivity of the PCL/PPy composites decreased considerably with increasing amount of PPy. Furthermore, maximum temperature attained at a given applied voltage for the composites could be well controlled by changing PPy amounts. The PCL/PPy films retained stable electrical heating performance in aspects of temperature responsiveness, steady-state maximum temperature and electric power efficiency. As the PPy thickness reached to 25 μm, the maximum temperature can up to 55 ℃. The incorporation of PCL/PPy composites resulted in high conductivity and enhanced heating behavior, which have potential to be used as efficient electric heating elements for biomedical application.

Magnetic spheroid polymers have been proposed for many applications in biomedicine. In this study, we demonstrated that the connection between the thermal responsive and magnetic properties of the CM-dextran/iron oxide nanoparticles graft-ing to poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) can be used to manipulate in the different magnetic field and temperature. In order to study magneto-thermal behavior of the magnetic spheroid polymers, we have changed ratio of CM-dextran coated iron oxide nanoparticles in magnetic spheroid polymers and used different static magnetic field for magnetization. Further-more, we have also used Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) to carry out material characterization. Magnetic spheroid polymers indicate that the high concentration of magnetic nanoparticles have good magnetization characteristics to adjust the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) under the magnetic field. The coupling of thermal responsive and magnetic properties as smart materials, can be used for drug delivery system.

Traumatic injuries are the most common ophthalmic conditions as the leading cause of partial- or full-thickness corneal laceration. A prompt and effective treatment will be of importance to avoid many complications such as corneal scarring, cataract formation, infection, glaucoma and blindness. In situ photo-induced cross-linking to provide immediate restoration of tissue integrity and aid organ function is a promising modality in tissue engineering that may be a new suture-less strategy for various clinical challenges. Therefore, we are interested in designing a photo-cross-linkable tissue adhesive composed of Urocanic Acid-Chitosan (UAC) for the repair of corneal laceration and medical applications using red light irradiation. In the present study, we measured mechanical properties using tensile and compress tests. The UAC structure was analyzed by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (NMR). We further examined the cellular viability of B4G12 cells treated with UAC sealant in the presence of red light irradiation by alarm blue assay. Wound healing study was conducted using rabbit corneal model. The results reveal that this photo-curable wound repair system is superior than non-treated control with higher percentage of wound closure areas. This study for the first time use this approach for repairing corneal wounds and the reconstruction of corneal stoma. This new tissue adhesive is expected to have optimal physical and chemical properties that seal linear and severe corneal lacerations. This therapeutic approach will be potential for further clinical uses.

Scar formation is a general problem after burn injury that has functional limitation. The treatment of burn injury includes the using of biomaterials. Fibroin is a kind of silk protein, and it's used in different forms of biomaterial wound dressings due to good biodegradable, biocompatible, low-immunogenic, and flexible characteristics. Based on the silk fibroin scaffold process in our lab, we aimed to analyze the effect of silk fibroin scaffold for regulating scar formation through in vitro and in vivo study. The in vitro study is to evaluate fibroblasts on the silk fibroin scaffold for proving that silk fibroin scaffold was non-toxic and promoted cell proliferation. The in vivo study which was assessed by rat burn model showed that silk fibroin scaffold may regulate the reepithelialization and the collagen deposition examined by H&E stain and Masson’s trichrome stain. We also examined the expression of alpha smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) and fibronectin which may participate in the mechanism of scar formation through immunohistochemistry. Overall, according to our results, silk fibroin may regulate the scar formation in burn wound healing.

Among all advanced molecular diagnostic techniques, silicon nanowire field effect transistor sensors have been reported to have extremely high sensitivity and specificity. Through our developed side-wall spacer etch technique, the polycrystalline silicon nanowire field effect transistor sensor could be fabricat-ed with simple and cheap process. In this study, p16INK4a pro-tein was used as the molecular target. The concentration of p16INK4a is related to cervical cancer. When human is infected with high-risk HPV, p16INK4a protein will be overexpressed. Through monitoring the concentration of p16INK4a protein by the highly sensitive silicon nanowire field effect transistor sen-sors, HPV infection and the risk of cervical cancer can be iden-tified in an early stage

