Session Detail

I present the mechanical structure analysis of the transition metal oxide hollow microsphere by BME. The Uniaxial com-pressive stress-strain curves can be presented by elstomeric foam model. In this study, hollow mineral microspheres of tungsten, molybdenum and iron oxides were prepared by bacterial mineral excretion (BME), and the uniaxial compres-sive strain-stress curve of these hollow microsphere shells was measured and analyzed by the elastomeric foam model.

 

Peripheral nerve injuries (PNI) is a common clinical challenge and issue to human health that arise from industrial injuries, natural disasters, war wounds, motor vehicle accidents, tumor damage and even some systemic diseases result in complete loss of motor functionality and paralysis. Approximately 2–5% of trauma patients experience a PNI and about 500,000 surgical procedures are carried out each year in the America. In the Europe alone, more than 300,000 PNI cases per year and esti-mated that more than 5 million cases of PNI occur annually worldwide due to traumatic events. Here, we developed an elastic 3D printed conduit fabricated by digital light processing (DLP)-type additive manufacturing for nerve regeneration. In 3D printing technologies, we can fabricate various scaffold in any length as well as diameter and overcome the geometries from individual differences according to individual patients. Especially, unique pattern inside the conduit could also be easily designed. Besides, mesoporous silica/graphene oxide nanoparticles (PSGO NPs) provide the large cargo to deliver growth factor and some specific protein for nerve regeneration. By means of 3D-printing process, we could prepare gradient concentration of PSGO NPs inside for guiding nerve growth. PSGO NPs also generated microcurrent to aid sciatica regeneration under high frequency magnetic field (MFMF). Nerve would grow along the micro-groove and gradient concentration of PSGO NPs in the lumen of the guide we designed in vitro and in vivo test. Over 1 month, Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats successfully regenerated across a 5 mm nerve gap and resulted in functional return.

 

This study aims to investigate the role of alkyl chain length of monothiol-terminated alkyl carboxylic acids in the synthesis, characterization, and application of gelatin-g-poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (GN) biodegradable in situ gelling carriers for antiglaucoma drug delivery. The study showed that with increasing alkyl chain length, the hydrophobicity of thermoresponsive polymer segments significantly increased. In addition, the greater hydrophobic association favored the decrease in both phase transition temperature and weight loss of GN copolymers, thereby accelerating their temperature-triggered gelation process and retarding the degradation progress under physiological conditions. The benefits from these features allowed the pilocarpine carriers to increase drug payload and extend drug release. Results of clinical observations and histological examinations demonstrated that the therapeutic efficacies in treating glaucomatous damage are in response to in vivo drug release profiles from various intracamerally injected GN carriers. The research findings suggest the influence of alkyl chain length of chain transfer agent-mediated polymer hydrophobicity and degradability on pharmacological bioavailability and action of pilocarpine in a glaucomatous rabbit model.

 

The autograft is the current “gold standard” for the nerve regeneration. However, the functional results of using an auto-graft are unstable and the lack of a donor nerve also retards the application of the autograft in a clinical setting. Conse-quently, it is highly desirable to develop engineered alternatives to the autografts with design flexibility and improved perfor-mance. In this study, we using Digital light processing (DLP) technology in 3D printing to developed a photopolymerizable water-based polyurethane (PU) material. In vitro the MTT assay and immunofluorescent display Wharton's jelly mesen-chymal stem cell has good bio-compatibilty on PU. Animal experiment show the 3D printing conduit load Schwann cell spheroids dramatically increased the nerve regeneration rate. This study demonstrates the potential of 3D-printing PU nerve conduit for potential clinical applications in the future.

 

Stimuli-responsive polymeric nanoparticles have been utilized as effective vehicles for escorting chemotherapeutic agents with optimal therapeutic effect. However, solid tumor microenvironment restrains deep drugs transportation due to its dense extracellular matrix, irregular vascular network and high interstitial fluid pressure. Therefore, the objective of this study is to develop reductive and enzyme sensitive polypeptide-based nanoparticles with programmable degradation manner for solid tumor treatment. The backbone of copolymers is composed of polyCys, polyHis and polyLeu blocks which exhibited a reversible disulfide bond protective layer, proton sponge effect and hydrophilic domain, respectively. Vismodegib, a hedgehog signal pathway inhibitor, was complexed in the core of the nanoparticles to show synergistic effect with anti-cancer drug, doxorubicin. From NMR and FTIR spectra, the mPEG and doxorubicin were successfully conjugated onto the polypeptide sequence through chemical reactions, respectively. The nanoparticles self-assembled into spherical shape through sonication with a size around 220 nm. Also, the programmable dissociation process could be clearly seen from the TEM images. In in vitro cell culture model, the nanoparticle decorated with active targeting ligand, tLyP-1, performed high selectivity toward the expression of neuropilin-1 (NRP-1) receptor on breast cancer cells. Moreover, in tumor spheroid 3D model, the nanoparticles exerted desirable therapeutics on collapsing ECM matrix and anticancer effect. These nanocarriers are expected to process through adverse ECM barrier with multiple endogenous stimuli-responsive properties and exert a safe and precise delivery. This tailored-designed vehicle has potential in treating NRP-1 over-expressed solid tumor and diseases with intense fibrosis problem.

 

At present, one out of every five people in Taiwan suffers from articular cartilage disease. The structure and function of cartilage can't be fully restored by using medical treat-ment or artificial joint surgery. The continuous development and research of tissue engineering can improve the regeneration ability and complete repair of cartilage tissue. In this study, tissue engineering and three dimensional (3D) printing technology were used to develop hyaluronic acid (HA)/polyurethane (PU) light cured cartilage composite scaffolds for cartilage tissue engineering. Hyaluronic acid is an extracellular component of articular cartilage that binds aggrecan to macromolecular proteoglycans and acts as a lubricant in cartilage fluid. Other studies have indicated that hyaluronic acid has the tendency to induce mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to differentiate into chondrocytes and form supportive cell differentiation, and also binds to the composition of other proteins and extracellular matrices, and is therefore often used as a natural material. Hyaluronic acid modified or chemically reacted with different chemical properties may have a good effect on its biological activity. Therefore, development of different modified hyaluronic acid will enhance the repair and regeneration of cartilage tissue. The results of this study show that the HA/waterborne PU light cured materials with special modification are applied to the digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing technology with excellent operability and printability. The cartilage scaffolds can be fabricated with complex porous structure and also has good performance and biocompatibility. This study will help the development of the cartilage disease therapy and precision medicine.

 

A novel biaxial culture system capable of cyclically stretching planar soft tissues was developed and used to study growth and remodeling of fibroblast-seeded collagen gels in response to dynamic mechanical stimuli. Fibroblast-seeded collagen gels, a simple three-dimensional cell culture model, were subjected to five distinct mechanical conditions for six days: freefloating, static equibiaxial stretching (10%), cyclic equibiaxial stretching at two constant strain magnitudes (CES-7% and CES-20%), and cyclic equibiaxial stretching with incrementally increasing stain magnitude (ICES, 7% -> 15% -> 20% each for two days). The frequency of cyclic stretching was set at 1 Hz. At the end of culture, mechanical properties of the gels were examined by biaxial mechanical testing and checked again upon the removal of seeded cells. Collagen microstructure within the gels was illustrated by multiphoton microscopy. The mRNA levels of collagen type I and type III and fibronectin in the cells were examined by reverse transcription PCR. The protein expression of a-smooth muscle actin was detected by immunohistochemistry. We found that the gels cultured under cyclic stretching were stiffer than those cultured under static stretching. Particularly, the stiffness appeared to be significantly enhanced when the ICES was employed. The enhancement of mechanical properties by cyclic stretching appeared to persist upon cell removal, suggesting an irreversible remodeling of extracellular matrix. Second harmonic generation images showed that collagen fibers became thicker and more compact in the gels cultured under cyclic stretching, which may explain the mechanical findings. The mRNA expression of collagen type I in the cells of the ICES was significantly greater than that of the other groups except for the CES-20%. This study suggests that when cyclic stretching is to be used in engineering soft tissues, incrementally increasing strain magnitude may prove useful in the development of the tissue.

 

Ligamentum flavum (LF) hypertrophy induces the inflammation and fibrosis by mechanical stress. It is the common disorder for the most patient with lumbar spinal canal stenosis. Here, we established a cyclic stretching mircoenvironment to simulate part of the motion condition of LF cells in human body by using two-dimensional and three-dimensional cell culture. We observed directional migration, morphological changes and protein expressions of LF cells after long-term cyclic mechanical stretching. In the future, this study is in a hope to identify the correlation between LFH and mechanical stress.

 

Many studies use ultrasound for diaphragmatic excursion (DE) evaluation. The calculation of DE value requires recording the diaphragm movement, freezing the ultrasound image, re-calling video and measuring target distance which is time consuming. We aimed at using an ultrasound image tracking algorithm (UITA) to trace diaphragm movement and reveal DE values in real time. We tested UITA with 40 young volun-teers under 4 respiration conditions: standing with quiet breathing (SQB), supine with quiet breathing (SuQB), stand-ing with deep breathing (SDB), and supine with deep breath-ing (SuDB). The value of DE during SQB, SuQB, SDB, and SuDB was 24.5 ± 10.2, 31.9 ± 10.5, 68.9 ± 15.9, and 98.1 ± 27.4 mm, respectively. We found displacement of diaphragm can be translated to waveforms like spirometry graphs with real-time DE value. DE decreased about 30% in the standing position than in the supine position. Quiet breathing or deep breathing had similar effect on the percent decrease of DE. Further studies are needed to validate this tracking algorithm as a clinical tool in patients with the diaphragm dysfunction.

 

Ultrafast ultrasound imaging is a novel ultrasound imaging technique based on coherent plane wave compounding, which has been widely developed for many biomedical applications. However, the operating frequency of most ultrafast ultra-sound imaging systems is typically from 3 to 15 MHz, the image resolution for this frequency range is not sufficient for visualizing microstructure tissues and imaging small ani-mals. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to implement a 40 MHz high-frequency ultrafast ultrasound imaging technique and demonstrate the potential applications of this technique.

