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Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering
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This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 2333-2662 - ISSN (Online) 2333-2654
Published by Horizon Research Publishing

[50 journals]

Brain Tissue Response Analysis Based on Several Hyperelastic Models, for
Traumatic Brain Injury Assessment
- Abstract: Publication date: Jun 2016
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 4 Number 2 M. Shariyat H. Ashrafi and H. Bandband Numerous geometrically simplified models may be found in literature for simulation of the traumatic brain injuries due to the increased intracranial pressure caused by sever translational accelerations of the brain inside the cranium following the impact waves. Some researchers have used more accurate models but employed specific hyperelastic material models. No research has presented a comprehensive comparison among results of various geometric and hyperelasticity models, so far. In the present research, two distinct finite element models and four hyperelastic constitutive models (i.e., polynomial, Yeoh, Arruda-Boyce, and Ogden models) are employed to accomplish the mentioned task. Therefore, the motivation is checking accuracy of the modeling procedure and discussing the results according the traumatic brain injury criteria. In this regard, a realistic skull-brain model is reconstructed in CATIA software based on the MRI scans and employed for optimized mesh generation in HYPERMESH finite element software. Influence of the contact and nonlinear characteristics of the brain tissue are considered in simulation of the relative motions in LS-DYNA finite element code. Time histories of the accelerations and the pressures (von Mises stresses) are derived from ANSYS finite element analysis code. Finally, the responses are discussed based on the available traumatic brain injury criteria and tolerances. Comparisons made with the available experimental results for the four hyperelastic constitutive equations confirm that employing Arruda-Boyce or Ogden models may lead to inaccurate or even erroneous results. On the other hand, the polynomial model is the most accurate model but underestimates the injury probability and may be used with care.
  PubDate: Jun 2016
Isolation, Characterization and Identification of Microorganisms from
Spoilt Carrots Obtained from Ose Market Onitsha, Nigeria
- Abstract: Publication date: Feb 2016
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 4 Number 1 Onuorah Samuel Nriagu Ogonna and Obika Ifeanyi Studies on the microorganisms associated with spoilt carrots obtained from Ose Market, Onitsha, Nigeria were carried out using standard cultural techniques. Nutrient agar, sabouraud dextrose agar and Eosin methylene blue agar were the growth media for the isolation of the heterotrophic bacteria, fungi and coliforms. The bacteria were identified as Serratia marcescens, Escherichia coli and Corynebacterium bovis while the fungi was identified on the basis of their colonial and microscopic characteristics as Penicillium digitatum, Rhizopus stolonifer, Aspergillus niger and Alternaria alternata. Escherichia coli was predominantly isolated among the bacterial isolates (50%) while Aspergillus niger occurred most frequently than the other fungal species (40%). These organisms may have been introduced to the carrots during growth, harvesting, handling, storage and distribution. The presence of the organisms is a public health risk because of the diseases known to be caused by them. It is therefore imperative that adequate hygienic practices must be put in place during the storage and handling of carrots. Spoilt carrots must also not be consumed as they contain a teaming population of bacteria and fungi, some of which are pathogenic to humans.
  PubDate: Feb 2016
Production of Vinegar from Oil-palm Wine Using Acetobacter Aceti Isolated
from Rotten Banana Fruits
- Abstract: Publication date: Feb 2016
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 4 Number 1 Onuorah Samuel Joson Lina and Obika Ifeanyi Vinegar production using Acetobacter aceti isolated from ten rotten banana fruits collected from different vendors in Eke-Awka Market in Awka, Nigeria was carried out using cultural techniques, with glucose yeast calcium carbonate-ethanol agar as the growth medium. The mean viable count of the bacterial isolates was 0.72 x 102 cfu/g. The isolates were characterized on the basis of their morphological and biochemical characteristics and identified as Acetobacter aceti and Acetobacter orleanensis with mean counts of 0.53 X 102 cfu/g and 0.19 x 102 cfu/g respectively. Freshly-tapped oil-palm wine was allowed to ferment for seven days at 30℃. The alcohol content was 10.0% while the pH value was 4.6 on the seventh day of the fermentation. The fermented palm wine was further fermented with the Acetobacter aceti for four weeks producing vinegar containing 7.1% acetic acid with a pH value of 3.5. The Acetobacter aceti grew well in high concentration of alcohol indicating that it is suitable for large scale vinegar production. In addition, the rotten banana fruits regarded as wastes were converted into a useful raw material for the isolation of Acetobacter aceti needed for the production of acetic acid and vinegar.