Patients who suffer from sleep disorder can affect their overall health, safety and quality of life. Poor sleep has been linked with high blood pressure, atherosclerosis (cholesterol- clogged arteries), heart failure, heart attack and stroke, diabetes, and obesity. However, monitoring of sleep conditions requires physicians to examine huge amount of EEG data which is time-consuming and might fall into the pitfall of subjective judgement. Accordingly, development of an objective platform for automatic and accurate detection of sleep condition in EEG data is important. In this paper, we developed a deep-learning based sleep evaluation system for EEG data. The EEG data recorded from Fpz and Cz positions using dry EEG electrodes (Fig. 1) were firstly transformed into temporal-frequency domain using wavelet analysis. Five characteristic features (maximum, minimum, median, average, standard deviation) on temporal-frequency domain were used as input data to train a MLP-LSTM cascaded network (Fig. 2). Our results in normal subjects have shown good performance in sleep stage detection. The accuracy has achieved over 70% (Fig. 3). The proposed system will be applied to monitor sleep conditions in clinical sleep disorder patients, such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and insomnia.

Evoked Potential is prone to interference from environmental noise in actual checking measurements. Most of this noise interference is dominated by power field interference signals with a power supply operating frequency of 50/60 Hz. If this non-physiological electrical signal component cannot be effectively removed or reduced, the correctness and quality of the electrophysiological response signal may be affected, and the evoked potential waveform features may not be clearly highlighted, resulting in the difficulty of labeling the waveform indication, or the occurrence of identification error. This research studies the adjustment of the operational instrument parameters which provides a discussion on the feasibility of waveform improvement.

The low concentration of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) are difficult for early cancer detection and periodically monitor dynamic changes. Here we study ctDNA detection sensor by using a graphene oxide-based DNA probe that can be specific and sensitive detect ctDNA. Based on single stranded DNA probe will absorb on GO by the π-π stacking interaction be-tween nucleobases of DNA probe and the sp2 domain in the GO. The fluorescence of ssDNA probe exhibits weak fluores-cent signal due to the fluorescence resonance energy transfer between GO and ssDNA probe. After the DNA probe binds to the target ctDNA. the binding force of the DNA probe forming double helix with the target ctDNA is greater than the binding force of the DNA probe to the GO surface and detach from the GO surface. At the same time, the fluorescent molecule on the DNA probe has a decreased FRET effect due to the distance from the GO surface, so that the fluorescence recovery intensity produces a signal.

Those functional textiles have been paid great attention because of their promising applications in next-generation wearable and biomedical electronics. Howev-er, the supply of sufficient electricity to operate such devices over an acceptable duration of time without em-ploying a large-sized battery has remained a major chal-lenge for the development. Meanwhile, the constraints on the harsh operation environment and ineffective re-sponse to instantly also reflect the physical status remain critical challenges. Therefore, the concept of power suit which can harvest renewable energy from the different humidity environment to charge the battery in wearable electronic devices has been proposed. In this study, we develop textile-based triboelectric generator to harvest biomechanical energy from human motions. The electric outputs generated from the triboelectric generator reach 100 V. The output characteristics of the as-fabricated C-TENG are notably stable under various humidity condi-tions, distinguishing them from conventional TENGs. As the relative humidity (RH) changes from 20% to 80%, the electric output of the C-TENG remains unchanged, in contrast to the performance degradation observed for conventional TENGs. In addition, we also functionalize the textile-based triboelectric generator with self-powered sensing properties. Through the selection of triboelectric materials, the as-developed generator fur-ther become self-powered sensors for humidity, ions, and gait phase detection. We believe that the textile-based triboelectric generator can be combined with other healthcare sensors to become smart clothing products in the near future.

