Novel concepts and strategies in skull base reconstruction after endoscopic endonasal surgery

Recently, a variety of craniofacial approaches has been adopted to enter the skull base, among those, the endonasal endoscopic technique. An effective watertight thereafter: the reconstruction can be performed using different materials, both autologous and non-autologous, individually or combined in a multilayer fashion. The current study was focused on the development of new advanced devices and techniques, aiding in reducing postoperative CSF leak rate. Additive manufacturing allows the design of devices with tailored structural and functional features and, as well, injectable semi-IPNs and composites; therefore specific mechanical/rheological and injectability studies are valuable. Accordingly, we propose new additive-manufactured and injectable devices

DESIGN STRATEGIES AND ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING OF 3D CUSTOMIZED SCAFFOLDS WITH OPTIMIZED PROPERTIES FOR CRANIOFACIAL TISSUE ENGINEERING

3D customized scaffolds for craniofacial tissue engineering were designed using advanced strategies and technologies. Specifically, reverse engineering, additive manufacturing, material selection, experimental and theoretical analyses were properly integrated. The focus was on: i) design strategies of 3D customized nanocomposite scaffolds for hard tissue regeneration; ii) an engineered design of 3D additive manufactured nanocomposite scaffolds with optimized properties; iii) an approach toward the design of 3D customized scaffolds for large cranial defects

Integrated Methodologies and Technologies for the Design of Advanced Biomedical Devices

Biomedical devices with tailored properties were designed using advanced methodologies and technologies. In particular, design for additive manufacturing, reverse engineering, material selection, experimental and theoretical analyses were properly integrated. The focus was on the design of: i) 3D additively manufactured hybrid structures for cranioplasty; ii) technical solutions and customized prosthetic devices with tailored properties for skull base reconstruction after endoscopic endonasal surgery; iii) solid-lattice hybrid structures with optimized properties for biomedical applications. The feasibility of the proposed technical solutions was also assessed through virtual and physical models

Innovative algorithms and data structures for signal treatment applied to ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451 smart transducers

2014 - 2015Technologies and, in particular sensors, permeate more and more application sectors. From energy management, to the factories one, to houses, environments, infrastructure, and building monitoring, to healthcare and traceability systems, sensors are more and more widespread in our daily life. In the growing context of the Internet of Things capabilities to acquire magnitudes of interest, to elaborate and to communicate data is required to these technologies. These capabilities of acquisition, elaboration, and communication can be integrated on a unique device, a smart sensor, which integrates the sensible element with a simple programmable logic device, capable of managing elaboration and communication. An efficient implementation of communication is required to these technologies, in order to better exploit the available bandwidth, minimizing energy consumption. Moreover, these devices have to be easily interchangeable (plug and play) in such a way that they could be easily usable. Nowadays, smart sensors available on the market reveal several problems such as programming complexity, for which depth knowledge is required, and limited software porting capability. The family of standards IEEE 1451 is written with the aim to define a set of common communication interfaces. These documents come from the Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) with the aim to create a standard interface which allows devices interoperability produced from different manufacturers, but it is not concerned with problems related to bandwidth, management, elaboration and programming. For this family of standards, now under review, it is expected a further development, with the aim to renew applicable standards, and to add new layers of standardization. The draft of the ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451.001 proposes to solve problems related to the bandwidth and the elaboration management, relocating a part of processing in the point of acquisition, taking advantage of elaboration capabilities of smart sensors. This proposal is based on a Real Time Segmentation and Labeling algorithm, a new sampling technique, which allows to reduce the high number of samples to be transferred, with the same information content. This algorithm returns a data structure, according to which the draft expects two elaboration layers: a first layer, in order to elaborate basic information of the signal processing, and a second layer, for more complex elaboration. [edited by author]XIV n.s

On the suitability of compressive sampling for the measurement of electrical power quality

The deeper interconnection and the increasing presence of active devices on the electrical networks is raising many issues concerning with the monitoring of Power Quality phenomena. Voltage parameters related to the supply of electricity and current parameters related to the working of electrical apparatuses have to be monitored as accurately as possible. To this aim specific international standards impose strict measurement methods and complex measurement instrument architectures, usually based on the computation of real time Fast Fourier Transforms, to be adopted for the purpose. In particular, considering poly-phase systems, four currents and four voltages have to be detected, synchronized, measured and analyzed with good accuracy and spectral resolution. This imposes to the measurement the calculation of eight FFTs in a very short time. These requirements conflicts with the need of cost-effective measurement instruments required by spread and distributed monitoring systems in many points of the electrical plant. To face this issues this paper proposes the study and the tuning of compressive sampling (CS) techniques capable of assuring reliable reconstruction of the signal of interest from very low acquired samples. In particular, to make the CS use more feasible, the authors have also exploited some peculiarities of the CS approach in order to reduce the computational burden usually associated with the mere application of its acquisition and reconstruction protocol. Preliminary results confirm the applicability of the proposed solution