The Effect of Silver Nanofibers on the Deformation Properties of Blood Vessels: Towards the Development of New Nanotechnologies to Prevent Rupture of Aneurysms

An aneurysm is the result of a widening or ballooning of a portion of a blood vessel. The rupture of an aneurysm occurs when the mechanical stress acting on the inner wall exceeds the failure strength of the blood vessel. We propose an innovative approach to prevent the rupture of an aneurysm based on the use of nanotechnology to improve the strength of the blood vessel. We present results on the effect of silver nanofibers on the resistance toward deformation of blood vessels. The silver nanofibers are grown on the surface of the blood vessels. The nanofibers are 120±30 nm in diameter and 2.7±0.8 μm in length. The deformation per applied force of blood vessels was found to decrease from 0.15 m/N in control blood vessels to 0.003 m/N in blood vessels treated with the nanofibers. This represents an increase in the resistance towards deformation of a factor of 50. The increase in the resistance towards deformation is clinically significant since blood pressure increases by factors slightly larger than one in the human body. Treatment of blood vessels with silver nanofibers is a potential translational clinical tool for preventing rupture of aneurysms in a clinical setting

Summer 2014 Biomedical Engineering Newsletter

Table of Contents New IEEE, AIMBE and SPIE fellows Arteries on aisle 9 Implants with sensors that shake off infection Mitch Kirby wins Whitaker International Fellowship Skin patch warns when it’s time to get out of the sunhttps://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/biomedical-newsletters/1001/thumbnail.jp

Characterization of alar ligament on 3.0T MRI: a cross-sectional study in IIUM Medical Centre, Kuantan

INTRODUCTION: The main purpose of the study is to compare the normal anatomy of alar ligament on MRI between male and female. The specific objectives are to assess the prevalence of alar ligament visualized on MRI, to describe its characteristics in term of its course, shape and signal homogeneity and to find differences in alar ligament signal intensity between male and female. This study also aims to determine the association between the heights of respondents with alar ligament signal intensity and dimensions. MATERIALS & METHODS: 50 healthy volunteers were studied on 3.0T MR scanner Siemens Magnetom Spectra using 2-mm proton density, T2 and fat-suppression sequences. Alar ligament is depicted in 3 planes and the visualization and variability of the ligament courses, shapes and signal intensity characteristics were determined. The alar ligament dimensions were also measured. RESULTS: Alar ligament was best depicted in coronal plane, followed by sagittal and axial planes. The orientations were laterally ascending in most of the subjects (60%), predominantly oval in shaped (54%) and 67% showed inhomogenous signal. No significant difference of alar ligament signal intensity between male and female respondents. No significant association was found between the heights of the respondents with alar ligament signal intensity and dimensions. CONCLUSION: Employing a 3.0T MR scanner, the alar ligament is best portrayed on coronal plane, followed by sagittal and axial planes. However, tremendous variability of alar ligament as depicted in our data shows that caution needs to be exercised when evaluating alar ligament, especially during circumstances of injury

Case series of breast fillers and how things may go wrong: radiology point of view

INTRODUCTION: Breast augmentation is a procedure opted by women to overcome sagging breast due to breastfeeding or aging as well as small breast size. Recent years have shown the emergence of a variety of injectable materials on market as breast fillers. These injectable breast fillers have swiftly gained popularity among women, considering the minimal invasiveness of the procedure, nullifying the need for terrifying surgery. Little do they know that the procedure may pose detrimental complications, while visualization of breast parenchyma infiltrated by these fillers is also deemed substandard; posing diagnostic challenges. We present a case series of three patients with prior history of hyaluronic acid and collagen breast injections. REPORT: The first patient is a 37-year-old lady who presented to casualty with worsening shortness of breath, non-productive cough, central chest pain; associated with fever and chills for 2-weeks duration. The second patient is a 34-year-old lady who complained of cough, fever and haemoptysis; associated with shortness of breath for 1-week duration. CT in these cases revealed non thrombotic wedge-shaped peripheral air-space densities. The third patient is a 37‐year‐old female with right breast pain, swelling and redness for 2- weeks duration. Previous collagen breast injection performed 1 year ago had impeded sonographic visualization of the breast parenchyma. MRI breasts showed multiple non- enhancing round and oval shaped lesions exhibiting fat intensity. CONCLUSION: Radiologists should be familiar with the potential risks and hazards as well as limitations of imaging posed by breast fillers such that MRI is required as problem-solving tool

Computational estimation of haemodynamics and tissue stresses in abdominal aortic aneurysms

