Pub Date : 2015-05-07DOI: 10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145199
Nataraj Kuntagod, Sanjoy Paul, S. Kumaresan, Bharath Balasubramaniam, Imtiaz Ahmed
90% of the visually impaired worldwide live in a low income setting, and 80% of all visual impairment can be prevented or cured provided, a timely care is given. A large portion of at risk population does not avail timely vision care due to low awareness and inability to afford nor access quality vision care. Generating high patient volumes by reaching out into the community is a general approach taken by many hospitals to provide quality and affordable vision care. However, all of them rely on semi-skilled field workers to reach out to the community. A significant challenge to the effectiveness of field workers is the paper-based systems they use to register patients, gather information about them, and analyze the collected data. The lack of online monitoring and access to real-time analytics makes the process inefficient when scaled across large geographies. This paper proposes a connected vision care wireless solution comprising of a mobile decision support system and an analysis and reporting server connected via an existing cellular infrastructure. This solution upgrades every field worker to a knowledge worker, enables automatic compliance and status tracking of patients, and provides real-time analysis for efficient program management. This paper highlights the improved efficiency of the vision care program achieved using the solution in a field trial conducted by Sankara Eye Care hospital in Tamil Nadu, India.
{"title":"Connected vision care for eradication of preventable blindness","authors":"Nataraj Kuntagod, Sanjoy Paul, S. Kumaresan, Bharath Balasubramaniam, Imtiaz Ahmed","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145199","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145199","url":null,"abstract":"90% of the visually impaired worldwide live in a low income setting, and 80% of all visual impairment can be prevented or cured provided, a timely care is given. A large portion of at risk population does not avail timely vision care due to low awareness and inability to afford nor access quality vision care. Generating high patient volumes by reaching out into the community is a general approach taken by many hospitals to provide quality and affordable vision care. However, all of them rely on semi-skilled field workers to reach out to the community. A significant challenge to the effectiveness of field workers is the paper-based systems they use to register patients, gather information about them, and analyze the collected data. The lack of online monitoring and access to real-time analytics makes the process inefficient when scaled across large geographies. This paper proposes a connected vision care wireless solution comprising of a mobile decision support system and an analysis and reporting server connected via an existing cellular infrastructure. This solution upgrades every field worker to a knowledge worker, enables automatic compliance and status tracking of patients, and provides real-time analysis for efficient program management. This paper highlights the improved efficiency of the vision care program achieved using the solution in a field trial conducted by Sankara Eye Care hospital in Tamil Nadu, India.","PeriodicalId":277757,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA) Proceedings","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127979461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-05-07DOI: 10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145165
A. Lombardi, P. Guccione, L. Mascolo, P. Taurisano, L. Fazio, G. Nico
In this work we investigate on the nonlinear properties of the brain networks using Graph Analysis and Cross Recurrence Plot. The nonlinear dynamics of the brain is analyzed using time series coming from fMRI data. Two groups of human subjects, one affected by schizophrenia and the other of healthy controls, are imaged during the completion of a working memory task. To examine the spatio-temporal properties of the BOLD signal, nonlinear recurrence properties are extracted from the time series of the most relevant voxels, using the cross recurrence plots and the corresponding measures. Then, a graph is built using such measures as weights between different brain regions (the nodes). The purpose of the paper is to give a description of the most relevant functional areas activated during the task completion and to capture the differences between the groups. Results are promising, since the methodology is still to be fully developed and explored.
{"title":"Combining Graph Analysis and Recurrence Plot on fMRI data","authors":"A. Lombardi, P. Guccione, L. Mascolo, P. Taurisano, L. Fazio, G. Nico","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145165","url":null,"abstract":"In this work we investigate on the nonlinear properties of the brain networks using Graph Analysis and Cross Recurrence Plot. The nonlinear dynamics of the brain is analyzed using time series coming from fMRI data. Two groups of human subjects, one affected by schizophrenia and the other of healthy controls, are imaged during the completion of a working memory task. To examine the spatio-temporal properties of the BOLD signal, nonlinear recurrence properties are extracted from the time series of the most relevant voxels, using the cross recurrence plots and the corresponding measures. Then, a graph is built using such measures as weights between different brain regions (the nodes). The purpose of the paper is to give a description of the most relevant functional areas activated during the task completion and to capture the differences between the groups. Results are promising, since the methodology is still to be fully developed and explored.","PeriodicalId":277757,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA) Proceedings","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127769048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-05-07DOI: 10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145258
M. Kammel, A. Kummrow, M. John, S. Reitz, K. Witt, J. Neukammer
A method is described to determine cell concentrations for erythrocytes and leukocytes with typical uncertainties of 0.8% and 2%, respectively. The unique method is designed in such a way that results are traceable to SI derived units. The sample suspensions are prepared under gravimetric control. The sample volume measured in cell counting is determined by weighing, including separate density measurements. Random coincidences are a significant challenge in particle counting leading to underestimated cell concentrations. In the method described here this challenge is met by recording the integrated dead time in particle counting and applying dilution series. This method is now routinely applied to provide reference measurement values for external quality assurance of German hematology laboratories for the complete blood count.