 

There are various researches on vision-based pattern recognition and gesture recognition over the past decades. However, hand gesture recognition as part of human-computer interaction is still facing a lot of challenges in general. This is due to no single method for automatic hand gesture recognition to fulfill every application. Depending on the user application domain, cultural background, and environment, the applied recognition algorithm may be varying from each other or even multiple alternate solutions to the same problem. Therefore, the proposal of this paper is to develop a simple system yet robust enough to track and recognize the hand gesture in real time without requiring marking and sophisticated machine learning technique. Owing to the low-cost webcam and open source computer vision library (OpenCV), the system is possible to be developed with a minimum hardware requirement. The acquired images are fed into the algorithm to detect the location of the hand based on the skin color and then segment the fingers and palm. Next, according to the segmented fingers labeled by the algorithm, it is then transformed into one of the 32 defined hand gesture based on each close and open of five fingers output data. The processed data in the Raspberry Pi is then transferred to the Arduino which consist of five separate motors to control the robotic hand.

 

From the conventional commonly-used landmark-based methods to the novel voxel-based method, plenty of methods available to define midsagittal references were put into practice to assist improvement of cranial symmetry. From clinical viewpoint, one of the most prominent facial characteristics in visual perception is the mandibular contour in anterior-posterior and vertex-submental views. Thus a method to retrieve the corresponding mandibular contour with respect to a specific midsagittal reference plane was developed. Voxel-based evaluation was proven to be significantly better in assessing a midsagittal reference plane. Voxel-based symmetry plane (SP) exhibited significant better contour correspondence no matter in frontal or submental viewing direction, denoting that the whole mandible was considered equally. On the other hand, landmark-based planes were found to be greatly influenced by the landmarks chosen and present obvious errors for defining mandibular symmetry.

 

X-ray imaging technology can access the database to read the X-ray imaging data and then conduct image processing through CMOS image sensing array integrated integrator, sampling circuit, and analog-to-digital converter. The paper proposed the design of a recycling folded-cascode amplifier and an architecture of a 14-bit successive approximation register analog-to-digital converter (SAR ADC) to demonstrate the data of sampling circuit via the interface of X-ray CMOS image sensor. Comparing with the traditional folded-cascode amplifier, the recycling folded-cascode amplifier has the advantages of higher gain, wider input common-mode range, wider bandwidth and output swing, whereas the SAR ADC has the merits of low power consumption and high resolution. A 14-bit SAR ADC consists of a sample-and-hold circuit, a comparator, a shift register, a successive approximation control logic unit and charge scaling digital-to-analog converter by using split array. The proposed analog-to-digital converter is an improved charge scaling digital-to-analog converter other than the traditional charge scaling digital-to-analog converter requires a large number of capacitors and a larger chip area. Using split array mode can reduce the chip area and achieve the purpose of low power consumption. In this paper, the recycling folded-cascode amplifier and 14-bit SAR ADC is designed by using the 0.18um 1P6M mixed-signal CMOS process of United Microelectronics Corporation. In 1.8V power supply operation, the recycling folded-cascode amplifier has 221uW low power, an open-loop gain of 65dB, a low-frequency power rejection ratio of 65dB and a common-mode rejection ratio of 144dB. The gain per unit bandwidth can reach more than 15MHz, which can meet the requirement of 0.1MHz transmission rate for CMOS image sensing array. When the circuit simulation performance of 14-bit SAR ADC is 219.1085uW power loss, and the sample transmission rate reaches up to 0.1MHz, the circuit performance is acceptable for X-ray image processing. The test results of recycling folded-cascode amplifier show that the gain is about 53 dB and the bandwidth is 3.5M Hz. The design and development of this circuit will assist to improve the self-made rate of key amplifiers and analog-to-digital converters in X-ray image sensing and processing module, and can further apply this amplifier and analog-to-digital converter circuit to other medical signal processing systems.

 

Atrial fibrillation is a cardiac malfunction which is characterized by rapid irregular heartbeats. Subsequently, leads to an abnormality of atrial ejection fraction. The radio ablation or medication can aid in blocking the unwanted electrical pathway on the atrium. To assess the post-operative results of these procedures non-invasively through medical images can be helpful for the patients. In this study, a self-developed 4D Cardiac CT images analysis program is reported. We reconstructed 3D volume of the heart, set the boundary of the mitral valve for the left atrial contour extraction and mapped onto the original CT images. A set of thirty 4D CT cardiac images are acquired at 30% and 90% of RR interval. This result shows that patient with atrial fibrillation, ejection fraction is much lower than the control group (Exp: 30.81 ± 13.61%, Ctrl: 36.69 ± 19.95%, p < 0.034).

 

Sleep disorders have a significant impact on people's quality of life and work efficiency. Sleep studies are important for diagnosing sleep disorders, and one of the essential parts of sleep study is sleep stage distribution, which provides information about the quality of sleep. However, scoring sleep stage manually is a time consuming task which requires clinical sleep physiologists to visually inspect whole night recorded polysomnography (PSG) data, and this is one of the reasons why it often takes much time for patients waiting for their sleep reports. This study applies continuous wavelet transform (CWT) to different channels of electroencephalography (EEG) and electrooculography (EOG) recordings, converting localized time-frequency information into images (Spectrogram). Using these spectrogram images as inputs to the convolutional neural network (CNN) to train a classifier. Expecting this classifier can help clinical sleep physiologists to speed up the production of sleep reports. Twenty-eight whole night PSG data recorded by National Cheng Kung University Hospital are used in this study. The average accuracy is about 85%.

 

The present study was employed 3D printing technology to create a porous scaffold contained with strontium (Sr)-doped calcium silicate (CS) and polycaprolactone (PCL) for guiding tissue regeneration (GTR). Physico-chemical characterization of the scaffolds was identified by optical and scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffractometer and universal testing ma-chine. As the results, it can be seen that the compressive strength of the scaffold was about 6.2 MPa. After soaking for 3 days in simulated body fluids, the sample was covered with a dense layer of bone-like apatite. The results indicate the Sr-doped CS/PCL composite exhibited a favorable bioactivity and osteoconductive properties that could be served as a promising biomaterial for treatment of dental osteopenia patients.

 

The dynamic role of photosensitizer (PS) concentration under various light intensity is measured. The efficacy of photodynamic therapy (PDT) and cell viability (CV) are measured (in vitro) and analyzed by analytic and numerical modeling. for a fixed PS concentration, CV is a nonlinear deceasing function of light intensity and exposure time; for a fixed light intensity, higher PS concentration achieves higher efficacy (except the transient stage), or smaller CV (at steady-state), in consistent to our analytic formulas. Finally, anti-cancer efficacy may be enhanced by the resupply of PS and/or external oxygen.

 

Collagen is an abundant structural protein in all animals. However, how collagen structurally organized into the functional tissue is still an open question. Here, using the chicken as an experimental system in conjunction with Fast Fourier Transform second harmonic generation microscopy, we investigate the corneal structural variation at different stage of developing embryos. The results indicate both the thickness and collagen alignment of corneal stroma continue involving with developing process of cornea but their event curves are different at their time stage.

 

Air pollution and nanoparticles are emerging as the most dangerous pollutants for our health effects going far beyond the simple toxicity to the lung. However, there are no effective in vitro models to test what will happen if particulates in human lung, we also test them in dish or animal test. In recent years, organs on chips are new technology that are microfluidic cell culture devices with separate parenchymal and vascular compartments lined by living human cells that mimic the multicellular architecture, tissue-tissue interfaces and relevant physical microenvironment of key functional units of living organs, while providing dynamic vascular perfusion in vitro. So we want to create a microfluidic lung-on-a-chip lined by human primary alveolar epithelium interfaced with endothelium and imitate environment in human body. Now, our present results demonstrated we have successfully cultured cell on the chip for long-term. At the same time, the function of the cell-cell interaction is verified, and the single-layer cells are stimulated by the particles to investigate the toxicity analysis. Finally, we hope that the system can bring different test results to the increasingly serious air pollution problem, and bring more applications and development possibilities to organs on chip.

 

This study presents a rapid diagnostic for mycobacterial tuberculosis (MTB) infection by measuring mycobacterial enzyme activity. Detection of the enzyme activity is tantamount to the presence and activity of bacterial cells. Mycobacterial topoisomerase (MTop), a significant enzyme in the proliferation of the bacteria, can partially break the supercoiled double stranded DNA helix to relax and then reanneal afterwards. Here we present a nano-sensor for detecting mycobacterial viability based on its topoisomerase enzymes' cleavage activities against the mycobacterial DNA substrates embedded in our microchannels. The nano-sensor comprises a carrier particle (dp=50 μm) conjugated with gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) via designed DNA strands. Liquid samples containing the pathogenic microbial topoisomerase enzymes are allowed to run along our fabricated borosilicate glass microchannel driven by capillary force. Embedded at the middle of the microchannels are obstacles for the carrier particles but will allow other small particles (AuNPs and proteins) to pass. When the MTopI enzymes are active, the carrier particles and AuNPs are separated because the linker DNAs are cleaved. As a result, AuNPs are washed away from the microchannels. Conversely, the nano-sensors conjugated with AuNPs tend to aggregate in the front end of the obstacles, resulting in visible red color band in the microchannel. Figure 3 illustrates fluid flow of the MTopI sample and the DNA nano-sensors along the microchannel driven by capillary force starting from the inlet towards the end of the channel. In summary, we proposed an integrated platform combining the DNA nano-sensors, capillary force, and colorimetry to address current challenges in rapid MTB diagnosis with high sensitivity and specificity through the measurement of MTopI enzyme cleavage activities.