'o e Abdominal aortic aneurysm is a vascular disease involving a focal dilation of the aorta. The exact cause is unknown but possibilities include infection and weakening of the connective tissue. Risk factors include a history of atherosclerosis, current smoking and a close relative with the disease. Although abdominal aortic aneurysm can affect anyone, it is most often seen in older men, and may be present in up to 5.9 % of the population aged 80 years. Biomechanical factors such as tissue stresses and shear stresses have been shown to play a part in aneurysm progression, although the specific mechanisms are still to be determined. The growth rate of the abdominal aortic aneurysm has been found to correlate with the peak stress in the aneurysm wall and the blood flow is thought to influence disease development. In order to resolve the connections between biology and biomechanics, accurate estimations of the forces involved are required. The first part of this thesis assesses the use of computational fluid dynamics for modelling haemodynamics in abdominal aortic aneurysms. Boundary conditions from the literature o

Early characterisation of neurodegeneration with high-resolution magnetic resonance elastography

This thesis contributes to recent interest within medical imaging regarding the development and clinical application of magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) to the human brain. MRE is a non-invasive phase-contrast MRI technique for measurement of brain mechanical properties in vivo, shown to reflect the composition and organisation of the complex tissue microstructure. MRE is a promising imaging biomarker for the early characterisation of neurodegeneration due to its exquisite sensitivity to variation among healthy and pathological tissue. Neurodegenerative diseases are debilitating conditions of the human nervous system for which there is currently no cure. Novel biomarkers are required to improve early detection, differential diagnosis and monitoring of disease progression, and could also ultimately improve our understanding of the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying degenerative processes. This thesis begins with a theoretical background of brain MRE and a description of the experimental considerations. A systematic review of the literature is then performed to summarise brain MRE quantitative measurements in healthy participants and to determine the success of MRE to characterise neurological disorders. This review further identified the most promising acquisition and analysis methods within the field. As such, subsequent visits to three brain MRE research centres, within the USA and Germany, enabled the acquisition of exemplar phantom and brain data to assist in discussions to refine an experimental protocol for installation at the Edinburgh Imaging Facility, QMRI (EIF-QMRI). Through collaborations with world-leading brain MRE centres, two high-resolution - yet fundamentally different - MRE pipelines were installed at the EIF-QMRI. Several optimisations were implemented to improve MRE image quality, while the clinical utility of MRE was enhanced by the novel development of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the optimised and automatic MRE-toanatomical coregistration and generation of MRE derived output measures. The first experimental study was performed in 6 young and 6 older healthy adults to compare the results from the two MRE pipelines to investigate test-retest agreement of the whole brain and a brain structure of interest: the hippocampal formation. The MRE protocol shown to possess superior reproducibility was subsequently applied in a second experimental study of 12 young and 12 older cognitively healthy adults. Results include finding that the MRE imaging procedure is very well tolerated across the recruited population. Novel findings include significantly softer brains in older adults both across the global cerebrum and in the majority of subcortical grey matter structures including the pallidum, putamen, caudate, and thalamus. Changes in tissue stiffness likely reflect an alteration to the strength in the composition of the tissue network. All MRE effects persist after correcting for brain structure volume suggesting changes in volume alone were not reflective of the detected MRE age differences. Interestingly, no age-related differences to tissue stiffness were found for the amygdala or hippocampus. As for brain viscosity, no group differences were detected for either the brain globally or subcortical structures, suggesting a preservation of the organisation of the tissue network in older age. The third experiment performed in this thesis finds a direct structure-function relationship in older adults between hippocampal viscosity and episodic memory as measured with verbal-paired recall. The source of this association was located to the left hippocampus, thus complementing previous literature suggesting unilateral hippocampal specialisation. Additionally, a more significant relationship was found between left hippocampal viscosity and memory after a new procedure was developed to remove voxels containing cerebrospinal fluid from the MRE analysis. Collectively, these results support the transition of brain MRE into a clinically useful neuroimaging modality that could, in particular, be used in the early characterisation of memory specific disorders such as amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer’s disease

Simulation-Based Joint Estimation of Body Deformation and Elasticity Parameters for Medical Image Analysis

Estimation of tissue stiffness is an important means of noninvasive cancer detection. Existing elasticity reconstruction methods usually depend on a dense displacement field (inferred from ultrasound or MR images) and known external forces. Many imaging modalities, however, cannot provide details within an organ and therefore cannot provide such a displacement field. Furthermore, force exertion and measurement can be difficult for some internal organs, making boundary forces another missing parameter. We propose a general method for estimating elasticity and boundary forces automatically using an iterative optimization framework, given the desired (target) output surface. During the optimization, the input model is deformed by the simulator, and an objective function based on the distance between the deformed surface and the target surface is minimized numerically. The optimization framework does not depend on a particular simulation method and is therefore suitable for different physical models. We show a positive correlation between clinical prostate cancer stage (a clinical measure of severity) and the recovered elasticity of the organ. Since the surface correspondence is established, our method also provides a non-rigid image registration, where the quality of the deformation fields is guaranteed, as they are computed using a physics-based simulation