  PubDate: Feb 2016
Predicting Hearing Aid Gain Values for Enhancing the Speech
Intelligibility Using Correlation Algorithm
- Abstract: Publication date: Sep 2015
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 3 Number 3 S. Rajkumar S. Muttan V. Jaya and S. S. Vignesh The tranquil solution for the hearing impaired subjects to get rid of the impairment is to wear the appropriate hearing aid to increase the hearing level and clarity of the perceived speech. Though the present day hearing aids are inbuilt with a suitable noise removing algorithm to get a clear speech signal, the satisfaction among the users is low. The satisfaction of the hearing aid users will be enhanced only with the fixation of appropriate Real Ear Insertion Gain (REIG) values for different frequency bands of the perceived speech signal. Various prescriptive procedures were developed so far in prescribing these values. But, the strenuous task for the audiologists is in selecting the best procedure and to suggest required modifications. The present work focuses this problem faced by the audiologists by analyzing the various technical snags and arrived with suitable solutions. In the present work, an expert system was developed to predict gain values without the need of the prescriptive procedures and reduced the trial and error time of the audiologists. A gain suggestion database of the satisfied subjects was developed, and later it was used by the correlation algorithm in the gain prediction process. The successful gain suggestions of the most correlated subject for different frequencies in the database are recommended for the new subject. The developed expert system was validated by performing hearing aid trials with 256 hearing impaired subjects and 93.7% of them received satisfaction. The successful gain suggestions made by the expert system are stored continuously to strengthen the database, so as to recommend the most appropriate gain values for the new subject.
  PubDate: Sep 2015
Identification of Motor Imagery Movements from EEG Signals Using
Automatically Selected Features in the Dual Tree Complex Wavelet Transform
Domain
- Abstract: Publication date: Nov 2015
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 3 Number 4 Syed Khairul Bashar and Mohammed Imamul Hassan Bhuiyan The decoding of human brain electrical functions by electroencephalogram (EEG) signal is the most important step in brain computer interface (BCI) based systems. So, in this paper, an automatic feature selection method has been proposed to classify imagery left and right hand movements from the EEG signals in the Dual Tree Complex Wavelet Transform domain. First, the EEG signals are decomposed into several bands of real and imaginary coefficients and then, some statistical features like Shannon entropy and variance have been calculated. These features are combined into a single feature space and after that optimal features have been selected automatically imposing some feature selection criteria from this combined feature space. The selected features have been shown to be promising to distinguish different kinds of EEG signals by statistical hypothesis testing (e.g., one way ANOVA) as well as graphical analysis (e.g., scatter plots, box plots). Finally, k-nearest neighbor based classifiers are developed using these selected features to identify left and right hand imagery movements. A mean accuracy of 90.00% is achieved in publicly available BCI competition II Graz motor imagery data set which is shown to be better than some existing techniques.
  PubDate: Nov 2015
Effects of Electroacupuncture Stimulation at Frequencies near the Heart
Rate on the Microcirculatory Blood Flow
- Abstract: Publication date: Nov 2015
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 3 Number 4 Fong-Cheng Lin Hsin Hsiu Yao-Chun Lin Ching-Yi Chung Wei-Chen Hsu and Chao-Tsung Chen Motivation: The frequency of electroacupuncture (EA) could substantially influence the induced response. We compared the effects of EA at frequencies at around the heart rate (HR) and 50%-higher-than-HR frequency on the microcirculatory blood flow (MBF). Methods: Skin-surface laser Doppler measurements were performed in healthy volunteers in three groups: (1) Group A (n=14), premeasurement-HR-frequency EA was applied; and (2) Group B (n=13), 50%-higher-than-HR-frequency EA. (3) Group C (n=16), no EA was applied. Each experiment involved recording a 20-min baseline-data sequence followed by an effect-data sequence obtained at 0–20 min after stopping 20 min of 0.08-mA EA. Results: Beat-to-beat time-domain waveform analysis (including the pulse width, flow rise time, and microcirculatory blood-flow variability) revealed that following EA, the MBF supply at the stimulated site was improved in both groups, and that the MBF perfusion through arteriolar openings appeared to be more efficient in Group A than in Group B. Conclusion: The obtained data may help to establish a new noninvasive method for studying the mechanisms underlying the MBF response induced by EA.
