Medical microprocessor systems

The practical classes and laboratory work in the discipline "Medical microprocessor systems", performed using software in the programming environment of microprocessors Texas Instruments (Code Composer Studio) and using of digital microprocessors of the Texas Instruments DSK6400 family, and models of electrical equipment in the environment of graphical programming LabVIEW 2010.Лабораторний практикум з програмування та побудови медичних мікропроцесорних систем, який викладено у навчальному посібнику допомагає накопичувати й ефективно використовувати отриману інформацію з теоретичного курсу на всіх стадіях навчального процесу, що є важливим для підготовки магістрів та необхідною ланкою у науковому пізнанні практичних основ біомедичної електроніки.The laboratory workshop on the programming and construction of medical microprocessor systems, which is outlined in the tutorial, helps to accumulate and effectively use the information obtained from a theoretical course at all stages of the educational process, which is important for the preparation of masters and a necessary link in the scientific knowledge of the practical basics of biomedicine.Лабораторный практикум по программированию и построению медицинских микропроцессорных систем, который изложен в учебном пособии помогает накапливать и эффективно использовать полученную информацию из теоретического курса на всех стадиях учебного процесса, что важно для подготовки магистров и является необходимым звеном в научном познании практических основ биомедицинской электроники

Reactive Metal-Organic Interfaces Studied with Adsorption Calorimetry and Photoelectron Spectroscopy

This doctoral thesis presents investigations on the reactive interactions between Ca and oligomeric organic thin films with X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), adsorption microcalorimetry, and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). By combining X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and adsorption microcalorimetry, it is concluded that Ca exhibits a rather different growth behavior on oligomeric organic thin films compared with their polymeric homologs: the diffusion of Ca atoms into the oligomeric organic thin films is generally stronger than into the comparable polymeric thin films, resulting in thicker reaction zones. These effects can be observed in the Ca/α-sexithiophene (Ca/6T) system at room temperature, where a thick reaction zone (ca. 30 nm) with a constant composition of the reacted and unreacted sulfur species is present. This finding is possibly due to steric hindrance effects in the reaction zone. Such hindrance effects are presumably the result of massive backbone structural modifications, which are introduced by ring opening reactions at the thiophene units of 6T, subsequently followed by CaS cluster formation. The initially measured adsorption enthalpy of Ca on 6T (275 kJ/mol) is discussed in the context of previous calculations and measurements on similar systems. In contrast to expectation, the initial value for the measured adsorption enthalpy remains independent of coverage up to 4 monolayers of Ca (1 monolayers corresponding to 7.4×1018 atoms/m2). This indicates a continuous exposure of yet unreacted sulfur to Ca from the gas phase up to this point, resulting in the formation of an extended reaction zone. Based on literature data, one would expect that a closed metallic Ca layer would form on top of the 6T film significantly below the observed threshold of 4 monolayers, quenching the reaction between Ca and 6T at an earlier stage during the Ca deposition. In order to improve the existing adsorption microcalorimeter setup, a reliable and multifunctional data acquisition system is built with the LabVIEW programming environment. To accommodate the pendulum style movement of the calorimeter's chopper for Ca pulse generation, synchronized timing of the desktop data acquisition program and step motor’s internal control program is realized through the calibrated compensations and the employment of pulse pair as the unit experimental step. Possible solutions for the balance between the ease of programming and runtime reliability are proposed together with the ideas for code efficiency improvement. As for the hardware development of the calorimeter, a possible transition from the PVDF film detector to the LiTaO3 single crystalline detector is also proposed, with a prototype detector being designed and manufactured

Analytical applications of sensor arrays and virtual instrumentation

An ammonium detection system using Ion-Selective Electrodes (ISEs) in Flow-Injection Analysis (FIA) is described. Because of the low selectivity of the nonactin ammonium selective electrode towards some common ions, different selectivity enhancement techniques have been examined. A Sensor Array Detector (SAD) which comprises ISEs selective for ammonium, sodium, potassium and calcium was used. A modified form of the Nikolskii-Eisenman Equation is proposed in which the charge power function of the interfering ion activity is linearised. Selectivity is quantified for the PVC membrane electrodes (NH4+, Na , K \ Ca ') in terms of constants rather than conventional coefficients. These constants and other electrode parameters such as cell constant and slope are estimated by means of the FIA-SAD approach. The SAD response was modeled via the Nikolskii-Eisenman equation with SIMPLEX regression model The applicability of the resulting values for these parameters is demonstrated through the determination of unknowns by direct solution of the system of modified Nikolskii-Eisenman equations describing the array response. The results show that the use of an array of ISEs under FIA regimes for the detection of ammonium in the concentration range 10 '4 to 10 '2 mol dm'3 gives a much higher improvement in the determination of ammonium in aqueous samples than the use of a single ammonium electrode in steady-state or kinetic measurements. This approach is suitable for use in real-time monitoring applications where batch calibration techniques cannot easily be implemented. Computer controlled laboratory instrumentation is of growing importance both in research and in industry. Different hardware and software approaches may be chosen which allow the development of high quality products, Last trends in hardware and software strategies are analyzed and some general guidelines are given for instrumentation development. The graphical compiler Lab VIEW 3.0 for instrumentation from National Instruments is presented and evaluated in terms of flexibility and low cost for the production of virtual instrumentation for research, biomedical applications and industrial environmental monitoring