In past decades, automatic sleep stage scoring techniques are almost based on hand-crafted features combining with classification rules or networks. With the rapid development of artificial intelligence over the last several years, many new deep learning relative models have been utilized in medical field. The deep learning networks overcome the limitation of traditional feature extraction techniques and achieve a remarkable accuracy in sleep stage classification. In clinical sleep examination, polysomnography is gold standard equipment which provides comprehensive biosignals for sleep quality assessment and sleep breathing-related disorder diagnosis. Identification of apnea/hypopnea events, and sleep stage classification are usually performed by sleep expert with the aid of computer assisted sleep scoring system. Undoubtedly, this is an extremely time consuming work. Recently, a number of researches focus on automatic sleep stage classification based on electroencephalography(EEG). This paper adopted a convolutional neural network (CNN) architecture modified from the AlexNet and LeNet-5 that can be trained to extract meaningful features from two-channel EEGs measured at frontal and central lobes. Based on the leave-one-out cross-validation over the datasets from 43 subjects, an overall accuracy of 77.4% for sleep stage scoring was achieved in all subjects with sleep apnea.

In order to solve hardly diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), this study combined with deep learning and DTI images to develop three classification models of Alzheimer's disease. At present, the accuracy of training data can reach 93.8%. We believe that it will be more helpful for diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's disease in the future.

The incidence of intradialytic hypotension (IDH) is as high as 25% to 50%. It is one of the most common complications. The nurse can only ask patients and check data every 30 minutes. It is difficult to give patients appropriate prevention to find the intradialytic hypotension. Intradialytic hypotension patients suffer from uncomfortable in the whole body and various vascular complications. The patients which have serious complication even cause death. This problem wastes a lot of medical resources. Immediate treatment such as injecting corticosteroids increases the cost of medical care and the burden of care. Recently, the technology of artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IOT) becomes mature. It is good to be applied to the clinical decision support system for intradialytic hypotension. The study uses a multi-layered neural network algorithm to create a predictive model of intradialytic hypotension. It also realizes the multi-bed monitoring system to pre-alert the hypotension problem for the medical staff. We analyze the data from 153 patients with different parameters of the dialysis machine. It includes 14 characteristic values such as pulse, respiration, and blood flow rate, etc for training and verification. The highest calculation model reaches 85% accuracy, 86% sensitivity, and 83% specificity. Finally, the algorithm combined with information system realizes the multi-bed monitoring system and provides support for real-time clinical decision support system. When intradialytic hypotension happens, the monitoring system will timely warn nurse to increase the relationship between doctors and patients and to reduce the side effects of the hemodialysis.

Recently, when training deep learning model, insufficiency in training data is a usual problem. Especially in medical images. Without cooperation with hospital there are much fewer reliable and also high-resolution images. Therefore, to relieve this embarrassment, a progressive growing of generative adversarial network(PGGAN) model is implemented to generate high-quality medical images. Simultaneously, we espy that lung cancer accounts for a large proportion of death in Taiwan but it usually mixed up with activate tuberculosis which would result in misusing drugs and delay the treatment. Thence, we design to utilize three PGGAN models for healthy cases, lung cancer patients’ cases, and lung cancer with tuberculosis patients’ cases. The images of the three cases are generated separately to ensure that we generate the specific disease images or healthy images without garble. Then, apply the characteristic of GAN model, compute the input noise by adding and subtracting in the vector space to find out the main lesion region of the specific disease. Our work is expected to increase the amount of high-resolution medical images for future deep learning labor, and discover new medical definitions for disease image diagnostic.

Emotion plays an important role in our social interaction, decision-making, and the perception of the world around us. Understanding emotion conditions inside ourselves or others can help people manage their stress and emotions. Current technologies detect subject’s emotion conditions from indirect information such as facial expressions or voices. However, emotion detection based on the aforementioned indirect information might sometimes fall into the pitfalls of misleading results. In this study, we established a EEG-based emotion detection system in virtual-reality (VR) environment. Dry electrodes have been used to collect EEG data from eight measurement sites , including Fp1, Fp2, F3, F4, T7, T8, O1, and O2. EEG data were transformed into temporal-frequency domain using wavelet analysis. EEG data were segmented into ten-second epochs and nine signal features on temporal-frequency domain were used as input data to train a three-layer LSTM neural network . The trained LSTM model was built on double treads of architecture in Python on TX2 plat-form for real-time detections of user’s emotion states. Our current system has been able to detect emotional degrees in valence, arousal and dominance axes. The detection accuracies have achieved over 70%. Future study will apply the proposed system for emotion detection in mental disorder patients, such as depression and bipolar disorder patients.