{"title":"Flow cytometer for reference measurements of blood cell concentrations with low uncertainty","authors":"M. Kammel, A. Kummrow, M. John, S. Reitz, K. Witt, J. Neukammer","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145258","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145258","url":null,"abstract":"A method is described to determine cell concentrations for erythrocytes and leukocytes with typical uncertainties of 0.8% and 2%, respectively. The unique method is designed in such a way that results are traceable to SI derived units. The sample suspensions are prepared under gravimetric control. The sample volume measured in cell counting is determined by weighing, including separate density measurements. Random coincidences are a significant challenge in particle counting leading to underestimated cell concentrations. In the method described here this challenge is met by recording the integrated dead time in particle counting and applying dilution series. This method is now routinely applied to provide reference measurement values for external quality assurance of German hematology laboratories for the complete blood count.","PeriodicalId":277757,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA) Proceedings","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116497809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-05-07DOI: 10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145250
N. A. Capela, E. Lemaire, N. Baddour
Human Activity Recognition (HAR) allows healthcare specialists to obtain clinically useful information about a person's mobility. When characterizing immobile states with a smartphone, HAR typically relies on phone orientation to differentiate between sit, stand, and lie. While phone orientation is effective for identifying when a person is lying down, sitting and standing can be misclassified since pelvis orientation can be similar. Therefore, training a classifier from this data is difficult. In this paper, a hierarchical classifier that includes the transition phases into and out of a sitting state is proposed to improve sit-stand classification. For evaluation, young (age 26 ± 8.9 yrs) and senior (age 73 ± 5.9yrs) participants wore a Blackberry Z10 smartphone on their right front waist and performed a continuous series of 16 activities of daily living. Z10 accelerometer and gyroscope data were processed with a custom HAR classifier that used previous state awareness and transition identification to classify immobile states. Immobile state classification results were compared with (WT) and without (WOT) transition identification and previous state awareness. The WT classifier had significantly greater sit sensitivity and F-score (p<;0.05) than WOT. Stand specificity and F-score for WT were significantly greater than WOT for seniors. WT sit sensitivity was greater than WOT for the young population, though not significantly. All outcomes improved for the young population. These results indicated that examining the transition period before an immobile state can improve immobile state recognition. Sit-stand classification on a continuous daily activity data set was comparable to the current literature and was achieved without the use of computationally intensive feature spaces or classifiers.
{"title":"Improving classification of sit, stand, and lie in a smartphone human activity recognition system","authors":"N. A. Capela, E. Lemaire, N. Baddour","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145250","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145250","url":null,"abstract":"Human Activity Recognition (HAR) allows healthcare specialists to obtain clinically useful information about a person's mobility. When characterizing immobile states with a smartphone, HAR typically relies on phone orientation to differentiate between sit, stand, and lie. While phone orientation is effective for identifying when a person is lying down, sitting and standing can be misclassified since pelvis orientation can be similar. Therefore, training a classifier from this data is difficult. In this paper, a hierarchical classifier that includes the transition phases into and out of a sitting state is proposed to improve sit-stand classification. For evaluation, young (age 26 ± 8.9 yrs) and senior (age 73 ± 5.9yrs) participants wore a Blackberry Z10 smartphone on their right front waist and performed a continuous series of 16 activities of daily living. Z10 accelerometer and gyroscope data were processed with a custom HAR classifier that used previous state awareness and transition identification to classify immobile states. Immobile state classification results were compared with (WT) and without (WOT) transition identification and previous state awareness. The WT classifier had significantly greater sit sensitivity and F-score (p<;0.05) than WOT. Stand specificity and F-score for WT were significantly greater than WOT for seniors. WT sit sensitivity was greater than WOT for the young population, though not significantly. All outcomes improved for the young population. These results indicated that examining the transition period before an immobile state can improve immobile state recognition. Sit-stand classification on a continuous daily activity data set was comparable to the current literature and was achieved without the use of computationally intensive feature spaces or classifiers.","PeriodicalId":277757,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA) Proceedings","volume":"145 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116081983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-05-07DOI: 10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145272
Carlos E. Teixeira, Luís H. C. Ferreira
In physiological measurement systems, the most critical stages are the transduction and the amplification, mainly when tolerances of components are taken into account. In this case, if there is a small difference between DC input voltages of the biopotential amplifier, its DC output voltage may be saturated, even when DC suppression circuits are used. In this paper, we propose an active biopotential electrode and, based on a yield-oriented analysis, a maximum gain condition that guarantees a constant DC output voltage of the proposed biopotential amplifier without using laser trimming. A DC Monte-Carlo simulation is performed to demonstrate our results and an experimental procedure is also carried out to analyze the proposed system by measuring heartbeat frequency.
