Tissue Processor Based PLC (Programmable Logic Controller)

Tissue Processor Tissue Processor consists of consists of several stages of dehydration, clearing, and paraffin infiltration.Phase dehydration to remove water content in tissues by immersion into alcohol. Clearing stage is the process of pulling out the alcohol content in the network by using a liquid xylol. Paraffin infiltration stages is the stage of filling cavities with liquid paraffin tissue. The purpose of this research is to modify the equipment that had broken before became an useful equipment that use basic controlled  PLC. This modification tool-making using the "one-group posttest design" by treatment of the instrument without first measuring the initial state, the results of treatment directly measured without comparison to a control group. Making the modification tool using PLC as the main controller throughout the series. The tool mechanical motion using DC motors and AC motors as well as the use of two sensors limit switch as the controller limits the motor movement. Based on the results obtained temperature measurement error with the largest value of 4.44% in paraffin heater tube 1 and the biggest error of 4.0% in paraffin heater tube 2. While the measurement time of each - each tube obtained the smallest error on the tube-to-one by 0 , 03%, and the biggest error of measurement contained in the tube to the fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth and tenth of 0.16%

Linerboard made from Soda-Anthraquinone (Soda-AQ) treated coconut coir fiber and effect of pulp beating

The performance of coir fiber in the production of linerboard made from soda-anthraquinone (soda-AQ) pulp was evaluated. Based on chemical analysis, the composition of coir fiber is suitable for the pulping process. Out of nine pulping conditions characterized, a pulping condition of 18% active alkali for 90 min cooking time was chosen. These conditions provided the highest screened yield (48.99%), a low rejection yield (0.27%), high viscosity (11.73 cP), and a kappa number (41) that is acceptable for unbleached linerboard production. Beating strengthened the coir pulp. Analyzing the beating revealed that coir pulp was optimized at 1000 to 2000 revolutions, based on a graph of freeness vs. burst index. For all beating conditions (1000 to 8000 revolutions), FESEM micrographs showed the presence of internal and external fibrillation of the fiber, which gradually increased fiber conformability and improved the inter-fiber bonding within the paper formation. Based on its burst strength of 4.57 kPa.m2/g and ring crush test of 1.76 Nm2/g, which complies with the minimum requirement of the industry standard, coir fiber can be considered an alternative fiber source for linerboard production

Yield responses of wild C3 and C4 crop progenitors to sub-ambient CO2 : A test for the role of CO2 limitation in the origin of agriculture.

Limitation of plant productivity by the low partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 (Ca ) experienced during the last glacial period is hypothesised to have been an important constraint on the origins of agriculture. In support of this hypothesis, previous work has shown that glacial Ca limits vegetative growth in the wild progenitors of both C3 and C4 founder crops. Here we present data showing that glacial Ca also reduces grain yield in both crop types. We grew four wild progenitors of C3 (einkorn wheat and barley) and C4 crops (foxtail and broomcorn millets) at glacial and post-glacial Ca , measuring grain yield, and the morphological and physiological components contributing to these yield changes. The C3 species showed a significant increase in unthreshed grain yield of ~50% with the increase in Ca , which matched the stimulation of photosynthesis, suggesting that increases in photosynthesis are directly translated into yield at sub-ambient levels of Ca . Increased yield was controlled by a higher rate of tillering, leading to a larger number of tillers bearing fertile spikes, and increases in seed number and size. The C4 species showed smaller, but significant, increases in grain yield of 10-15%, arising from larger seed numbers and sizes. Photosynthesis was enhanced by Ca in only one C4 species and the effect diminished during development, suggesting that an indirect mechanism mediated by plant water relations could also be playing a role in the yield increase. Interestingly, the C4 species at glacial Ca showed some evidence that photosynthetic capacity was upregulated to enhance carbon capture. Development under glacial Ca also impacted negatively on the subsequent germination and viability of seeds. These results suggest that the grain production of both C3 and C4 crop progenitors was limited by the atmospheric conditions of the last glacial period, with important implications for the origins of agriculture. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Investigation of Lower-limb Tissue Perfusion during Loading

An extant tissue indentor used for amputee residual limb tissue indentation studies was modified to include laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF) to enable measurement of tissue perfusion during indentation. This device allows quantitative assessment of the mechanical and physiological response of soft tissues to load, as demonstrated by indentation studies of the lower-limb tissues of young healthy subjects. Potential measures of interest include the relative change in tissue perfusion with load and the time delays associated with the perfusion response during tissue loading and unloading. Such measures may prove useful in future studies of residual limb tissues, improving our understanding of tissue viability risk factors for individuals with lower-limb amputation

Angiogenesis in tissue engineering : Breathing life into constructed tissue substitutes