We proposed a new fused method to track the motion trajectories of a zebrafish. By combining merits from the data density functional method and the algorithm of multiple object tracking using kalman filter, a 3-dimensional trajectory of a moving zebrafish can be easily recorded and then for the activity analysis. The proposed technique provides an alternative for the researches of tumor environment and gene transfer.

We proposed a new fused method to track and analyze the motional patterns of human gaits. The hardware scheme of the proposed method only employed single triple-axis accelerome-ter to collect the gait signals from subjects, and then the signals were mapped into specific physical spaces. By combining tech-niques from machine learning methods, abnormal gait features can be recognized by the proposed method. The recognition rate is 81%.

The respiratory monitor healthcare system has attracted considerable attention for many years. Owning the fact that chronic respiratory illnesses observed to increase gradually, relying only on X-ray imaging or CT imaging are not enough to diagnose completely. Before digital recording technology shows up, physicians use stethoscope for clinical diagnosis. The signal cannot be saved, detection by human also gives amounts of incorrectness. Artificial intelligence in clinical diagnosis has become more and more important. Modern breath sound analysis is focused on digital sound processing and graphic representation of the signals. Therefore, our research is aimed at investigating the breath sound analysis of tracheostomy patients, using computational skills and algorithms for classification. In this paper, we use sound detection module sensor to record respiratory and sputum sounds from tracheotomy patients and preprocess the signal. Next, we extract the feature by FFT (Fast Fourier Transform), MFCC (Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients) and spectrum analysis including time-domain and frequency-domain. After labeling curated sounds, we perform classification by artificial neural networks and convolutional neural networks. Finally, we build a non-contact, real-time detection system with graphical user interface to detect if tracheostomy patients need sputum drawing, then inform medical personnel immediately. The advantages of the respiratory monitoring system are noninvasive, safe, low cost, easy to use and the result can inform medical personnel immediately. This progress can be used in other respiratory disease detection and help diagnosis not only in the hospital but health care centers or even at home.

Alzheimer's disease is an irreversible progressive neurodegenerative disease, usually associated with dementia, and there are currently no definitive treatment and prophylactic agents for Alzheimer's disease. In this study, automated docking studies were performed to provide useful insights into acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibition binding modes with designed 4-acyloxy-biphenyl-4'-N-butylcarbamates (compounds 1–8). Besides, the experimental results were compared with comparative molecular similarity index analysis (CoMSIA). This study could provide useful information about enzyme enantioselectivity for the development of AChE inhibitors for Alzheimer's disease treatment.

During radiotherapy, the respiratory motion compensation system is used to compensate for the movement of the tumor due to breathing. Although the effectiveness of radiation therapy can be improved, but due to the delay of the system, the compensation effect cannot be optimized. Even if the phase lead compensator is used to compensate, due to the fact that the control parameters cannot be controlled in real time, the phase lead compensator cannot work effectively. In order to reduce the impact of system delay, this study is expected to add a Phase Lead Compensator (PLC) to the respiratory motion compensation system and perform adaptive control of the parameters in the system to compensate. The system can automatically calculate the best control parameters according to different patients during radiotherapy, and further improve the effectiveness of treatment to reduce the side effects of patients after radiotherapy. The results showed that the simulated respiratory signal were compensated by the respiratory motion compensation device using PLC real-time adaptive control parameters. The compensation rate was between 42.85%~83.53% and 33.76%~82.62% in the right-left and superior-inferior direc-tions respectively. The compensation results of the signals ranged from 58.95% to 78.56% and 62.87% to 79.05% in the right-left and superior-inferior directions respectively.

Nowadays, the management of the medical equipment is based on the management system from the hospital rather than paper form documentation. However, the development and maintenance of the management system can impose a lot of cost for just to fulfil user with different kind of management platform. Hence, in order to reduce the development cost, the aim of this research is to develop a cross-platform mobile APP using Ionic SDK that can provide user interchange information within iOS and Android devices. This can be achieved by using a backend web server in collaborative with HTTP protocol for transmission web data across different kind of devices. The integrated mobile APP system also granted the user to manage the medical equipment through three types of platform which is iOS, Android device and web browsers. The function of system included: (1) classification of login permission according to department; (2) medical equipment maintenance request; (3) network broadcast notification for pending case; (4) E-mail notification for preventative maintenance; (5) repair and maintenance log; (6) simple PDF trouble-shooting instruction manual; (7) pie chart analysis based on medical equipment failure; (8) upload archive of manufacturer work order picture; (9) satisfaction questionnaire filling form. In response to Taiwan’s domestic hospital evaluation, the related medical equipment management can benefit from the integrated platform where the cost down of developing and provide convenience for managing the medical equipment in thereby enhancing the medical quality management.