{"title":"Yield-oriented biopotential amplifier design for PCB-based active dry electrodes","authors":"Carlos E. Teixeira, Luís H. C. Ferreira","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145272","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145272","url":null,"abstract":"In physiological measurement systems, the most critical stages are the transduction and the amplification, mainly when tolerances of components are taken into account. In this case, if there is a small difference between DC input voltages of the biopotential amplifier, its DC output voltage may be saturated, even when DC suppression circuits are used. In this paper, we propose an active biopotential electrode and, based on a yield-oriented analysis, a maximum gain condition that guarantees a constant DC output voltage of the proposed biopotential amplifier without using laser trimming. A DC Monte-Carlo simulation is performed to demonstrate our results and an experimental procedure is also carried out to analyze the proposed system by measuring heartbeat frequency.","PeriodicalId":277757,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA) Proceedings","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116602704","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-05-07DOI: 10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145232
G. Cosoli, L. Casacanditella, F. Pietroni, Andrea Calvaresi, G. M. Revel, L. Scalise
The authors have investigated a novel processing technique, which allows to measure possibly relevant features in the ECG (Electrocardiogram) signal according to the morphology of its waveform. The aim of this work is to prove its efficacy in the assessment of the subject's Heart Rate (HR) and to broaden its use to signals coming from different biomedical sensors (based on optical, acoustical and mechanical principles) for the computation of HR. The analysis technique proposed for the identification of the main feature (R-peak) in ECG signal provides results that are comparable to those obtained with traditional approaches. The approach has also been applied to other signals related to blood flow, such as PCG (Phonocardiography), PPG (Photoplethysmography) and VCG (Vibrocardiography), where standard algorithms (i.e. Pan & Tompkins) could not be widely applied. HR results from a measurement campaign on 8 healthy subjects have shown, respect to ECG, a deviation (calculated as 2σ) of ±3.3 bpm, ±2.3 bpm and ±1.5 bpm for PCG, PPG and VCG. Future work will involve the extraction of additional features from the previous signals, with the aim of a deeper characterization of them to better describe the subject's health status.