 

The proof of concept of utilizing a microfluidic dielectrophoresis (DEP) chip was conducted to rapidly detect a dengue virus (DENV) in vitro based on the fluorescence im-munosensing. The mechanism of detection was that the DEP force was employed to capture the modified beads (mouse anti-flavivirus monoclonal antibody-coated beads) in the microflu-idic chip and the DENV modified with fluorescence label, as the detection target, can be then captured on the modified beads by immunoreaction. The fluorescent signal was then obtained through fluorescence microscopy, and then quanti-fied by ImageJ freeware. The platform can accelerate an im-munoreaction time, in which the on-chip detection time was 5 min, and demonstrating an ability for DENV detection as low as 104 PFU/mL. Furthermore, the required volume of DENV samples dramatically reduced, from the commonly used ~50 μL to ~15 μL, and the chip was reusable ( > 50x). Overall, this platform provides a rapid detection (5 min) of the DENV with a low sample volume, compared to conventional methods. This proof of concept with regard to a microfluidic dielectrophore-sis chip thus shows the potential of immunofluorescence based-assay applications to meet diagnostic needs.The proof of concept of utilizing a microfluidic dielectrophoresis (DEP) chip was conducted to rapidly detect a dengue virus (DENV) in vitro based on the fluorescence im-munosensing. The mechanism of detection was that the DEP force was employed to capture the modified beads (mouse anti-flavivirus monoclonal antibody-coated beads) in the microflu-idic chip and the DENV modified with fluorescence label, as the detection target, can be then captured on the modified beads by immunoreaction. The fluorescent signal was then obtained through fluorescence microscopy, and then quanti-fied by ImageJ freeware. The platform can accelerate an im-munoreaction time, in which the on-chip detection time was 5 min, and demonstrating an ability for DENV detection as low as 104 PFU/mL. Furthermore, the required volume of DENV samples dramatically reduced, from the commonly used ~50 μL to ~15 μL, and the chip was reusable ( > 50x). Overall, this platform provides a rapid detection (5 min) of the DENV with a low sample volume, compared to conventional methods. This proof of concept with regard to a microfluidic dielectrophore-sis chip thus shows the potential of immunofluorescence based-assay applications to meet diagnostic needs.

 

This work developed a cost-efficient and portable electroencephalogram (EEG) acquisition platform by entirely leveraging off-the-shelf electronic components/modules and dry electrodes. The dry electrodes were placed on a 3D-printed soft electrode holder that allows self-assembly by a user regarding the number and location of electrodes to be placed for the cognitive task of interest. By conducting an event-related potential (ERP) experiment namely Go/Nogo task, the obtained ERP outcome of salient fronto-central N2 and P3 peaks accompanied by only inhibitory responses empirically demonstrated the integrity of the platform in terms of signal quality and data synchronization.

 

Medical interventional devices (MIDs) are commonly used to provide access for minimally invasive diagnosis. In this study, We propose the very advanced technique for studying medical interventional devices (MID) with soft tissue interaction by extracting acoustic emission data from the proximal end of the MID. We have to extract dynamical characteristics of the interaction between the MID distal tip and soft tissue. We found that signal which has less noise, confirms the right placement of the device in the soft tissue. This study shows a novel method to obtain valuable information for MID guidance and tissue/device interactions for further analysis and evaluation.

 

The shoulder joint is the joint with the largest range of human activity, and it is easy to cause rotator cuff tendons to inflammation, wear and even breakage. At present, the main treatment of shoulder joint surgery is shoulder arthroscopy. Arthroscopic surgery is mainly direct observation of the patient’s shoulder joint by arthroscope through the muscles, and then the physician uses surgical instruments to give the treatment through another hole of muscle. However, in the process of shoulder arthroscopy, fluid injection is often required, because the tissue shaved through the device will constantly interfere with the visual field in the picture, so the doctor usually uses fluid injection to maintain the clarity of the picture but they cannot adjust the amount of injection well. In view of this, patient's shoulder would have postoperative edema after surgery owing to the improper fluid injection. Besides, the excessive injection can even lead to severe respiratory disease or PAGCL [1]. Therefore, this study intends to develop the algorithm of automatic irrigation pump by using the artificial intelligence. The images of the shoulder arthroscopy are provided by Cheng Kung University Hospital, and we try to input the testing image into the trained classifier to help determine whether the view of shoulder arthroscopy picture is clear enough and the classification result is given as the reference of the automatic irrigation pump for fluid injection. This study uses the mainstream con-volutional neural network: Alexnet as a tool, and also tests and evaluates the feasibility of artificial intelligence for differentiating different condition of fluid injection. We expect that our training model can be used as the algorithm for automatic irrigation pump and make the patient recover much better in the future.

 

This study investigated the impact of body mass index (BMI) in prospectively ECG-triggered coronary CT angiography (CCTA) to achieve sufficient and consistent image quality across a diverse patient population. All CCTA scans were performed on a 320-slice multi-detector CT with default protocol settings. Automatic exposure control (AEC) was used in conjunction with iterative reconstruction (IR) to ensure sufficient diagnostic information at the lowest radiation dose. Multiple linear regression methods were used to analyze how tube voltage, tube current and chest circumference varied according to BMI. A total of 1509 consecutive CCTA examina-tions were enrolled in this study (468 women, 1041 men; age range 25-89 years; heart rate range 40.08-80.75 bpm; BMI range 15.76-47.35 kg/m2). The regression model suggested that 100-, 120- and 135-kVp CCTA scans should be used in patients with BMI less than 26, 30 and 32 kg/m2, respectively. As for patients with BMI > 32 kg/m2, although the efficacy of AEC on compensating patient attenuation is limited, the image noise can be reduced by increasing the blending level of IR-FBP.

 

Deep learning methods have become increasingly important as the advancement of computing speed and capacity during recent years. When applied to computer vision and image processing, deep learning has great performance on object classification, object detection, image segmentation, etc. In this paper, we apply convolutional neural network to classify ecological data such as 19 types of bee wings. One difficulty in the ecology classification is the limited amounts of the dataset. Thus, image augmentation method is used to increase the dataset size. The original dataset of 750 images is enlarged to 19,000 images, among them 15,200 images used for training (i.e., 800 images for each class) and 3,800 images for testing. With the augmented images, we train our model to classify the types of bees according to their wings. Furthermore, we apply transfer learning technique to improve model’s classification accuracy. A pre-trained neural network model is applied on the ecological dataset. The test accuracy of 98.34% is achieved after data augmentation. And 93.79% test accuracy for trans-fer learning, which is used to build one-class classification and recognize “unknown” class.

 

A lot of severe disabled patients such as neurodegenerative disease or spinal cord injury are difficult to use traditional communication aids and then cause many problems in their daily lives. To help the severely disabled patients, steady state visually evoked potentials based brain-computer interface (SSVEP-based BCI) is one of the efficient ways to easy the patients in communicating with other people or devices. In this study, a modular deep neural network is developed to integrate the decisions by using different types of features. To effective represent the characteristics of biological signal elicited SSVEP, the canonical correlation analysis, fast Fourier transform, and magnitude-squared coherence are adopt to extract the features. To improve the communication effectives of SSVEP-base BCI, a modular deep neural network (MDNN) is developed to find the feature dependent decisions by using different features and then to fuse these decisions for finding a precise recognition result. The experimental results showed that MDNN produce higher accuracy compare to other approaches. Therefore, the proposed MDNN can effectively help severe disabled patients in interacting with other people or devices.

 

The development of medical technologies is improving medicine practice and healthcare approach. Nevertheless, in developing countries, healthcare is a major issue mainly because of economic difficulties. This research proposes a real time monitoring platform to solve patient data digitalization and integration in health systems in order to improve vital signs data management. This platform is a support for health professionals to follow up and visualize differently patient’s vital signs. The web page of the platform allows staff to connect and check the vital signs wherever they are. The platform is designed as a set of three parts that connect and inter communicate: the medical equipment, the Raspberry Pi based medical gateway and the medical cloud server. By using cheap and reliable technologies, open source software and resources, this low cost and low energy consumption system match with developing countries needs and realities.

 

Optimal approaches in fall risk assessment involve interdisciplinary collaboration of assessment. We hypothesized that the high dimensionality objective sensor based parameters, followed by a feature selection and dimensionality reduction process, be able to discriminate elderly nonspecific fallers. 31 community-living elder who were beyond 60 years old (faller: n=15; non faller: n=16) were recruited. The measurements include gait, balance and ankle proprioception performances. Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Generalized Discriminant Analysis (GDA) were further applied to obtain more discriminative feature space. Receiver-Operator Characteristic (ROC) curves were constructed to compare the classification quality in all the features. The AUC of ROC was GDA dimensionality reduction feature (1), LDA dimensionali-ty reduction feature (0.99), Proprioception (0.752), IMU (0.745) and COP (0.72), respectively. The experimental result show the GDA feature has the best classification quality and the addi-tional advantage in combination of interdisciplinary multi-factorial fall risk assessment.

 

Neurofeedback training (NFT) of electroencephalogram (EEG) is a psychophysiological procedure that allows users to learn self-regulation of their cortical oscillations. Trained alpha activity after NFT is associated with cognitive performance, its neural origin, however, remains unknown. The present study aimed to explore possible equivalent current dipoles (ECDs) of the trained alpha activity. Thirty-six healthy participants were recruited and randomly assigned to either an Alpha group with feedback of 8-12 Hz (n=20) or a Sham group with feedback of 4-Hz bandwidth amplitude selected randomly from 7-20 Hz (n=16). The Alpha group exhibited progressively significant increase of 8-12-Hz amplitude exclusively. Furthermore, the Alpha group had reliable controllability of the trained alpha occurrence in a block deign. ECDs of the trained alpha activity existed in the posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, middle temporal cortex, and hippocampal formation, which are associated with several cognitive functions. There was no ECD within the occipital cortex. These results suggest that the trained alpha activity differs from classic alpha rhythm and may play an active role in cognitive performance.