  PubDate: Nov 2015
Parylene Coatings in Medical Devices and Implants: A Review
- Abstract: Publication date: May 2015
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 3 Number 2 Sushmitha Kuppusami and Reza H Oskouei This paper reviews various aspects of parylene coatings in medical devices and industry and summarises the fabrication methods of parylene coatings and their potential medical applications. In medical industry, two major beneficial properties of parylene include excellent barrier qualities and inherent bio-compatibility and bio-stability. The need for a bio-compatible material with good surface characteristics is of paramount importance. The recent findings indicate the application of parylene coatings in several areas of medical industry such as surgical instruments, implants, medical devices, mandrels, and medical electronics. Parylene has been slowly introduced into the research market, and has found to be competitive for available materials in the market. A review of the literature was undertaken to identify the prospective use to determine whether parylene coatings can survive the needs in medical industry.
  PubDate: May 2015
Benefits of Immunomagnetic Separation for Epitope Identification in
Clinically Important Protein Antigens: A Case Study Using Ovalbumin,
Carbonic Anhydrase I and Tau Protein
- Abstract: Publication date: Feb 2015
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 3 Number 1 Barbora Jankovicova Zuzana Svobodova Lenka Hromadkova Rudolf Kupcik Daniela Ripova and Zuzana Bilkova Immunomagnetic separation (IMS) with specific antibody as affinity ligand immobilized on a magnetic carrier has several advantages in comparison with standard column separation procedures. Epitope mapping enabling identification and characterization of protein structures reactive with the antibody represents one possible application of IMS. We used epitope extraction technique based on the proteolytic digestion of the target protein followed by capturing of a specific peptide fragments by the antibody immobilized on the solid phase. Magnetic particles coated with antibody molecules were first incubated with the prepared mixture of peptides. After specific binding of peptide fragments comprising the epitope sequences, the beads were washed to remove non-epitope peptides. Captured epitope-peptides were then eluted in small volume of 0.05% TFA. Elution fractions were finally analyzed without any modification by mass spectrometry. In this work the results and experience gained in epitope mapping of three clinically important proteins (ovalbumin, carbonic anhydrase I and tau protein) are discussed.
  PubDate: Feb 2015
Problems in Controlling Skin Dose Using the Dose Limit Quantities
- Abstract: Publication date: May 2014
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 2 Number 2 Jana Hudzietzová Jozef Sabol and Bedřich Šesták Some problems relevant to the correct use of the dose limit quantities with special emphasis on controlling and monitoring the skin exposure in line with the generally accepted and introduced definitions are discussed. Since the present situation in ensuring adequate radiation protection of the skin is rather untransparent due to ambiguity of the concept of the equivalent dose for skin, suggestions regarding the changes in the values of the present dose limit for skin are presented.
  PubDate: May 2014
Evaluation of Digital Hearing Aids Using Speech Phonemes
- Abstract: Publication date: May 2014
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 2 Number 2 M. Soleimani S. J. Sameni F. Torabinezhad Y. Modarresi and M. Kamali Since the most important input for users of hearing aids is speech, the study of the ways hearing aids amplify and reconstruct speech phonemes is necessary. The present study recorded the forms of five speech phonemes as stimuli and the rate of prescribed gain from the NAL-NL2 and DSLm[i/o] formulas for these phonemes was compared. This was a descriptive-analytical study performed on 16 programmed hearing aids for severe sensory-neural hearing loss in flat, rising and sloping configurations. After fitting the hearing aids to the NAL-NL2 and DSLm[i/o] formulas, their rates of gain for phonemes /a/,/u/,/š/,/s/and /f/ were determined using an Affinity 2.0 analyzer in a 2cc coupler at the 3 levels. The prescribed gain for DSLm[i/o] for the 5 phonemes in flat and rising audiograms for 3 speakers (male, female, female child) and intensity levels was significantly higher than for NAL-NL2 (p
  PubDate: May 2014
Gold Nano Particles (GNPs): An Emerging Solution of Cancer
- Abstract: Publication date: Jul 2014
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 2 Number 3 Galib Hashmi Masudul Haider Imtiaz and Shahida Rafique Cancer, one of the leading causes that bring confirm death, is the subject of widespread fear and taboos. Although the complete elimination of cancer hasn’t been discovered yet, “the war against cancer” has already been declared worldwide and research works are ongoing for cancer medicines. This paper presents a review on “Gold Nano Particle (GNP)”, a magic bullet which might be the timely solution to bring win against cancer malignancy. GNPs can be used as cancer drug carriers, contrast agent or in target cancer therapy etc. Because cancer cell membrane has Nano size holes, the Nano structure of GNP would help it to enter the cancer cells. It has also the dissolving abilities, so no harm would be done to other parts of the body. By using near infrared LASER, localized heating of GNPs is also possible to destroy cancer cells. Test on rats using GNPs is found successful and the implementation on human is a matter of time. In Vitro and In Vivo observations on GNPs show much promises in near future.