Long-term function of three-dimensional (3D) tissue constructs depends on adequate vascularization after implantation. Accordingly, research in tissue engineering has focused on the analysis of angiogenesis. For this purpose, 2 sophisticated in vivo models (the chorioallantoic membrane and the dorsal skinfold chamber) have recently been introduced in tissue engineering research, allowing a more detailed analysis of angiogenic dysfunction and engraftment failure. To achieve vascularization of tissue constructs, several approaches are currently under investigation. These include the modification of biomaterial properties of scaffolds and the stimulation of blood vessel development and maturation by different growth factors using slow-release devices through pre-encapsulated microspheres. Moreover, new microvascular networks in tissue substitutes can be engineered by using endothelial cells and stem cells or by creating arteriovenous shunt loops. Nonetheless, the currently used techniques are not sufficient to induce the rapid vascularization necessary for an adequate cellular oxygen supply. Thus, future directions of research should focus on the creation of microvascular networks within 3D tissue constructs in vitro before implantation or by co-stimulation of angiogenesis and parenchymal cell proliferation to engineer the vascularized tissue substitute in situ

ScarGAN: Chained Generative Adversarial Networks to Simulate Pathological Tissue on Cardiovascular MR Scans

Medical images with specific pathologies are scarce, but a large amount of data is usually required for a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) to achieve good accuracy. We consider the problem of segmenting the left ventricular (LV) myocardium on late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) scans of which only some of the scans have scar tissue. We propose ScarGAN to simulate scar tissue on healthy myocardium using chained generative adversarial networks (GAN). Our novel approach factorizes the simulation process into 3 steps: 1) a mask generator to simulate the shape of the scar tissue; 2) a domain-specific heuristic to produce the initial simulated scar tissue from the simulated shape; 3) a refining generator to add details to the simulated scar tissue. Unlike other approaches that generate samples from scratch, we simulate scar tissue on normal scans resulting in highly realistic samples. We show that experienced radiologists are unable to distinguish between real and simulated scar tissue. Training a U-Net with additional scans with scar tissue simulated by ScarGAN increases the percentage of scar pixels correctly included in LV myocardium prediction from 75.9% to 80.5%.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures. To appear in MICCAI DLMIA 201

Autonomous Tissue Scanning under Free-Form Motion for Intraoperative Tissue Characterisation

In Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS), tissue scanning with imaging probes is required for subsurface visualisation to characterise the state of the tissue. However, scanning of large tissue surfaces in the presence of deformation is a challenging task for the surgeon. Recently, robot-assisted local tissue scanning has been investigated for motion stabilisation of imaging probes to facilitate the capturing of good quality images and reduce the surgeon's cognitive load. Nonetheless, these approaches require the tissue surface to be static or deform with periodic motion. To eliminate these assumptions, we propose a visual servoing framework for autonomous tissue scanning, able to deal with free-form tissue deformation. The 3D structure of the surgical scene is recovered and a feature-based method is proposed to estimate the motion of the tissue in real-time. A desired scanning trajectory is manually defined on a reference frame and continuously updated using projective geometry to follow the tissue motion and control the movement of the robotic arm. The advantage of the proposed method is that it does not require the learning of the tissue motion prior to scanning and can deal with free-form deformation. We deployed this framework on the da Vinci surgical robot using the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) for Ultrasound tissue scanning. Since the framework does not rely on information from the Ultrasound data, it can be easily extended to other probe-based imaging modalities.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, ICRA 202

Sound propagation through bone tissue

Effect of perforation on structure borne sound propagation through rigid porous materials has been investigated. Experimental works has been carried out on rigid porous materials with and without perforations. A low frequency vibration has been applied to excite the material structure by using a force transducer connected a shaker to detect the changes in resulting response. Applied vibration on sample surface causes structure borne sound wave to propagate through the material. The resulting response of this structural borne vibration is detected by using an accelerometer. The results with and without perforation of the sample have been compared. The results show that changing the structure of the material has an effect on the amplitude, shape and arrival time of the transmitted acoustic wave

Comparison of Varying Tissue Freezing Methods on Murine Colonic Tissue

Histology often requires a tissue specimen to be embedded so that it may be sectioned, stained, and mounted on a microscope slide for viewing. One common method of tissue embedding for rapid histology is freezing, since freezing allows tissue to be stored without the need for fixing. Frozen tissue is often embedded in a medium such as Optimal Cutting Temperature (OCT) compound so that it can be sectioned using a cryostat. However, factors such as ice-crystal formation during the freezing process can cause damage to the tissue. As such, the protocol used to freeze the tissue can affect the quality of the slides. The purpose of this project is to compare different freezing methods and examine their strengths and weaknesses when applied to murine colonic tissue. Murine colonic tissue was frozen using two snap-freezing methods, piezoelectric freezing, and two different cold storage methods, each with their own three to four variations. Transverse sections were made in a cryostat, which were mounted on slides and stained using a hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining protocol. The sections were then imaged using a light microscope. A blind test was conducted to rate the image quality and inter-rater agreement was calculated using Fleiss’s Kappa. Paraffin embedding obtained the highest score, while OCT embedding inside a -80°C freezer received the second highest score