 

In this study, we investigated the crucial portion of the k-space data for the reliable magnetic resonance (MR) temperature image of radiofrequency ablation (RFA). A MR compatible RFA system, including the titanium needle electrode, the brass neutral electrode and the cooper conduction wires, was developed. The k-space data of RFA were obtained with a 3T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment while the compatibility of needle electrode was confirmed in a 1.5T MRI scanner. The temperature image was derived from the k-space data based on the proton resonance frequency shift technique. The computational complexity of the k-space data for temperature image was reduced by replacing a portion of the data by zero. We found that the temperature image of ablative lesions would be remained reliable with 23.4% of the k-space data.

 

Body-worn hearing aids are one of the most common assistive-hearing devices for individuals with hearing difficulties. It mainly integrates microphones, speakers, and signal-processing units to enhance the acoustic signals thereby improving the audibility for hearing-impaired individuals. Previous studies have shown that the pocket aid benefits the users; however, there is still room for improvement, such as reduction of rubbing noise. Mechanism design and application of acoustic absorbing damping material are common approaches for solving this issue; however, such approaches offer limited improvement. Therefore, a suitable signal-processing method, such as the deep-denoising autoencoder (DDAE), could be used to further reduce the rubbing noise. The experimental results show that the DDAE provides higher perceptual evaluation of speech quality and extended short-time objective intelligibility than the classical noise reduction (NR) approach. Moreover, multi-objective learning-based DDAE can achieve higher performance than DDAE NR. These results suggest that the deep-learning-based NR could be used to further improve the benefits for body-worn hearing aid users.

 

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are biomarkers for the detec-tion, diagnosis, and monitoring of cancer which could offer biological information required for the development of person-alized medicine. However, the specific catch and nondestructive release of CTCs from million blood cells remain technically challenging. Here, we present a system to studying CTC catch and release efficiency by a disulfide-containing poly(carboxybetaine methacrylate) (poly(CBMA)) hydrogel. We used disulfide-contained crosslinkers to form poly(CBMA) hydrogel which potentially inhibited the adhesion of tumor cells and blood cells. After conjugation of 50 g/mL anti-epithelial cell adhesion molecule (anti-EpCAM) antibodies via carbodiimide reaction, we found that the capture efficiency of tumor cells reached a maximum. The system was further vali-dated by isolation co-spiked tumor cells in healthy human blood. The results shows that the system provided the captur-ing ability of tumor cell in blood, and the tumor cells were further recovered without injury after the disulfide linkage in the poly(CBMA) hydrogel was broken by an addition of L-cysteine.

 

We investigate the neurovascular functions during hyperacute, focal ischemia in a small-animal photothrombotic ischemia (PTI) model following recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (rtPA) thrombolysis. We employ a custom-designed electrocorticogram (ECoG) - functional photoacoustic microscopy (fPAM) imaging system (i.e., ECoG-fPAM) for probing the hyperacute ischemic neurovascular functions. Our study demonstrated for the first time the simultaneous changes in neural activity (i.e., somatosensory-evoked potential (SSEP), resting-state (RS) ECoG related indicators (i.e., inter-hemispheric coherence, alpha-delta ratio (ADR) and brain symmetry index (BSI)) and the cerebral hemodynamic responses (i.e., cerebral blood volume (CBV) and hemoglobin oxygen saturation (SO2)) at different rtPA infusion onset times post PTI. Our experimental model and corresponding data will serve as a benchmark to explore ischemic neurovascular mechanisms and to study potential interventions for bettering stroke treatment outcomes.

 

Three-dimensional (3D) cell culture models have become powerful tools in cancer research, as they better simulate the in vivo physiological microenvironment than traditional two-dimensional (2D) cell cultures. Tumor cells cultured in a 3D system as multicellular tumor spheroids (MTS) recapitulate several critical in vivo characteristics that allow the study of biological functions and drug discovery. Microwell technology is best platform for generating MTS as it provides geometrically defined microstructures for culturing size-controlled MTS amenable for various downstream functional assays. This work presents a simple and economical microwell fabrication methodology that be conveniently incorporated into the conventional workflow used to generate MTS. The microwells were 400–700 µm in diameter, and hepatic MTS cultured in them for up to 5 days grew to 250–520 µm with good viability and shape. To demonstrate the ability to integrate the microwell fabrication with a high-throughput workflow using the conventional multi-well plate system, a conventional 96-well plate was employed for proof-of-concept drug screening. The relative fluorescence intensity showed an eight-fold reduction in cell viability, confirming the feasibility of photothermal treatment as a potential therapeutic intervention. In conclusion, using the microwell platform to generate MTS may be an effective tool for discovering therapeutic modalities for cancer treatment.

 

Traditional diagnosis of lung cancer is through histolog-ical examination. However, due to the fact that cells are three-dimensional, objective determination of the two-dimensional nucleus to cytoplasm (N/C) ratio remains a challenge. In this work, we used two-photon microscopy to acquired three-dimensional images of normal human lung cell line Beas2B, human lung adenocarcinoma CL1-0 and CL1-5 cell lines. Based on an automated algorithm, we calculated N/C ratios in two- and three-dimensions. Over all, we found that 3D N/C ratio is less susceptible to variations to cell sizes than 2D N/C ratio in discriminat-ing normal and cancer cells. Moreover, our algorithm removes ambiguity in determination of N/C ratios and may be applied in the clinical setting for objective deter-mination of this important parameter used in clinical diagnosis.

 

In this study, we utilized Holo-Hilbert spectral analysis (HHSA) to investigate the amplitude-modulated (AM) and frequency-modulated (FM) in oscillatory activities, induced by slow- and fast-rate repetitive movements. The proposed HHSA approach which is based on 2-layer empirical mode decomposition (EMD) approach provided full-informational spectral information. We observed that the modulation power induced by slow-rate movements was significantly higher than that induced by fast-rate movements. The AM frequencies in alpha band with slow-rate movements were higher than with fast-rate movements. The difference between slow-rate and fast-rate movements might be caused by the change of motor functional modes (from default mode network (DMN) to automatic mode). The HHSA for oscillatory activity analysis could provide informative interaction among different frequency bands.

 

Hydrogel-based electronics are ideally suited for neural interfaces because they exhibit ultracompliant mechanical properties that match that of excitable tissue in the brain and peripheral nerve. Hydrogel-based multielectrode arrays (MEA) can conformably interface with tissues to minimize inflammation and improve the reliability to enhance signal transduction. However, MEA substrates composed of swol-len hydrogels exhibit low toughness and low adhesion stabil-ity when laminated on the tissue surface and also present technical challenges for processes commonly employed in MEA fabrication. Here, we describe a new strategy to fabri-cate ultracompliant MEA based on aqueous-phase transfer printing. This technique employs redox active adhesive mo-tifs in hygroscopic polymer precursors that simultaneously form hydrogels through sol-gel phase transitions and bond to underlying microelectronic structures. Specifically, in situ gelation of 4-arm-polyethylene glycol-grafted catechol [PEG-Dopa]4 hydrogels induced by oxidation using Fe3+ produces conformal adhesive contact with the underlying MEA, robust adhesion to electronic structures, and rapid dissolution of water-soluble sacrificial release layers. MEA are then integrated on hydrogel-based substrates to produce free standing ultracompliant neural probes, which are then laminated to the surface of the dorsal root ganglia in feline subjects to record single-unit neural activity.

 

Poly(glycerol sebacate) (PGS) has been shown to be a promising biodegradable elastomer for engineering soft tissues. Fabrication of an anisotropic PGS scaffold, however, remains challenging. In our previous study, we developed a method based on the use of sacrificial fibers to fabricate an anisotropic PGS porous membrane. Briefly, aligned poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) membranes were prepared by electrospinning. The membrane was then embedded in PGS prepolymer to form a composite upon drying. After crosslinking of PGS, the embedded PVA fibers were removed by water, leaving numerous cylindrical pores in the PGS membrane. There were two limitations in the previous study, however. First, PVA could react with PGS, leading to incomplete removal of PVA. Second, the PVA electrospun fibers were nano-sized, and hence the resultant pores were in the nanoscale, which not be capable of guiding cell alignment. The purpose of this study was to deal with the two limitations. Polylactide (PLA), which does not react with PGS, was used in replacement of PVA for the preparation of the sacrificial fibers, which was then removed by chloroform upon crosslinking, leaving aligned grooves on the surface of the PGS membrane and cylindrical pores within the membrane. The porous PGS membrane was shown to be mechanically anisotropic. The membrane was not cytotoxic and the grooves on its surface were capable of directing cell alignment via contact guidance. With the same approach, we fabricated a PGS tubular scaffold with uniform wall thickness and examined their mechanical properties. The PGS anisotropic scaffold have potential in the applications of vascular tissue engineering.

 

The current methods of surface modification for anti-corrosion and anti-adhesion on metals include composite plating, electroless plating, and metal plating. Not only do these techniques require meticulous safety measures, but is also prone to cause contaminations to the environment. Extra costs and precautions must be taken when working with poisonous chemicals to prevent hazardous material emission to environment endangering the nature and wellbeing of people. In the field of material surface modification, atmospheric pressure plasma spraying is a common approach. This is a safe and dry process and since air is used as reactant gas no pollutants are produced. A new type of atmospheric pressure plasma spraying equipment is used to measure the process temperature of metal materials, optical emission spectrometer (OES), and water contact angle (WCA), bacteria adhesion test, and salt spray test after surface modification. The test results shown in this research indicates no heat damage is present on the material. OES shows reactive species are present when plasma is ignited. Nitrogen is present at 315.36 nm and 336.44 nm. Singlet oxygen is also present at 777.32 nm and 845.75 nm. After surface modification, WCA showed on metallic surfaces can reach 95 degrees and above forming a super hydrophobic surface. Bacteria adhesion test showed 90% less adhesion after surface modification. A 48-hour salt spray test revealed that after surface modification on metallic surface, the procedure can slow down corrosion and rust prevention performance is better than chrome plating.