{"title":"A novel approach for features extraction in physiological signals","authors":"G. Cosoli, L. Casacanditella, F. Pietroni, Andrea Calvaresi, G. M. Revel, L. Scalise","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145232","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145232","url":null,"abstract":"The authors have investigated a novel processing technique, which allows to measure possibly relevant features in the ECG (Electrocardiogram) signal according to the morphology of its waveform. The aim of this work is to prove its efficacy in the assessment of the subject's Heart Rate (HR) and to broaden its use to signals coming from different biomedical sensors (based on optical, acoustical and mechanical principles) for the computation of HR. The analysis technique proposed for the identification of the main feature (R-peak) in ECG signal provides results that are comparable to those obtained with traditional approaches. The approach has also been applied to other signals related to blood flow, such as PCG (Phonocardiography), PPG (Photoplethysmography) and VCG (Vibrocardiography), where standard algorithms (i.e. Pan & Tompkins) could not be widely applied. HR results from a measurement campaign on 8 healthy subjects have shown, respect to ECG, a deviation (calculated as 2σ) of ±3.3 bpm, ±2.3 bpm and ±1.5 bpm for PCG, PPG and VCG. Future work will involve the extraction of additional features from the previous signals, with the aim of a deeper characterization of them to better describe the subject's health status.","PeriodicalId":277757,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA) Proceedings","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124053027","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-05-07DOI: 10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145219
E. Rizzuto, S. Carosio, A. Musarò, Z. Prete
X-MET (Ex-vivo Muscle Engineered Tissue) is a promising 3-dimensional model of skeletal muscle for in vitro tests and in vivo transplant. X-MET is an in vitro cultured tissue and has several properties in common with adult skeletal muscle, from biological and morphological to functional ones. To monitor the X-MET's growing improvements, we developed an experimental system based on Digital Image Correlation (DIC) to precisely measure the tissue's contractile capability, thus trying to prevent the formation of any anisotropic or inhomogeneous parts. We employed a high speed camera mounted on a stereomicroscope, and synchronized the image acquisition with the electrical stimulation and the force response measurement. The capability of measuring the 2-dimensional surface strain field in any desired Region Of Interest (ROI) allowed to obtain a comprehensive monitoring of the tissue's formation, both at a global and a local level. Preliminary results confirmed the adequacy of the system to measure tissue's strain field in complete accordance with the force measurement. Moreover, an in-depth analysis allowed to precisely pinpoint the sub-zones where discontinuities arise during tissue formation, returning essential information to improve X-MET generation process.
{"title":"A Digital Image Correlation based technique to control the development of a skeletal muscle engineered tissue by measuring its surface strain field","authors":"E. Rizzuto, S. Carosio, A. Musarò, Z. Prete","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145219","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145219","url":null,"abstract":"X-MET (Ex-vivo Muscle Engineered Tissue) is a promising 3-dimensional model of skeletal muscle for in vitro tests and in vivo transplant. X-MET is an in vitro cultured tissue and has several properties in common with adult skeletal muscle, from biological and morphological to functional ones. To monitor the X-MET's growing improvements, we developed an experimental system based on Digital Image Correlation (DIC) to precisely measure the tissue's contractile capability, thus trying to prevent the formation of any anisotropic or inhomogeneous parts. We employed a high speed camera mounted on a stereomicroscope, and synchronized the image acquisition with the electrical stimulation and the force response measurement. The capability of measuring the 2-dimensional surface strain field in any desired Region Of Interest (ROI) allowed to obtain a comprehensive monitoring of the tissue's formation, both at a global and a local level. Preliminary results confirmed the adequacy of the system to measure tissue's strain field in complete accordance with the force measurement. Moreover, an in-depth analysis allowed to precisely pinpoint the sub-zones where discontinuities arise during tissue formation, returning essential information to improve X-MET generation process.","PeriodicalId":277757,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA) Proceedings","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127586334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-05-07DOI: 10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145252
C. Crema, A. Depari, A. Flammini, Mirko Lavarini, E. Sisinni, A. Vezzoli
The wider and wider availability of powerful, low-cost mobile devices (e.g., smartphones or tablets) is deeply changing healthcare, so that the mHealth term has been coined. The announcement of healthcare projects by market big players as Apple and Samsung confirms this trend. In particular, the opportunity to collect reliable patient data automatically allows to enhance patient/user self-management and helps in better delivering therapies. In this paper, authors propose an innovative architecture for a smart pill-dispenser enhanced by a smartdevice that furnishes the capability of automatically identifying the user, other than logging medicine in-take activities. A real-world prototype, based on an emulated pill-dispenser connected via an NFC link to different smartdevices, has been purposely realized. Experimental tests confirm the architecture feasibility. Low-cost requirements are satisfied and a user-friendly interface has been implemented.