The stroke volume is an important cardiac blood flow hydraulic parameter that can be used to assess whether the pump function of the heart is normal. Non-invasive stroke volume measurement is currently performed using impedance cardio plethysmography (ICG). The ICG method is used to detect the amount of changes in the volume of thoracic cavity generated by the heartbeat and to estimate the stroke volume. Left ventricular ejection time (LVET) is an important parameter in stroke volume measurement with ICG technology. However, the ICG signal is susceptible to artificial noise interference, which leads to inaccurate LVET and miscalculation of stroke volume. In order to solve this problem, this paper uses the photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor to measure LVET, and assesses whether the LVET measured by the PPG sensor is more accurate than the LVET measured by the ICG. The results show that using the PPG sensor can indeed improve the accuracy of the LVET measurement, and that the closer the PPG sensor is placed to the heart, the more stable and accurate the measured LVET will be.

In USG-guided interventional procedures, the surgeons need to mentally register the reference data set (computed tomography [CT] or magnetic resonance [MR] images), and the working dataset of USG (real-time). This study presents a system to combine real-time USG information with preoperative 3D CT virtual model using landmark registration. The future goal of this system is to apply for radiofrequency needle tracking during the surgery.

In conventional endoscope video, a 2D image of surgical anatomy is visualized. A dense 3D model of the anatomy would help clinicians in planning management of the lesions visualized during endoscopy. Reconstructing such 3D model from conventional endoscopic images is a challenge. We propose a method to combine shape from shading and structure from motion algorithms of computer vision to reconstruct a real size 3D structure of colon lesions.

The occurrence of dementia is increasing in an aging, even aged society. According to the previous research reports, early diag-nosis and treatment of dementia may slow down the progres-sion of illness and reduce the cost of care-giving. There are several assessment measures currently applied in clinics, such as Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR), Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (CASI), Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), etc. However, their common feature is the need of instructors to guide one patient at a time. In addition, most of the tests are based on western culture. In Taiwan area, the hospital visiting rate of dementia patients is very low. This points out the problem that the clinical assessments are not often used for screening. In this study, a game based computerized measure for assisting the assessment of the suspected subjects is developed and its effi-cacy is discussed. The proposed system is developed and em-bedded in an interactive game based on Taiwanese culture theme. This system can work on Android and Windows plat-form, and it includes obtaining the user background and test-ing different cognitive domains, including attention, language, memory, visuospatial abilities, executive function and orienta-tion.

Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the common entrapment neuropathy that occurs due to compression of the median nerve at the wrist. Oral steroids treatment is commonly used in mild and moderate CTS. However, the degree of improvement in patients after steroid treatment is always subjectively quantified. Moreover, the mechanism of steroid treatment on CTS is an important issue. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate median nerve mobility by ultrasound after oral steroid treatment and to determine the parameters that are able to depict improvement across the severity spectrum of CTS. A total of 30 mild to moderate CTS patients confirmed by nerve conduction studies (NCS). The CTS patients will be randomly divided into 2 treatment arms: (1) 2 weeks of prednisolone 20 mg daily followed by 2 weeks of prednisolone 10 mg daily (n =15), and (2) 2 weeks of acerin 20 mg daily followed by 2 weeks of acerin 10 mg daily (n =15). In one cycle of the flexion–extension finger movement, all the average lateral displacements were then accumulated to obtain cumulative lateral displacements, which were curve-fitted by polynomial function. The amplitude of the fitted curve was computed to evaluate the maximum value of the fit. During finger flexion and extension, greater transverse sliding of median nerve was observed in the steroid group than in the acerin group. Compared to the acerin group, the steroid group had higher amplitude estimates (P < .01). Moreover, the steroid group had a significantly better improvement in global symptoms scores when compared to the acerin group (P < .01). After treatment, patients with steroid treatment had significantly better improvement in distal motor latency compared with acerin group. Therefore, the mobility of the median nerve can be used as an objective parameter to follow-up patients after oral steroid treatment to document improvement or relapse.