 

Type 1 diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease characterized by insulin deficiency and hyperglycemia owing to the loss of pancreatic beta cells. Islet transplantation has been demonstrated as a promising therapy in addition to insulin treatment. The liver, renal capsule or peritoneal cavity are currently chose as the sites for islet transplantation. However, the surgical access of these positions can be very invasive and may cause subsequent complications. In contrast, subcutaneous sites offer advantages of minimally invasive operating procedure and easy access for graft monitoring. Nevertheless, subcutaneous transplantation of islet exhibits only limited therapeutic outcomes, which can be attributable to the inadequate capability of skin tissue to foster revascularization in a short period. In this work, three-dimensional (3D) mesenchymal stem cell aggregates are fabricated using a thermo-responsive methylcellulose hydrogel. We anticipate that the combination of 3D stem cell aggregates with islets may enhance regional neovascularization and increase graft survival by prevent graft apoptosis at subcutaneous site, thus improving the therapeutic efficacy of islet transplantation.

 

The key characteristic of collagen associated with disease is the arrangement of collagen fibers. Osteogenesis imperfecta and asthma to breast and ovarian cancer are good examples of abnormal collagen alignment. Cornea is one of the collagen-rich connective tissue and plays important role in clear vision. While X-ray scattering techniques are able to determine bulk structure of cornea, to distinguish depth-dependent details of the corneal stroma comprised of a layered network of fibrillar collagen are still not sound. Here, we use Fast Fourier Transform second harmonic generation microscopy as a tool to determine the directionality of corneal stroma as a function of depth. Our results also display the position dependent difference of corneal stroma along the temporal –nasal direction

 

This study aimed to evaluate self-healed hydrogels for mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) culture. Here, self-healing hydrogels were prepared by mixing glycol chitosan with difunctional polyethylene glycol (DF-PEG) at different molecular weight (MW) and concentrations. Hydrogels with lowest MW and highest concentration possessed highest crosslinking degree. Hydrogels with higher crosslinking degree had lower swollen ratio, shorter gelation time, higher strain and stress, and slower degradation rate. Increasing DF-PEG concentration might increase cell viability, however, the hydrogel with highest crosslinking degree had lowest cell viability. Alkaline phosphatase activity and alizarin red S stain proved cell encapsulated hydrogels were able to promote osteogenic differentiation.

 

An novel feasible treatment for aged macular degeneration (AMD) is an implantable artificial sub-retinal chips using electronic components, which have replaced photo-receptors. Owing to this chip will be implanted and used for very long periods, the connection and the biocompatibility between the electrodes and the remaining cells in retina is still a problem. Our lab has combined inkjet printing technology and a biocompatible material- graphene oxide(GO) to build an micro-patterned interface to make RPE cell attach to the mi-cro electrodes on the chip[1]. In order to implant our chip into photoreceptor layer to solve dysfunctional photoreceptors, we culture PC12(rat adrenal medulla pheochromocytoma) on the chip by applying inkjet printing and graphene oxide we have tested for RPE cells. In this study, we found that the electrical stimulation from the microelectrode transmit through micro-patterned GO and affect PC12 differentiation. The surface-coating technology would help the sub-retinal chip being more biocompatible for long-term implantation, which could be effectively applied in retina tissue engineering and therapy. And through culturing PC12 on the microelectrode, we can further understand the electrical signal output when we im-plant the chip into human retina.

 

The lack of targeted NO delivery systems with a prolonged half-life and sustained NO release mechanism has hindered applications of this approach in cancer treatment. Here, we report the development of NanoNO—a nanoscale NO carrier with a sustained release profile that efficiently delivers NO into hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in vitro and in vivo. And we applied NanoNO for orthotopic liver cancer model. We demonstrated that NanoNO would be a potential system for delivery of NO to treat cancer.

 

Liquid biopsy has been reported that can apply in cancer diagnostic. It’s minimal invasive and faster than tradi-tional tissue biopsies[1, 2]. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are shed from primary tumors and travel through the blood circu-lation to distant organs. Circulating tumor microemboli (CTM) are potentially important cancer biomarkers, which is defined as aggregates CTCs (more than two), anti-apoptosis and protec-tion from anoikis [3]. The role that CTM played in cancer me-tastasis or significance was still unknown. Several studies have shown that it was still unclear to identify CTCs and CTM from the peripheral blood, because the lack of detection methods. From the inspiration of liquid-biopsy, we expect to reach the goal real-time monitor and capture CTCs and CTM immedi-ately via our sensitive and specific nano-interface microfluidic chip and identify CTCs and CTM from the peripheral blood for prognosis and cancer treatment. Our system will divide into two parts. First part, since CTM's size is bigger than CTCs, we use this characteristic to separate CTCs and CTM into two groups. The second part, the developed system, which immobilized an-tibodies as a nano-bio interfaced to recognize if it is CTCs or CTM. The system's greatest advantage is that we don't need pretreatment to the whole blood, and can also two-factor au-thentication.

 

Exosomes, nanovesicles which released from tumor cells and exists in liquid biopsy, are a promising candidate in cancer diagnosis due to its noninvasively diagnosability and capabil-ity to monitor molecular changes in tumors throughout the therapy.[1] They involves in intercellular communications and transportations of proteins, RNA, and other molecules. More importantly, exosomes are one of the biomarkers for early cancer diagnosis as they are released into the blood stream during tumor's development. Besides, before metastasis, exo-somes are secreted into human's circulating system and reaching the new distinct site or organ to establish a micro-environment suitable for metastasis, while circulating tumor cells start being released into the blood stream only when metastasis has progressed. In order to fight more time for cancer sufferers and also be able to track the status of tumor on the curing patients immediately.

 

When it comes to bacteria detection, the traditional method, plate count, is a time consuming and high manpower demanding method. Therefore, a device for bacteria fast detection is urgently needed. Ring-shaped interdigitated electrode (RIDE) is developed to rapid monitor the concentration of the bacteria samples based on the theory of dielectrophoresis (DEP) and AC electroosmosis (ACEO). While RIDE chip is operating, the sample which was experienced the pretreatment is dropped on the surface. Then input the appropriate AC signal to generate the electrokinetic force to concentrate the bacteria into the center detection zone through the interaction of DEP force and ACEO force. At the same time, using the microscopy CCD to capture the collection result per minute. Appling the analysis software to analyze the image above, the data of RIDE count can be obtained within 30 sec. To make a comparison of the results of RIDE count and the results of plant count, the calibration curve can be built. Compare to the traditional way of bacteria detection, the strengths of RIDE platform involve rapid counting, less sample required, and low cost. So far, the main application of RIDE is to detect the concentration of lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in the fermentation industry. In the future, to expand the detection field of medical bacteria detection, such as urine examination of bacteriuria patients and enteric microflora analysis is the application that can be expected.

 

In recent years, many studies have pointed out that abnormal blood flow patterns can be regarded as pathological signs and essential indicators for diagnos-ing cardiovascular diseases. Hence, the purpose of this study is aimed to develop a real-time, non-invasive measurement for blood flow in vivo. The imaging sys-tem is expected to provide the information using vector Doppler imaging technique. By the dynamic analysis on the speed and direction of blood flow, the system would be able to provide much more valuable information on preclinical research.

 

Focused ultrasound phased array systems have attracted increased attention for brain therapy applications. However, such systems currently lack a direct and real-time method to intraoperatively monitor ultrasound pressure distribution for securing treatment. This study proposes a dual-mode 256-channel ultrasound phased array system design to support transmit/receive operations for concurrent ultrasound expo-sure and backscattered focal-beam reconstruction through a spherically focused ultrasound array. A total 256-channel ultrasound transmission system was used to transmit focused ultrasonic energy, with an extended implementation of multi-ple-channel receiving function (up to 64 channels) using the same 256-channel ultrasound array. Our results showed that PSF and focal beam can be successfully reconstructed and visualized in free-field conditions, and can also be transcrani-ally reconstructed following skull-induced aberration correc-tion. In-vivo experiments were conducted to demonstrate its capability to pre-operatively and semi-quantitatively map a focal beam to guide blood-brain barrier (BBB)-opening. The proposed system may have potential for real-time guidance of ultrasound brain intervention, and may facilitate the design of a dual-mode ultrasound phased array for brain therapeutic applications.

 

A low-voltage CMOS analog front-end suitable for portable bio-signal monitoring devices such as the electrocardiogram (ECG) and the electroencephalogram (EEG) is described. The circuit is design based on the second generation current conveyor where the circuit is composed of two second generation current conveyors (CCIIs), two electronically and linearly OTA (EOTAs) and two capacitors. The voltage gain can adjustable for 40 dB to 58dB by the external DC bias current. It works at zero input common mode voltage with ±0.5V supply voltage with the power consumption is about 0.42mW in typical situation and the CMRR is found to be 223dB at the voltage gain of 800V/V (58dB). The integrated input referred noise is 0.11µVrms/sqrt(Hz) (0.1-200Hz). The characteristics and performances of this circuit are confirmed through PSPICE simulation results.

 

Purpose: "Sitting" is a kind of exercise that relaxes in the lower part of body, but the upper part of body does not. Sedentariness can cause hunchback and scoliosis. As the children are still in a growing period, the impact is greater. Method: We choose 5 sitting posture that are: keep the back straight, slouch, severe slouch, cross left leg over right and cross right leg over left. Using 5 pairs of pressure sensor symmetrically distributed on a round cushion. Determine the current sitting posture of the user through the position of the center of gravity. If user's sitting posture is not correct, an app will vibrate as reminder. Result: Different sitting postures have different position of the center of gravity. Through the characteristics, we can determine what the posture the user is. The accuracy rate of this system, for children is 96.11% and for the adults is 95.56%. Conclusion: According to the test results, children and adults can use the system. This system accurately reflects the posture of the users and can make the mobile devices vibrate to remind via the Bluetooth.