  PubDate: Jul 2014
Analysis of Fmri Data for Statistical Activation Mapping
- Abstract: Publication date: Jan 2014
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 2 Number 1 Enamul Hoque Chowdhury Belayat Hossain Farzana Islam and Shahida Rafique Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a non-invasive technique which shows great promise in providing neurological information on healthy subjects and clinical patients by mapping functional activation within the brain. The functional structure of human brain, the correlation between neural activities and the Blood-Oxygen-Level Dependent (BOLD) signal and fMRI experimental design techniques were studied in this work. The 2D and 3D anatomical high resolution and 3D + Time series (4D) low resolution functional images have been reconstructed and normalized. Spin echo-Echo Planar Imaging (EPI) technique has been used for obtaining fMRI data acquisition with spatially high resolution activation map overlaid on EPI image with the reduction of image acquisition time. The steps in the analysis of fMRI data were described and two statistical techniques, e.g., t-statistic and correlation analysis for data from single events have been proposed. The effect of Hemodynamic Response (HDR) on the neural activation has been observed for square, delayed square, visual cortex, averaged visual cortex and ideal HD response using correlation technique. It has been realized that ideal HDR generates the relevant activation map with correlation coefficient, r> 0.20. This fMRI analysis offers possibilities for improved neurological research and clinical neurosurgical applications.
  PubDate: Jan 2014
Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy to Investigation of Functional
Connectivity in Schizophrenia Using Partial Correlation
- Abstract: Publication date: Jan 2014
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 2 Number 1 Zahra Einalou Keyvan Maghooli Seyed-Kamaledin Setarehdan and Ata Akin Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is an optical imaging method which monitors the brain activation by measuring the successive changes in the concentration of oxy- and deoxyhemoglobin in real time. In this study, we aimed to investigate the functional connectivity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) during a modified version of the color-word matching Stroop task among schizophrenia and healthy persons. fNIRS data were band-pass filtered using a wavelet algorithm with frequency range of 0.003-0.08Hz. Partial correlation (PC) values were computed for each stimulus condition. Our analysis shows that the functional connectivity of PFC is highly relevant with the cognitive load and it is different from healthy to schizophrenia person.
  PubDate: Jan 2014
Effect of Kidney Malignant Tissues on Antenna Resonance
- Abstract: Publication date: Jan 2014
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 2 Number 1 M. H. Hassan and A. M. M. A. Allam A logarithmic spiral microstrip antenna (LSMA) is designed, simulated and measured in rabbit’s kidney. The antenna operates in the Medical Implant Communications Service (MICS) band at 403 MHz. It is fabricated on Rogers RT6010 (lossy) with relative dielectric constant of 10.2 and thickness 1.9 mm. There is a good agreement between the measured and simulated results for LSMA in rabbit’s kidney. A study is made to observe the effect of malignant tissues on the performance of the antenna. Results are considered as brain stone for early detection diagnosis for cancer.
  PubDate: Jan 2014
Optical Magnetometer Employing Adaptive Noise Cancellation for Unshielded
Magnetocardiography
- Abstract: Publication date: Sep 2013
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 1 Number 1 Valentina Tiporlini and Kamal Alameh This paper demonstrates the concept of an optical magnetometer for magnetocardiography. The magnetometer employs a standard Least-Mean-Squares (LMS) algorithm for heart magnetic field measurement within unshielded environment. Experimental results show that the algorithm can extract a weak heart signal from a much-stronger magnetic noise and detect the P, QRS, and T heart features and completely suppress the common power line noise component at 50 Hz.
  PubDate: Sep 2013
Curvature Characterization of Flex Sensors for Human Posture Recognition
- Abstract: Publication date: Sep 2013
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 1 Number 1 Giancarlo Orengo Laura Sbernini Nicola Di Lorenzo Antonino Lagati and Giovanni Saggio Resistive flex sensors have been increasingly used in different areas for their interesting property to change their resistance when bent. They can be employed in those systems where a joint rotation has to be measured, in particular biomedical systems, to measure human joint static and dynamic postures. In spite of their interesting properties, such as robustness, low price and long life, to date commercial flex sensors have been only characterized against the variation of the bend angle with small fixed curvature radius mostly around the device center, so limiting the application to the measure of human joints. Here we aimed to investigate the flex sensor’s response when there is a change in curvature radius as it is, for instance, for the measure of the postures of the human torso. So, we designed a novel automated test process to obtain resistances vs. curvature radius pairs. Results demonstrated the usability of flex sensors to other parts of the human body rather than “simply” joints, differently as it is currently done.