There is no denying that ischemic stroke is one of the mortality factors in Taiwan. Compare with anterior circulation (AC) ischemic stroke, posterior circulation (PC) ischemic stroke is more fatal in brain and causes a wide range of non-specific presenting symptoms. Therefore, more than a third of posterior circulation strokes are misdiagnosed. In this paper, a CAD system was developed for ischemic stroke diagnosis to help physicians determine the level of impairment caused by ischemic stroke objectively and next treatment option. This study focuses on CT image with ischemic stroke and excludes cases with tumor, edema and hemorrhage. This system was developed based on the analysis of texture parameters in CT brain image. After the preprocessing, including region growing and median filter, 9 kinds of texture parameters in CT image were obtained and then used as a tool to analyze and calculate Alberta Stroke Program Early CT Score (ASPECTS). Totally 16 data sets were used in 5 regions of PC-ASPECTS, respectively, 8 sets for training and 8 sets for testing. Finally, support vector machine (SVM) classifies whether the ROI is normal with corresponding vector equation and PC-ASPECTS was calculated. The results and statistical analysis showed that the texture parameters and PC-ASPECTS are proportional directly. For CT image, this system demonstrates an accuracy of 95.6%, sensitivity of 85.3%, specificity of 98.4%, and kappa of 0.86 for region detection. Moreover, the accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of stroke scoring (PC-ASPECTS≥7) are 95%, 80%, 100%, respectively. According to these results, the estimation of stroke by this system is more proper than the interpretation of physician inspect. Results not only indicate that this developed system for the diagnosis of posterior circulation ischemia is effective and accurate, but also help the physicians and healthcare professionals to improve door-to-needle times.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder that affects communication and behavior. There is a pressing need to improve early detection of ASD so that families can access intensive and appropriate intervention services as early as possible. Some subjective assessment tools, such as CHAT (Checklist for Autism in Toddlers) and STAT (The Screening Tool for Autism in Two-year-olds) and Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scale Developmental Profile (CSBS-DP) have been developed to fulfill aforementioned purpose. Some of the studies have been utilize the still face experiment for autism infants screening. The still-face has been found to evoke marked changes in infant behavior, now known as the still-face effect. Infants typically show increased gaze aversion. The objective of this study is to examine the validity of the still face experiment as a screening apparatus to detect infants with ASD for at 6 to 12 months from a general population sample. We measured heart rate in real time during the Still face experiment to observe relationship of emotion and physiology signals of Infants. In general, smiles and cry-faces are the prototypic expressions of positive and negative affect in infants. Infants with ASD showed less smiles and more intense crying or a different condition of heart rate during still face experiment. These were applied to analysis correlations between ASD due to Emotional Engagement variations. We hope present more objective diagnostic information to clinicians and researchers for early intervention.

Blood cell analysis in animal study have been proposed to reveal the application of behavior pattern and pharmacologic screening tests. In this study, a dynamic image identification system that could calculate the blood flow velocity and quantity of red blood cells (RBCs) in blood vessel have developed. This system includes user interface, selective region-of-interest (ROI) and catching flow of RBCs. This system combine self-define algorithm and image processing as a novel method for automatic analysis. A selective ROI region to calculate the blood flow velocity and quantity of RBCs in artery and vein simultaneously. The blood flow velocity measurements used an average calculation of each RBC in ROI region to reduce background noise. The results depicted waveforms of the blood flow velocity and amount of RBCs. Waveform variation of the blood flow velocity could be observed based on vasoconstriction and vasodilation.

The crackle signal has been simulated by the following pro-cesses which included 1) breath modeling; 2) modulation (am-plitude modulation and frequency modulation); 3) adding noise; 4) filtering; and 5) output. The results presented an acceptable performance. The 2 cycle duration (2CD) and initial deflection width (IDW) which are defined by CORSA were very clear. Compared with Zhang et al.s’ study (2015), the following parameters were met with the simulated results. One is the max area, the other is the centroid near 500 Hz in the spectrogram. Therefore, the AM and FM model for the crackle in lung sound was identified.