Automated multi-well neural injury device

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a wide spread pathological problem occurring in 1.4 million individuals every year according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. There are several types of TBI and the most prominent ones are concussion, contusion, hematoma, coup-contrecoup injury and diffuse axonal injury (DAI). The most severe type and the one that is the hardest to diagnose is DAI. DAI occurs mostly due to accidents relating to automobile, motorcycles and in some cases fall and assault, resulting in a shearing phenomenon of the brain. Patients with DAI can range from being, mildly injured, severely disabled or result in death. This current research is focusing on creating a neural injury device for a twenty four well apparatus with an easy to use software based control. This neural injury device used air pressure to create blast injury to the neural cells in a uniaxial direction. This thesis research focused on the software design for controlling the neural injury device. Several experiments was performed to verify its efficiency in creating consistent, accurate and controllable injury to 24 well of cultured neurons. The results from the experiments demonstrate that this automated multi-well neural injury device is very reliable in terms of controllability, accuracy and consistency

Reflective imaging improves spatiotemporal resolution and collection efficiency in light sheet microscopy

© The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nature Communications 8 (2017): 1452, doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01250-8.Light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM) enables high-speed, high-resolution, and gentle imaging of live specimens over extended periods. Here we describe a technique that improves the spatiotemporal resolution and collection efficiency of LSFM without modifying the underlying microscope. By imaging samples on reflective coverslips, we enable simultaneous collection of four complementary views in 250 ms, doubling speed and improving information content relative to symmetric dual-view LSFM. We also report a modified deconvolution algorithm that removes associated epifluorescence contamination and fuses all views for resolution recovery. Furthermore, we enhance spatial resolution (to <300 nm in all three dimensions) by applying our method to single-view LSFM, permitting simultaneous acquisition of two high-resolution views otherwise difficult to obtain due to steric constraints at high numerical aperture. We demonstrate the broad applicability of our method in a variety of samples, studying mitochondrial, membrane, Golgi, and microtubule dynamics in cells and calcium activity in nematode embryos.This work was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the National Institutes of Health. P.L. and H.S. acknowledge summer support from the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, through the Whitman- and Fellows- program. P.L. acknowledges support from NIH National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under grant number R01EB017293. C.S. acknowledges funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of NIH under Award Number R25GM109439 (Project Title: University of Chicago Initiative for Maximizing Student Development [IMSD]) and NIBIB under grant number T32 EB002103. Partial funding for the computation in this work was provided by NIH grant numbers S10 RRO21039 and P30 CA14599. A.U. and I.R.-S. were supported by the NSF grant number 1607645

The Measurement of Polymer Swelling Processes by an Interferometric Method and Evaluation of Diffusion Coefficients

The amorphous polymer film swelling in a liquid solvent below the glass transition temperature was characterized by a few kinetic parameters (especially the mutual diffusion coefficient of swelling and its mean value) obtained by interference of monochromatic light in the wedge arrangement. This interferometric method allows one to determine the concentration field in the swollen surface layer and consequently to compute the concentration-dependent diffusion coefficient. A software system developed at the Department of Physics and Material Engineering at TBU in Zlin has been used for the evaluation of the main kinetic parameters of the swelling process. The software can be used for the on-line analyses of interferograms during the swelling process. The main application outputs are the computation of the concentration profile, the concentration gradient, the mutual diffusion coefficient of the swelling by the solvent and its mean value

Stimulation of oxidative phosphorylation by calcium in cardiac mitochondria is not influenced by cAMP and PKA activity