  PubDate: Sep 2013
Mortality Risk Assessment of ICU Cardiovascular Patients Using
Physiological Variables
- Abstract: Publication date: Sep 2013
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 1 Number 1 Mohammad Karimi Moridani Seyed Kamaledin Setarehdan Ali Motie Nasrabadi and Esmaeil Hajinasrollah Recognition of mortality-related factors in intensive care units (ICUs) could increase the efficiency and effectiveness of these units; The purpose of this research is to investigate the recorded data of the patients admitted in ICU with clinical analysis, in order to find indices of mortality. The long-term goal of this study is to develop an algorithm that is able to anticipate the mortality risk of ICU patients. Extracted features included time and frequency domain analysis of ECG and some of the physiological variables. The results showed that heart rate variability (HRV) and blood pressure are the most important parameters in ICU mortality risk assessment and anticipation for cardiovascular patients.
  PubDate: Sep 2013
A Survey on Optical Fiber Sensors for Telemedicine Applications
- Abstract: Publication date: Sep 2013
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 1 Number 1 Hadeel Kassim AL-Jobouri In this paper most of the important telemedicine applications with optical fiber sensor were introduced, and they included two techniques of using optical fiber sensors with monitoring and treating patients remotely through the operation. Optical sensors with MRI compatibility have been used in these two fields through catheter and biopsy techniques. This survey is the first one in which the optical fiber sensors in the field of biomedical engineering applications has been used.
  PubDate: Sep 2013
Comparative Analysis of Different Prescriptive Formulae Used in the
Evaluation of Real Ear Insertion Gain for Digital Hearing Aids
- Abstract: Publication date: Nov 2013
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 1 Number 2 S.Rajkumar S.Muttan V.Jaya and S.S.Vignesh Various prescriptive procedures have been developed, for calculating the real ear insertion gain of a digital hearing aid based either on loudness equalization or speech intelligibility. But the problem for audiologists lies in selecting an appropriate procedure for particular types of hearing impairment. The aim of this work is to analyze various linear and nonlinear prescriptive procedures, by performing various audiological investigations on hearing impaired subjects, so as to select an optimum procedure for a specific type of impairment. An audiological test was carried out on 237 hearing impaired subjects in the age group of 23 to 75 years, and they were given appropriate hearing aids with gain recommendations, using different formulae by audiologists. The degrees of success of the recommended formulae were analyzed, based on the speech discrimination score. Subjects with mild and moderate losses were found satisfied with the gain suggestions of linear prescriptive procedures, in addition to procedures based on loudness equalization NAL-RP (National Acoustics Laboratory-Revised Profound), POGO II (prescription of Gain Output), and DSL (Desired Sensation Level). Subjects with sensorineural loss were satisfied only with the gain recommendations of non linear prescriptive procedures NAL-NL1 (National Acoustics Laboratory-Non Linear), NAL-NL2 and DSL I/O (Desired Sensation Level Input/Output). An appropriate prescriptive procedure for a specific audiogram could be successfully suggested in future based on the results obtained from the total population on whom the study was carried out. In the case of those subjects who were not satisfied with the suggested procedure, a revised formula would be arrived at, by suitably varying the gains by the audiologists.
  PubDate: Nov 2013
Application of Data Mining Techniques to Efficiently Monitor Chronic
Diseases Using Wireless Body Area Networks and Smartphones
- Abstract: Publication date: Nov 2013
  Source:Universal Journal of Biomedical Engineering Volume 1 Number 2 Ioannis Kouris and Dimitris Koutsouris This paper presents a wireless body area network platform performing daily physical activity recognition using accelerometers, biosignals and smartphones. Various classifiers have been evaluated to identify the one with the best recognition results. Functional Trees classifier provided the best performance and was used in the real time activity recognition that executed on the smartphone. Geo-location provided by the GPS receiver of the smartphone used to retrieve location based environmental data and Points of Interest via the web. Activity recognition results and environmental data were stored in a database and a cloud-hosted application performed Emerging Patterns search through the data to predict future conditions. The described framework has application in the prevention of short-term complications of metabolic diseases such as diabetes or environmental conditions related diseases such as Chronic Obtrusive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).
  PubDate: Nov 2013