 

Falling is one of the major reasons that leads to a wounded problem, not only is it studied by different medical institutions, but it has also caught the attention of the scientific community. It is a common phenomenon for frail people, especially for elderly people. Since this is one of the top reasons why most elderly people get into an accident. To avoid and reduce the accident caused by fall, the objective of our study is to develop a wearable sensor and to collect data gathered from the inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensor with 9-axis. In this study, the system including posture detection and feature analysis was presented. In which it monitors and generates patterns during various exercises namely: walking, jumping, sitting-standing routine and falling. By doing so, the movements of the said frail people could be tracked and detected to reduce their chances of getting into an accident.

 

Brushing teeth is a daily hygiene practice. Currently, the commercial selling toothbrush unit only has a general physical cleaning function. It also needs to collaborate with toothpaste that may potentially harm to the human body for cleaning though the cleansing effect is limited. Therefore, this study presents the application of plasma technology in the toothbrush. This use the chemical properties of plasma on sterilization which can cover interdental and physical bristles of the toothbrush, so as to achieve perfect cleansing and removing oral residual. The plasma-cleaning toothbrush not only can inhibit the bacterial growth that may cause oral disease, it also can be thought as self-cleaning when not in use. The internal and external structure of the toothbrush was designed and use the homemade power supply to determine the best plasma excitation state. The electrical properties, temperature, reactive species and sterilization effect of the plasma toothbrush were tested and analyzed. The planar reactor was placed inside the brush head and then the internal motor fan blows the reactive oxygen species generated by the plasma to the oral cavity to achieve sterilization effects. The total power consumed by the system is 13.829W by supplying voltage and frequency, 7.68kV and 7.143kHz respectively. The experimental results showed that the maximum excitation temperature during the process is 40 °C and will not cause any thermal damage to human tissues. The sterilization of E. coli can reach 90% D-Value at 115 seconds, which can achieve complete sterilization in four minutes.

 

In Brain Machine Interfaces (BMI), goal-directed movement coordinated the reaching target in external environment through vision, and then the upper limb would be drove to execute the motor movement. To accomplish the goal success-fully, the reaching movement required on-line control to modi-fy or update the ongoing hand movement through visual feed-back in mostly condition. Moreover, during the on-line correc-tion of goal-directed movement, the visually derived relative position of hand and target was the key information for modi-fying the movement state. It had been found that the neural population in premotor cortex of monkeys encoded this infor-mation: visually derived relative position of hand and target. In aspect of intracortical micro stimulation, the forelimb areas in secondary motor cortex (M2) of rodent was considered equivalent to premotor area in monkeys. In this study, we demonstrated that the target-hand relative position could be decoded from the neural activity in M2 of rodents successfully. This decoding model worked as an internal error feedback scheme to decode the visual-feedback-related information from M2. By combing this internal error feedback model to present commonly used neural decoder in BMI could significantly improve the decoding performance.

 

Brain Machine Interface (BMI) was the method of transform-ing mental thoughts and imagination into actions. A real-time BMI system improved the quality of life of patients with se-vere neuromuscular disorders by enabling them to communi-cate with the outside world. At present, the important aspect of the real-time implementation of neural decoding algorithms on embedded systems has been often overlooked, notwith-standing the impact that limited hardware resources have on the efficiency/effectiveness of any given algorithm. In this study, the prediction model was built based on the neural activities (spikes) from rodent primary motor cortex (M1) and their corresponding trajectory of rodent forelimb by decoding algorithms, kernel sliced inverse regression (kSIR). Mean-while, a cost effective way of implementing and designing a demonstration platform for BMI research was presented, featuring a low-cost hardware implementation based on an open-source electronics platform Raspberry Pi. Here, the nonlinear decoding algorithm was implemented as separate signal analysis modules for the real-time decode of end effec-tor trajectory.

 

MI-BCI (Motor Imagery Brain-Computer Interface) with robotic feedback has been proven to be an effective tool for neurorehabilition. However, the brain activity shown in electroencephalography (EEG) is very complicated; therefore it requires training for a patient to master MI-BCI. On the other hand, studies has shown that non-invasive brain stimulation, such as TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) and tDCS (transcranial direct current stimulation) could improve motor functions of stroke patients and patients with Parkinson’s disease. In this study, we would design an experiment to find out whether non-invasive brain stimulation would increase the event-related desynchronization (ERD) phenomenon in EEG when performing MI tasks, and therefore provides effective EEG data for MI-BCI classification.

 

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is one of the neuron degenerative disorders which affects 1% of human population arising from the degeneration of the dopaminergic neurons of the substan-tia nigra pars compacta (SNc). Although scientists have come up with the medications for dopaminergic therapy which are able to improve the motor symptoms extremely in the early stages of PD, degeneration of dopaminergic neurons keep going on. Other treatments such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and cortical electrical stimulation (CES) have been applied based on the plastic-like mechanisms, which are considered to have the therapeutic potential for the brain degenerative diseases. In our previously studies, 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) induced Hemiparkinsonian rats model have been used to explore the gait performance through the combination of CES and theta burst stimulation modula-tion. In 6-OHDA-lesioned PD model rats, the results showed that CES with intermittent TBS (iTBS) protocol could improve gait performance based on stride length and speed. However, the mechanisms of TBS on PD are still unclear. In this research, apomorphine-induced rotation and rota-rod test were imple-mented to assess the motor performance in hemiparkinsonian rats. In the result, the falling time of rota-rod decreased and number of rotations increased as the progression of 6-OHDA lesion. For the CES-TBS, the number of rotations decreased after the intervention of iTBS compared to the increased rota-tion induced by continuous TBS (cTBS). In the electrocorti-cography (ECoG) we can observe the 30 Hz band on 6-OHDA ipsilateral lesioned site. The 30 Hz band ECoG was suppressed by cTBS but not in iTBS. We suppose the suppression of beta band oscillation by cTBS is mediated through primary motor cortex to subthalamic nucleus (M1-STN) projection and cou-pled with STN suppression. These findings agree with the hypothesis that M1-cTBS treatment may modulate parkin-sonian behavior and STN hyperactivity through M1-STN projection.

 

Accurate long-term control of prosthesis has been a significant issue for neural signals recorded at brain machine interface (BMI). The accuracy, stability and longevity are the key considerations of BMI applications. However, a lever-pressing task and electrode recordings were used to investigate the rodents encoding of hand velocity and trajectory in primary motor cortex (M1). The multiscale neural signals decoded by brain machine interfaces algorithm can be divided into two types: action potentials (spike) from individual neurons and local field potentials (LFP) from extracellular space around neurons. Since the different superiority of spikes and LFPs, this study proposed a decoding algorithm- kernel sliced inverse regression (kSIR) which combined spikes and LFPs as the multimodal inputs to decode the contents of the mind with high accuracy and stability. Results showed that the stability and accuracy were significantly improved, where the accuracy was improved from 0.88 ± 0.059 to 0.93 ± 0.061 for X-axis and 0.90 ± 0.022 to 0.97 ± 0.024 (R-squared, Mean ± SEM) for Y-axis. This implementation favorably lends itself toward the long-term decoding approach which can provide accurate real-time decoding of neural signals over periods of days.

 

Recent studies have highlighted the combination of immuno-therapy with other conventional treatment modalities, which have the potential to reduce cancer metastasis and improve survival. In this work, a nanoparticle (NP) system that was composed of polyaniline-conjugated glycol chitosan (PANI-GCS) was prepared to encapsulate an insoluble toll-like re-ceptor (TLR) 7/8 ligand for combinational photothermal immunotherapy. The hydrophobic PANI was covalently grafted on the hydrophilic GCS via its highly reactive amine groups to form an amphiphilic polymer (PANI-GCS), which could self-assemble into NPs in an aqueous milieu. The conju-gated PANI can be utilized as nano-localized heat sources, remotely controlled by using near-infrared (NIR) light, for cancer cell ablation, while TLR7/8 ligand was applied to in-duce potent inflammatory cytokine secretion by dendritic cells (DC), which may subsequently enhance the activation of anti-gen-specific T cell responses. Our TEM images reveal that the size of the TLR7/8 ligand-loaded PANI-GCS NPs was approx-imately 170 nm, which could be effectively internalized by bone-marrow derived dendritic cells (BMDC), resulting in the upregulation of cell surface costimulatory molecules (CD80 and CD86). In the animal study, we found that intratumoral injection of the PANI-GCS NPs was able to generate localized heat upon exposure to NIR and partially suppress the growth of CT26 tumor cells in a mouse model. Additionally, the in-jected TLR7/8 ligand-loaded PANI-GCS NPs could success-fully trigger a long-term systemic antitumor immunity and reject the rechallenged CT26 tumors.

 

In vitro data demonstrated enhanced uptake of angiopep-2 decorated hybrid nanoparticles (ANG-IMNPs) by murine astrocytoma cells (ALTS1C1) and pronounced cytotoxicity by combined NIR-triggered photodynamic therapy (PDT) and photothermal therapy (PTT). In consistence with the increased penetration of ANG-IMNPs through endothelial monolayer in vitro, the NPs have also shown significantly enhanced accumulation at brain tumor by IVIS. The IHC　tissue　examination confirmed prominent apoptotic and necrotic effects on tumor cells in mice receiving targeted dual photo-based therapies, which also led to enhanced median survival (24 days) as compared to the NP treatment without angiopep-2 (14 days).

 

Atherosclerosis is a multifactorial inflammatory disease that would progress silently for long period, and it is also widely accepted as the main cause of cardiovascular diseases. To prevent atherosclerotic plaques generating, imaging early molecular markers and quantifying the extent of disease pro-gression are desired. During the inflammation, circulating monocytes leave the bloodstream and migrate into incipient lipid accumulation in the artery wall, following conditioning by local growth factors and proinflammatory cytokines; therefore, monocyte accumulation in the arterial wall can be observed in fatty streaks, rupture-prone plaques, and experi-mental atherosclerosis. In this work, we synthesized mono-cyte-targeting iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs), which were incorporated with the peptides derived from the chemokine receptor CCR2-binding motif of monocytes chem-oattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) as diagnostic tools for poten-tial atherosclerosis. MCP-1-motif MNPs had co-localized with monocytes in in vitro fluorescence imaging. In addition, with MNPs injection in ApoE knock-out mice (ApoE KO mice), the well-characterized animal model of atherosclerosis, MNPs were found in specific organs or regions which had monocytes accumulation, especially the aorta of atherosclerosis model mice, through the in vivo imaging system (IVIS) imaging and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We also performed the Oil Red O staining and Prussian Blue staining to confirm the colocalization of MCP-1-motif MNPs and atherosclerosis. The results showed the promising potential of MCP-1-motif MNPs as a diagnostic agent of atherosclerosis.