{"title":"A smartphone-enhanced pill-dispenser providing patient identification and in-take recognition","authors":"C. Crema, A. Depari, A. Flammini, Mirko Lavarini, E. Sisinni, A. Vezzoli","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145252","url":null,"abstract":"The wider and wider availability of powerful, low-cost mobile devices (e.g., smartphones or tablets) is deeply changing healthcare, so that the mHealth term has been coined. The announcement of healthcare projects by market big players as Apple and Samsung confirms this trend. In particular, the opportunity to collect reliable patient data automatically allows to enhance patient/user self-management and helps in better delivering therapies. In this paper, authors propose an innovative architecture for a smart pill-dispenser enhanced by a smartdevice that furnishes the capability of automatically identifying the user, other than logging medicine in-take activities. A real-world prototype, based on an emulated pill-dispenser connected via an NFC link to different smartdevices, has been purposely realized. Experimental tests confirm the architecture feasibility. Low-cost requirements are satisfied and a user-friendly interface has been implemented.","PeriodicalId":277757,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA) Proceedings","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116117923","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-05-07DOI: 10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145238
A. Lay-Ekuakille, G. Pagliara, P. Vergallo, M. Z. U. Rahman, D. K. Reddy, S. Casciaro, F. Conversano
Thermotherapy is often used for diverse biomedical applications. One of them is treating human body area under pain, for example, lumbar pain. Thermotherapy can be used for such purpose by means of, for instance, metal-based bands that produce heat on the area under treatment. The heat delivered by such bands end after a specific time. This is a thermotherapy system based on a contact between dedicated bands and human body area under pain. The bands generally contain materials as polyester, iron or copper, salt, cellulose, active carbons, etc... The paper presents an energy harvesting system based on Seebeck's effect using micro-thermogenerators (TEGs) that convert heat from neck to electrical energy to be used on lumbar area with a further conversion from electrical to heat. This approach, even apparently complicated, allows to use a system that can be utilized every time and for a long period. It is useful because the heat produced by human body is displaced from neck to another area of the same body.
{"title":"Microsensors and energy harvesting for thermotherapy: Design and characterization","authors":"A. Lay-Ekuakille, G. Pagliara, P. Vergallo, M. Z. U. Rahman, D. K. Reddy, S. Casciaro, F. Conversano","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145238","url":null,"abstract":"Thermotherapy is often used for diverse biomedical applications. One of them is treating human body area under pain, for example, lumbar pain. Thermotherapy can be used for such purpose by means of, for instance, metal-based bands that produce heat on the area under treatment. The heat delivered by such bands end after a specific time. This is a thermotherapy system based on a contact between dedicated bands and human body area under pain. The bands generally contain materials as polyester, iron or copper, salt, cellulose, active carbons, etc... The paper presents an energy harvesting system based on Seebeck's effect using micro-thermogenerators (TEGs) that convert heat from neck to electrical energy to be used on lumbar area with a further conversion from electrical to heat. This approach, even apparently complicated, allows to use a system that can be utilized every time and for a long period. It is useful because the heat produced by human body is displaced from neck to another area of the same body.","PeriodicalId":277757,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA) Proceedings","volume":"320 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115342854","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2015-05-07DOI: 10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145185
A. Troia, R. Cuccaro, A. Schiavi
In this paper a novel formulation for the realization of homogenous transparent and tunable attenuating tissue-mimicking materials (TMMs) has been reported. Although many hydrogel based materials have been proposed for high intensity ultrasonic field characterization, no one fully satisfies the requested acoustic and optical properties. Using concentrated salts solutions and different polysaccharide molecules, a simple preparation method has been developed to obtain this new class of TMMs. Physical properties of these TMMs have been investigated by an accurate mechanical and acoustic characterization. Furthermore, a short discussion about the mechanism of ultrasonic attenuation given by salts solutions embedded in polymeric matrix has been conducted. Finally, by means of an experiment on protein denaturation induced by HIFU, the different mechanism underlying lesions formation occurring in a transparent TMM with and without salt has been revealed. Shown results supply a new starting point for the production of TMMs suitable for HIFU characterization.
{"title":"New formulations for realization and characterization of homogeneous tissue mimicking materials for HIFU exposures","authors":"A. Troia, R. Cuccaro, A. Schiavi","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA.2015.7145185","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper a novel formulation for the realization of homogenous transparent and tunable attenuating tissue-mimicking materials (TMMs) has been reported. Although many hydrogel based materials have been proposed for high intensity ultrasonic field characterization, no one fully satisfies the requested acoustic and optical properties. Using concentrated salts solutions and different polysaccharide molecules, a simple preparation method has been developed to obtain this new class of TMMs. Physical properties of these TMMs have been investigated by an accurate mechanical and acoustic characterization. Furthermore, a short discussion about the mechanism of ultrasonic attenuation given by salts solutions embedded in polymeric matrix has been conducted. Finally, by means of an experiment on protein denaturation induced by HIFU, the different mechanism underlying lesions formation occurring in a transparent TMM with and without salt has been revealed. Shown results supply a new starting point for the production of TMMs suitable for HIFU characterization.","PeriodicalId":277757,"journal":{"name":"2015 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA) Proceedings","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125736967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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