Journal of Medical Engineering and Technology最新文献

Wearable technology is a promising and revolutionary technology that is changing some aspects of our standard of living to a great extent, including health monitoring, sport and fitness, performance tracking, education, and entertainment. This article presents a comprehensive literature review of over 160 articles related to state-of-the-art human wearable technologies. We provide a thorough understanding of the materials, power sources, sensors, and manufacturing processes, and the relationships between these to capture opportunities for enhancement and challenges to overcome in wearables. As a result of our review, we have determined the need for the development of a comprehensive, robust manufacturing system alongside specific standards and regulations that take into account wearables' unique characteristics. Seeing the whole picture will provide a frame reference and road map for researchers and industries through the design, manufacturing, and commercialisation of effective, portable, self-powered, multi-sensing ultimate future wearable devices and create opportunities for new innovations and applications.

Diabetes mellitus is one of the fastest-growing lifestyle disorders in the world. While numerous regimes have been developed to manage diabetes, there continue to be high numbers of diabetes-related deaths worldwide. The review gives a brief introduction to the pathology and aetiology of the disorder, different solutions developed over time with their advantages and disadvantages, and highlights the technological components and challenges of the latest technologies: artificial pancreas and regenerative medicine. The study is restricted to a set of high-quality publications from the last decade.

Pressure ulcers have been part of tissue damage without effectiveness in medical, surgical, and intensive care units. This study aims to focus on developing lateral tilt positions for effective pressure ulcer relief for bedridden patients. A repositioning mattress was placed in the side-lying left lateral tilt position (15°, 30°, 45°), sheering (0.680, 1.323, 1.870), interface pressure (2.550, 2.290, 2.830), and placed at 1.5 m long piece of polyethylene rubber. The design strength was set at 6000 N and 2100 mm x 1105 mm (${\sigma }_{t,0,d}$ = 42, ${\sigma }_{c,0,d}$ = 34). The design shows the greatest supine position at 30°, 1.323, 2.290, pressure load ($\Delta p_0$ = 1.125 (1820) $\approx$ 2050 psi, $\Delta p_{3000}$ = 1.125 (620) $\approx$ 700 psi), tensile stress (${\sigma }_{t,0,d}$ (MPa) = 42), compressive stress (${\sigma }_{c,0,d}$ (MPa) = 34), and FOS (${\sigma }_{t,0,d}$ = 42, ${\sigma }_{c,0,d}$ = 34). The factor of safety illustrated that the 30° lateral tilt position is more consistent in repositioning for pressure ulcer prevention compared to the supine-to-tilt region. Further, an application of repositioning mattresses was developed to test in bedridden patients with tissue ulcers in nursing homes.

The knee joint is frequently exposed to injuries in people of all ages. In some cases, physical therapy is prescribed to recover the strength and mobility of a patient. The robotic assistance devices are gaining community attention and aim to improve the quality of life of people. In this work, we present the kinematic and dynamic modelling of a five-bar-linkage assistive device for knee rehabilitation according to anthropometric data from Latin-American population. We obtain a dynamic model of the proposed rehabilitation system and compare the knee trajectories with obtained using the assistive system to evaluate appropriate control strategies in the future. For this purpose, we present the kinematic formulation of the device, and then we derive the dynamics using two approaches to validate the model; we obtain the motion equation using the Lagrange approach and an algebraic method that simplifies modelling. Both approaches yield a unique model, which is validated either in simulation and by experimental trials, showing the functionality of the system and the validity of the models when performing rehabilitation routines.

The purpose of this research is to install a handrail on sliding doors used in hospitals and nursing facilities to support the elderly and disabled to walk by themselves. Semi-automatic lifting equipment is utilised for the retractable handrail to make sure people in bad health are able to open the door using minimal force. This paper summarises ergonomic considerations to develop the product above. For example, the maximum opening force should be a certain value or less for the elderly and disabled to open the product effortlessly. Additionally, the initial opening force is required to be a certain degree for safe use. When the product is used as a handrail, the handrail is required to be stable and unshakable in opening or closing directions. The results obtained by having the elderly and disabled use the prototype demonstrated that it improves their walking abilities.

The balloon surface temperature (BST) should be monitored to ensure the success of the ablation procedure using the HotBalloon^TM ablation catheter (HBC) in clinical settings. Therefore, we sought to develop a new HBC equipped with a surface temperature monitoring sensor. The BST was evaluated using a pseudo-tissue model and a thermocouple to imitate catheter insertion into the pulmonary vein. Thermo-fluid analysis with computer-aided engineering (CAE) was performed to analyse the temperature distribution in the catheter and the balloon. The CAE analysis reproduced the results from a pseudo-tissue model experiment and demonstrated that some fluid zones inside the catheter shaft had a nearly identical temperature as the BST during the liquid suction period. The pseudo-tissue model experiment confirmed that the temperature was almost the same between the balloon surface and the position of 5 mm inside the catheter shaft from the proximal end of the balloon. A thermocouple placed at 5 mm or 25 mm from the proximal end of the balloon within the catheter shaft showed an equivalent temperature result. This 5-25-mm distance is acceptable to set the BST monitoring sensor inside the catheter shaft, since the sensor can help accurately estimate the BST.

Blood pressure (BP) is a vital health parameter that varies throughout the day. As a single reading of high BP may not indicate hypertension, continuous monitoring of BP is usually recommended by medical doctors to confirm the diagnosis of hypertension. In the last few decades, researchers have investigated cuff-less and continuous BP measurements based on pulse transit time (PTT). The main purpose of this research is to develop an autoregressive (ARX) system identification (SI)-based PTT calculation model using two PPG signals acquired from carotid and toe. The signals were recorded from 65 subjects with an age range between 20 and 60 years. The results of the study have been validated in two stages. The first validation comprised the estimated BP from PTT using SI compared to the measured BP using the cuff-based method for all subjects. The results of the estimated BP using the proposed method compared to the measured BP obtained using the standard BP cuff measurement method are highly correlated to both systolic blood pressure (R² = 0.8132) and diastolic blood pressure (R² = 0.8357). The second validation consisted of comparing PTT values using system identification to the results of the PTT derived from the ECG-PPG method. The results showed that both methods are highly correlated (R² = 0.7808), and there is no significant difference between them (p < 0.05) with a slightly better PTT estimation related to DBP in the proposed method. Our results have proven that the PTT obtained from the carotid PPG and toe PPG using the system identification approach yielded SBP and DBP estimations that are consistent with the values of the conventional BP cuff method. The newly proposed method has the advantage of being cuff-less and able to provide continuous BP measurements.