 

With the appearance of vancomycin 3.0, a super-antibiotic which is more potent than its predecessor vancomycin 1.0, it is implicated that the bacteria are continuously transforming to be equipped with higher drug resistance that greatly raises the difficulty of anti-microbiome. To build up an efficacious treatment approach, we developed a type of perfluorocarbon (PFC)–based nano-emulsions that incorporated photosensitizer (Indocyanine green; ICG), antibiotics (Rifampicin; RIF) and capability of inducing probiotic activity (ICG-RIF-loaded PFC nanoemulsions; IRPNEs). The antibacterial capability of the IRPNEs is aimed to carry out through first stage of growth inhibition due to induction of probiotic fermentation, second stage of photodynamic effect functioned by encapsulated ICG, and the last stage of Rifampicin-mediated antibiotic treatment that is so-called photochemobiotic therapy. For the physical characterization, by dynamic light scattering analysis, the size and surface charge of IRPNEs are 240.7 ± 6.73 nm and -20.9 ± 2.40 mV, respectively. The encapsulation efficiencies of ICG and Rifampicin are approximately 95.0% and 54.0%, respectively. In terms of the phototherapeutic efficacy of the agent, under near infrared (NIR) laser exposure (808 nm; 6 W/cm2), IRPNEs enhanced thermal stability, increased production of singlet oxygen and were able to provide appropriate hyperthermia effect comparing to the freely dissolved ICG. P. acnes with 1 × 106 cells/mL can be completely eradicated by S. epidermidis fermentation products followed by treatment of IRPNEs (≥ 20-μM ICG/3.8-μM RIF) with NIR laser exposure for 5 min, whereby the resulted microbial mortality was even higher than that caused by using 16-fold enhanced amount of loaded RIF alone. To summarize, IRPNEs as a nano-carrier enhanced ICG stability, provided carbon sources to probiotics undergo fermentation and improved antimicrobial efficacy compared to same dosage of naked RIF or ICG.

 

Given that biodegradable in situ gelling delivery systems may have potential applications in the design of ophthalmic pharmaceutical formulations, this study, for the first time, aims to develop gelatin-g-poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (GN) carriers for topical epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) administration
in the treatment of dry eye disease (DED). By temperature triggered sol-gel phase transition of copolymers, EGCG-loaded GN was prepared at 32 °C and characterized by FTIR, NMR, and HPLC analyses. Results of WST-1 and live/dead assays showed that GN materials have good compatibility with corneal epithelial cells. Gradual biodegradation of delivery carriers allowed sustained release of EGCG without drug toxicity. Anti-inflammatory and antioxidant activity studies also indicated effective therapeutic drug levels at each time point within 3 days of release. In a rabbit dry eye model, corneal epithelial defects was ameliorated by treatment with single-dose administration of EGCG-containing GN. Furthermore, drug molecules released from carrier materials could prevent further tear evaporation and loss of mucin-secreting goblet cells in diseased animals. Our findings suggest that GN carrier is responsible for enhanced pharmacological efficacy of topically instilled EGCG, thereby demonstrating the benefits of using biodegradable in situ gelling delivery system to overcome the drawbacks of limited dry eye relief associated with eye drop dosage form.

 

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common type of cancer and the second leading cause of death in women worldwide. Despite the huge amount of efforts devoted to cancer research, there remains a huge gap in searching for the ultimate cancer treatment due to the complexity of cancer and our lack of thorough understanding of cancer. In the past, traditional 2D cancer models have been used extensively for drug screening studies. However, 2D cancer models have proven to be insufficient in mimicking the important features of tumor and thus often leads to a less accurate predictions of drug responses. With the help of bioprinting, 3D cancer models can be biofabricated to better mimic tumor microenvironment and thus provide a better basis for in vitro cancer models. Such 3D models improve the overall specificity of drug screening as well as identification of new treatment targets. This increases the possibilities of finding a more effective and innovative way to combat cancer. In this study, we biofabricated a HeLa cell encapsulated gelatin methacrylol (GelMA) scaffolds and conducted a comparison cell viability study between 2D and 3D culture models. In addition, we biofabricated a dual layered HeLa cell encapsulated and normal cervical cell encapsulated scaffold and conducted a drug testing assay. Our initial results revealed that there are significant differences between 2D and 3D culture models and such models could be used for subsequent drug related studies.

 

Levamisole is a kind of drug which is used to treat worm infections. Recently, there is a new research dis-covering that Levamisole can inhibit the growth of ovarian cancer cells. We want to study the cell toxicity of Levamisole toward ovarian cancer cell lines SKOV-3 & CP70, and design a drug carrier composed of PVP and PMMA to enhance the efficacy. We produced the drug carrier and encapsulated Levamisole by electrospray system. Through the characteriza-tion of SEM image, the particle size is between 1.0-1.5 μm, and try to modify the surface of particle to graft the antibody. The encapsulation efficiency of Leva/PVP/PMMA MPs is 20%, and the drug loading content is 0.1%. Freedrug of Levamisole released 50% of drugs within 1 hour and 90% of drugs in one day. Compared to freedrug, the rate of drug release of Leva/PVP/PMMA MP was much slower. It released 50% of drugs after 4 hours and 70% of drugs within one day. 5 mM freedrug of Levamisole reduced 60% cell viability toward SKOV-3 cell lines, and the cell toxicity of Leva/PVP/PMMA MPs is same as freedrug. 0.1 g/mL Leva/PVP/PMMA MPs could reduce 60% cell viability toward SKOV-3 cell lines. On the other hand, 5 mM freedrug of Levamisole could only re-duce 30% cell viability toward CP70 cell lines, and 0.1 g/mL Leva/PVP/PMMA MPs didn’t show a significant cell toxicity toward CP70 cell lines.

 

Recently, ultrasound (US) combined with a contrast agent, microbubbles (MBs), has been used to target or control drug release to tissues and cells. MBs, which are small gas-filled microspheres that are used as contrast agents in diagnostic ultra-sound-based imaging, are now being intensively in-vestigated for ultrasound-mediated gene and drug de-livery as cavitation nuclei. In this study, the feasibility of a low-invasive method, US combined with MBs to enhance the drug delivery through skull or ear canal in inner ear will be firstly demonstrated. The MBs mixed with the fluorescent drug was delivered into the middle ear cavity through transtympanic injection. Then, US was applied to temporal bone or the ear ca-nal to induce MBs cavitation and increase the perme-ability of the round window membrane. The fluores-cent drug enters the cochlea through the round window membrane. Before the animal experiment, the in vitro model was built to simulate the cavitation ef-fects on round window membrane during transcranial or transcanal US irradiation. The preliminary results showed that the permeability of round window mem-brane was improved in both in vitro and in vivo exper-iments. Functional evaluation, such as auditory brain-stem response and distortion-product otoacoustic emissions, will be performed to evaluate hearing threshold. Pathologic changes and ultrastructural changes will be observed with immunohistochemistry and transmission electron microscopy.

 

Hypertrophy of the ligamentum flavum (LF), facet joints and herniated disc are important contributing factors in degenerative lumbar spinal stenosis. However, the exact pathogenesis of LF hypertrophy is not well understood although numerous studies have been working on it. There are some evident advantages in 3D cell culture, such as cell to cell interaction and increased physiological relevance. 3D cell culture systems are considered to reflect the cells in vivo better than that of 2D cell culture systems. In our study, we focused on the formation of 3D LF spheroid for development of a better in vitro LF model and further for investigation on the pathogenesis of LFH.

 

Bisphosphonates are widely used to treat bone density loss and skeletal disorder diseases. The adsorptions, retentions, diffusions, and releases of bisphosphonates in bone minerals were governed by their binding affinity to bone minerals. Experimental studies showed incoherent relative binding affinity to bone minerals. In this work, we studied the binding free energy of selected nitrogen-containing bisphosphonate, zoledronate, risedronate, pamidronate, alendronate, and ibandronate to neat and protonated hydroxyapatite surfaces through molecular dynamics. Simulation results showed how nitrogen-containing functional groups and surface protonation influenced their binding affinity to hydroxyapatite surfaces. The hydrophilic character of nitrogen-containing functional group made zoledronate have larger binding free energy than that of risedronate, and ibandronate at neat hydroxyapatite surfaces. Protonated and slender amine groups made pami-dronate and alendronate have larger binding free energy than zoledronate, risedronate, and ibandronate at neat and proto-nated hydroxyapatite surface. Surface protonation in general reduced the binding affinity of bisphosphonate except proto-nated (010) surfaces. Bisphosphonates preferred to immerse at the grooves of protonated (010) surfaces with high binding free energy, and the immersions were consistent with site binding model proposed by isothermal titration calorimetry measure-ments. Based on simulations results we suggested that the binding affinity rank was alendronate > pamidronate > zoledronate > ibandronate > risedronate which was consistent with NMR and isothermal titration calorimetry studies.

 

Conventional antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) is time-consuming, resulting in high mortality and rising bacte-rial drug resistance. Rapid antibiotics determination assits medical doctors to make correct prescriptions and save more lives. In this study, we developed a technique combining opti-cal diffusometry and vancomycin-modified beads-based as-says to detect microorganisms and achieve rapid AST. Ac-cording to Stokes-Einstein equation, the diffusion coefficient is inversely proportional to the particle diameter. The particle diameter changes after the beads conjugate with bacteria, causing a diffusivity decline. We used vancomycin-modified beads to experiment with three types of bacteria, including Gram-negative bacteria Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeru-ginosa, and Gram-positive bacteria of Staphylococcus aureus. Our final results showed that the system possessed ad-vantages of the ability to detect multiple drugs at the same time, time-saving (< 2 h), small sample volume (5 µL), and low initial bacterial count (105 CFU/mL). The technique provided a practical means to achieve rapid therapy against microbial diseases in the near future.