Like elsewhere, cardiovascular disease (CVD) is an increasingly important cause of morbidity and mortality in Bangladesh. Over the past few decades, because of epidemiological transition, the prevailing disease pattern in this country changed from predominantly communicable to predominantly non- communicable disease, CVD contributes to the latter a lot. Actually, CVD particularly coronary artery disease (CAD) is getting epidemic proportion day by day. Hypertension and heart failure are on the rise, whereas the prevalence of acute rheumatic fever is declining. However, despite some efforts, reliable data concerning various aspects of CVD is inadequate at present. The current prevalence of hypertension, CAD, rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease and stroke may be 20-25%, 4-6%, <1/1000, 0.3- 1.0% respectively. Objective of this study is to develop a module with assistance of doctors and CE/BME which will be used to identify the actual number of cardiovascular patients and measure the potential risk on health index. The goal of this study is to bring as much people as possible within survey and find the potential CVD patients together with the peoples who might not have CVD now but possess the credible risk factors. We will be able to provide preventive information to these populations and motivate and suggest for more care on individual health to avoid diabetes. A database is designed for performing several tasks to analyze the patients data collected from various hospitals’ of Bangladesh. The numerical statistic will represent the overall patients health index for diseases and assessment will allow us to determine the actual patients number with appropriate threat in categories of CVD. Proper Diagnosis and treatment then can be assured for these individuals and national precautionary action will accomplish through regulatory control. Future assessment and intervention can be further explored from the perspectives of patients and CVD information processing which can improve the patients’ indexing, safety and health care management in many developing countries.

Topic: The bolus effect of thermoplastic mask for whole brain irradiation (WBI) using two dimensional and arc-based intensity modulated radiotherapy techniques. Purpose: The thermoplastic mask was used to immobilize the head positioning. The radiation dermatitis and hair follicle damage were observed in WBI. The study was to investigate the bolus effect of thermoplastic mask contributing dose to the scalp. Materials and Methods: Two kinds of thermoplastic masks were used to immobilize the head of anthropomorphic phantom. One is the whole brain mask usually used clinically, and the other was designed for this study. The cut-mask was cut from the edge of the upper ear. Two-dimensional radiotherapy, helical tomotherapy and volumetric arc therapy (VMAT) were planned for WBI. The total dose for WBI was 30 Gy in ten fractions. The plans have the same coverage of planning target volume (PTV), and the same critical organ dose. The GAFchromic™ EBT3 films were used to measure scalp dose for two kinds of thermoplastic masks. Results: The EBT3 film dose measured for frontal scalp, parietal scalp, temporal scalp, and occipital scalp in original mask and modified mask were 35.81% vs 25.85%, 41.20% vs 31.55%, 60.77% vs 51.89%, and 46.65% vs 45.46%, respectively. The scalp doses measured by EBT3 films were reduced 27.81%, 23.42%, 14.62%, and 2.55% by modified mask in frontal scalp, parietal scalp, temporal scalp, and occipital scalp, respectively. The mean and standard deviation for all measurements in original mask and modified mask are 49.81%±10.58% and 43.48%±10.54%. Conclusion: The bolus effect of thermoplastic mask increased scalp dose and may lead to radiation dermatitis and hair follicle damage. The designed cut-mask also can immobilize the head position during WBI. The cut-mask reduces the surface area covered by thermoplastic mask and decreased the scalp dose in WBI.

As the demand for data storage is growing exponentially, higher density and durable storage solutions are necessary. DNA has many potential advantages as a medium for information storage because it is extremely dense, high capacity, low-maintenance and durability. Previous research has focused on ASCII code files or pictures, which ignored expression with other languages encoded with Unicode. We provide a DNA translator for multiple languages and also discuss the influence of entropy in different dataset. The effect of Huffman code encoding and ternary code encoding for different dataset are also compared. Our results indicate that the DNA memory translator system is very efficient for the dataset with low entropy.