AbstractCardiac oxidative ATP generation is finely tuned to match several-fold increases in energy demand. Calcium has been proposed to play a role in the activation of ATP production via PKA phosphorylation in response to intramitochondrial cAMP generation. We evaluated the effect of cAMP, its membrane permeable analogs (dibutyryl-cAMP, 8-bromo-cAMP), and the PKA inhibitor H89 on respiration of isolated pig heart mitochondria. cAMP analogs did not stimulate State 3 respiration of Ca2+-depleted mitochondria (82.2±3.6% of control), in contrast to the 2-fold activation induced by 0.95μM free Ca2+, which was unaffected by H89. Using fluorescence and integrating sphere spectroscopy, we determined that Ca2+ increased the reduction of NADH (8%), and of cytochromes bH (3%), c1 (3%), c (4%), and a (2%), together with a doubling of conductances for Complex I+III and Complex IV. None of these changes were induced by cAMP analogs nor abolished by H89. In Ca2+-undepleted mitochondria, we observed only slight changes in State 3 respiration rates upon addition of 50μM cAMP (85±9.9%), dibutyryl-cAMP (80.1±5.2%), 8-bromo-cAMP (88.6±3.3%), or 1μM H89 (89.7±19.9%) with respect to controls. Similar results were obtained when measuring respiration in heart homogenates. Addition of exogenous PKA with dibutyryl-cAMP or the constitutively active catalytic subunit of PKA to isolated mitochondria decreased State 3 respiration by only 5–15%. These functional studies suggest that alterations in mitochondrial cAMP and PKA activity do not contribute significantly to the acute Ca2+ stimulation of oxidative phosphorylation

Photo-thermal Processing of Semiconductor Fibers and Thin Films

Furnace processing and rapid thermal processing (RTP) have been an integral part of several processing steps in semiconductor manufacturing. The performance of RTP techniques can be improved many times by exploiting quantum photo-effects of UV and vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) photons in thermal processing and this technique is known as rapid photo-thermal processing (RPP). As compared to furnace processing and RTP, RPP provides higher diffusion coefficient, lower stress and lower microscopic defects. In this work, a custom designed automated photo assisted processing system was built from individual parts and an incoherent light source. This photo-assisted processing system is used to anneal silica clad silicon fibers and deposit thin-films. To the best of our knowledge, incoherent light source based rapid photo-thermal processing (RPP) was used for the first time to anneal glass-clad silicon core optical fibers. X-ray diffraction examination, Raman spectroscopy and electrical measurements showed a considerable enhancement of structural and crystalline properties of RPP treated silicon fibers. Photons in UV and vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) regions play a very important role in improving the bulk and carrier transport properties of RPP-treated silicon optical fibers, and the resultant annealing permits a path forward to in situ enhancement of the structure and properties of these new crystalline core optical fibers. To explore further applications of RPP, thin-films of Calcium Copper Titanate (CaCu3Ti4O12) or CCTO and Copper (I) Oxide (Cu2O) were also deposited using photo-assisted metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) on Si/SiO2 and n-Si substrate respectively. CCTO is one of the most researched giant dielectric constant materials in recent years. The given photo-assisted MOCVD approach provided polycrystalline CCTO growth on a SiO2 surface with grain sizes as large as 410 nm. Copper (I) oxide (Cu2O) is a direct band gap semiconductor with p-type conductivity and is a potential candidate for multi-junction solar cells. X-ray diffraction study revealed a preferred orientation, as (200) oriented crystals of Cu2O are grown on both substrates. Also, electrical characterization of Cu2O/n-Si devices showed the lowest saturation current density of 1.5x10-12 A/cm2 at zero bias. As a result, photo-assisted thermal processing has the potential of making the process more effective with enhanced device performance

Construction of artificial skin tissue with placode-like structures in well-defined patterns using dielectrophoresis

During embryonic development of animal skin tissue, the skin cells form regular patterns of high cell density (placodes) where hair or feathers will be formed. These placodes are thought to be formed by the aggregation of dermal cells into condensates. The aggregation process is thought to be controlled by a reaction-diffusion mechanism of activator and inhibitor molecules, and involve mechanical forces between cells and cells with the matrix. In this project, placode formation in chicken embryonic skin cells was used as a model system for the study of the mechanism by which the placodes are formed. Artificial aggregates of chicken embryonic skin cells were created by suspending them in a 300 mM low conductivity sorbitol solution and attracting them by positive dielectrophoresis to high field regions within microelectrode arrays by applying a 10 - 20 Vpk-pk 1 MHz signal across the microelectrodes. It was demonstrated that using this method aggregates can be produced in a large variety of patterns and that the distance between the aggregates and aggregate size and shape within the pattern can be controlled effectively. Custom-built image analysis tools were developed in LabVIEW to analyze the patterns formed. The formation of aggregates by dielectrophoresis was followed by an immobilization phase of the resulting patterns inside a gel matrix, forming an artificial skin. Nutrients and oxygen were supplied externally. Long-term incubation of the artificial skin shows that embryonic skin cells in the aggregates were viable and showed behavior similar to that of developing embryonic skin, including further aggregation of the cells and the formation of cell condensates. The domain size was shown to have an influence on the condensation process, with cells in small aggregates forming only one condensate near the centre of the aggregate, and several condensates in larger aggregates. Whilst the distribution of cell condensates within the aggregates in round large aggregates is predominantly random, some line formation could be observed in linear aggregations, indicating some self-organization may be occurring