 

Abstract— In nonlinear optical imaging of biological specimens, more than half of the generated luminescence signal is lost, when signal collection is performed in the epi-illuminated geometry. In this study, we enhanced the collected luminescence signal by the use of alternating multiply-coated layers of tantalum pentoxide (Ta2O5) and silicon dioxide (SiO2) on standard microscope cover glasses that has high transmission in the near-infrared wavelength region and high reflection of the visible, luminescence signal. Our coating is biocompatible, allows visual examination of the specimens and optimize collection of the luminescence signal. We demonstrated this approach on a number of specimens including sulforhodamine solution, fluorescence microspheres, and labeled 3T3 cells. In all cases, the use of coated cover glass enhanced signal, optimally by a factor of about 2. Image analysis of labeled 3T3 cells also shows signal enhancement did not contribute to additional photobleaching. Our results show that properly designed coated cover glass can enhance detected signal in multiphoton microscopy and result in improved image quality

 

According to the theory of neural plasticity, brain can com-pensate the impaired function by rebuilding the neural circuit. The aim of this study is to apply patterned stimuli and to monitor hymodynamic changes in the brain. Nine stroke subjects were recruited for investigating the ef-fect of cortical intermittent TBS (iTBS) electrical stimulation. The subjects were asked to perform the cycling tasks to induce the cortical activation. During cycling, brain hemodynamic activity and kinematic information were measured before and after the stimulation. A concurrent stimulation with iTBS1200 and direct current was delivered during the stimulation ses-sion. fNIRS signal was analyzed as the hemodynamic response function as concentration changes in hemoglobin in time do-main and frequency domain. For kinematic information, the surface EMG on quadriceps muscles were for analyzing the symmetry between affected and unaffected leg using the shape symmetry index (SSI) and area symmetry index (ASI), and torque and speed information of ergometer to obtain the smoothness. Our NIRS data showed the decreasing value in power spec-trum density band I (0.01Hz~0.02Hz) and increasing in band II (0.02Hz~0.05Hz), and band III (0.05Hz~0.15Hz) during and after the stimulation which suggest the brain might respond to the stimulation. The enhanced regional brain activation value also found in primary motor cortex (PMC), sensorimotor cortex (SMC), and secondary sensory cortex (S2). The sym-metry indices of SSI and ASI are significant different between healthy and stroke subjects. However, it was not significant difference before and after the stimulation. The advantage of the stimulation technique used in this study is the highly flexi-bility and compatibility with the functional brain activity monitor techniques like fNIRS. Although the stimulation effects to blood flow oscillation bands still need to be clarified, it is a potential stimulation technique for neural degeneration diseases.

 

Diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) is a non-invasive method to monitor cerebral blood flow (CBF). CBF is an important biomarker which controls the supply of oxygen, metabolic consumption, and byproduct clearance in the brain. Clinical potential of DCS for monitoring CBF in cerebrovascular diseases, such as stroke, has been studied. We developed a fast DCS system that is capable of detecting cerebral hemodynamic oscillation during cardiac frequency. Abnormal hemodynamics was monitored by our system in the rodent model of common carotid artery ligation (CCAL), ventilative hyperoxia and hypoxia. Furthermore, inter-hemispheric correlation coefficient (IHCC) during the hemodynamic oscillation will be measured in rodent model of ischemic stroke using fast DCS. To test the potential of using IHCC in stroke detection, the changes in IHCC from normal and ischemic stroke will be evaluated.

 

In recent studies, the implementation of fiber-optic systems combined with Ca2+ fluorescent indicators for neural activity research has increased due to its deep probing brain region and applicability of freely moving animals. During fluorescent targeting, it was never 100% specific, hence, it was important to prevent unnecessary tissue exposure to light. However, in most of the studies, large brain regions illuminated by multi-mode optical fiber that exceeded the fluorescent indicator targeting regions would cause unnecessary signals recorded by the system. Furthermore, motion and physiological artifact during freely moving animals recording also made signals contaminated. Therefore, we demonstrated a dual-wavelength optical recording system to reduce the influence of recording artifact and introduced Monte Carlo simulation before experiment to predict the light intensity profile in brain tissue which was valuable in determining a suitable protocol for specific experiment.

 

"Pain" is an unpleasant experience that most people have had and it is a common or major symptom of many diseases. In order to ensure the effectiveness of the treatment of pain and process possible adverse reactions, pain assessments are necessary for patients. In clinical situations, self-reported questionnaires are mostly used for pain assessments. These scales aren’t able to reflect the pain in real time, and understaffing is a load on the medical staff, leading to pain monitoring being difficult to achieve. According to previous research, the physiological parameters of heart rate variability (HRV) and photoplethysmography (PPG) change during the pain production process, and a model established by the binary logistic regression analysis is suitable for discriminating pain. This study used a binary logistic regression model to discriminate pain, and the accuracy of the discriminations was 80%. In the future, this model will be used to establish a monitoring system for immediate monitoring, and assist medical staff to make better assessments to achieve effective pain monitoring and management.

 

Continuing the laboratory's many years of experience, the atmospheric low-temperature plasma system has been developed, and its functionality has been proven based on laboratory research. Therefore, this study turned this functional equipment into commercialization. Combine the plasma system in a handheld device. The device is divided into two main parts: the excitation position of plasma and the grip position. It's easy to use and has a graceful outline. Its internal structure contains plasma generator and lines for connecting Helium gas cylinder. Designing a circular air diffuser around the surface of excited plasma, in addition to increasing the uniformity of the excitation surface and decreasing the excitation temperature of plasma. The electrode is wrapped in the grip to ensure its safe to use. Considering about its appearance, structural design, and product process and design principles of the mold. We completed the structure, shaped design and printed a 3D model at the current stage. Integrate all functional components and test the finished product, like the excitation temperature, excitation species and excited electronic patterns, etc. The excitation temperature of plasma is maintained below 34 ̊C for 600 seconds. Using optical emission spectrometry to detect OH and singlet oxygen. The plasma operating frequency is 1.312 kHz, power supply is 32.2 kV, working current is 66.4 mA, and power consumption is 0.66 W. The above data results are not different from the previous laboratory plasma system. In conclusion, this product can be used on improving wound healing, shortening the time of wound healing and sterilizing wounds in the future. Species produced by plasma can induce fibroblasts to accelerate proliferation and their ability to crawl during wound healing. Evaluate the efficiency of sterilization on E. coli by plasma system. The degree of sterilization can reach D-value after 300 seconds plasma treatment. The temperature is also suitable for the treatment of human skin.

 

Ultrasound is being used frequently in breast imaging, where it plays many important roles in both symptomatic breast imaging and breast screening, for example distinguishing benign lesions from malignant lesions and guidance of interventional procedures. There is an increasing need for the ultrasound operator to be appropriately trained and skilled. This may be overcome with the use of anthropomorphic training phantoms. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop a low cost and easy to fabricate gelatin based biopsy training phantom for all types of breast needle biopsy which requires precise insertion. Developed gelatin based phantom is embedded with a simulated malignant tumor, benign tumors, and a cyst. This proposed phantom can be easily fabricated by trainee himself for breast biopsy training. Young’s modulus and acoustic properties (speed of sound, attenuation coefficient, and backscattering) for the gelatin tissue phantom and simulated tumors are studied. The efficiency of the developed phantom in improving biopsy skill level of residents was evaluated. It was found that the residents’ subjective confidence levels for performing challenging ultrasound-guided breast biopsy procedures substantially increased with the use of phantom simulation training. Therefore, our phantom is realistic enough such that the training outcome can be linked to the performance of the residents when they perform a biopsy on patients.

 

Since the technological advancements and civilization development, numerous medical supplies are being developed, manufactured and consumed. Medical supplies will come in contact with wounds or tissues directly. If the sterilization procedures were not followed properly and performed correctly, it could lead to microbial contaminations and en-danger the lives of patients. However, atmospheric cold plasma has excellent sterilization performance. Our research utilizes magnetron along with our custom wave guide and design to develop a microwave cold plasma sterilization equipment. Equipment stability will be tested as well as the sterilization effectiveness under different plasma exposure time and different gas molecules against E. Coli. The results showed that under the pressure of 5×10-2 torr, 99.99% sterilization of E. Coli were obtained after 15-second exposure and 30-second exposure for every test group. In the meantime we proved that simply changing any one of the parameters such as pressure, microwave irradiation and the maximum temperature of the test piece not more than 65°C, the sterilization effect was not effective. All kinds of species in the plasma can be effectively sterilized. Final result showed our research of self-made microwave cold plasma sterilization equipment can sterilize E. coli quickly while producing uniform and steady plasma.

 

The aim of this study was to investigate the SpO2 features during rapid eye movement phase (REM) of the patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Ten COPD patients (mean age 75.7± 7.5 years) were recruited from outpa-tient clinics of Chang Gung Memorial Hospital under inform consent. Overnight polysomnographic (PSG) data was record-ed from the polysomnography system and channel setup was according to the 2007 recommendations from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). After data processing, lower proportion of REM was noted comparing to previous data from non-COPD elderly (6.9% vs. 12.6% of total sleep time in the previous data). The variation of SpO2 during REM was 2%, while 0.4% when sleep onset. In addition, the patients with the higher hypoxia index had lower SpO2 levels and larg-er SpO2 variation. In summary, the COPD patients would have SpO2 drops with a certain level of variation when REM. The potential application of SpO2 feature during sleep could be helpful for identifying the REM phase of the COPD in our automated REM detection algorithm.