High Frequency Sampling of TTL Pulses on a Raspberry Pi for Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy Applications

Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy (DCS) is a well-established optical technique that has been used for non-invasive measurement of blood flow in tissues. Instrumentation for DCS includes a correlation device that computes the temporal intensity autocorrelation of a coherent laser source after it has undergone diffuse scattering through a turbid medium. Typically, the signal acquisition and its autocorrelation are performed by a correlation board. These boards have dedicated hardware to acquire and compute intensity autocorrelations of rapidly varying input signal and usually are quite expensive. Here we show that a Raspberry Pi minicomputer can acquire and store a rapidly varying time-signal with high fidelity. We show that this signal collected by a Raspberry Pi device can be processed numerically to yield intensity autocorrelations well suited for DCS applications. DCS measurements made using the Raspberry Pi device were compared to those acquired using a commercial hardware autocorrelation board to investigate the stability, performance, and accuracy of the data acquired in controlled experiments. This paper represents a first step toward lowering the instrumentation cost of a DCS system and may offer the potential to make DCS become more widely used in biomedical applications.Radiation Monitoring Devices, Inc

Acute Stress Attenuates Cognitive Flexibility in Males Only: An fNIRS Examination

Cognitive processes that afford us the ability to control thoughts and achieve goal-directed behavior are known as executive functions. Empirical evidence in the past few years has demonstrated that executive functions can be influenced by acute stress. The impact of acute stress on cognitive flexibility, a key aspect of executive functions, has received little attention in the literature. We present the results of two experiments conducted to examine the effect of acute stress on cognitive flexibility. Acute stress was induced using the cold pressor task. Cognitive flexibility was assessed using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). Across both experiments acute stress had an attenuating effect on task switching on the WCST. Our findings also indicate that this effect was moderated by the participant’s gender. In Study 1, we observed that following stress exposure male participants in the stress condition made more perseverative errors than participants in the control group. In Study 2, we examined the bilateral hemodynamics in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) during acute stress induction using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Our analysis indicated that functional oxyHb signals fluctuated with greater amplitude than systemic components for participants in the stress group relative to those in the control group. In addition, oxyHb levels post stress induction were correlated with performance on the WCST for the male participants in the stress group only. Concordant with previous reports, our findings indicate that acute stress impacts cognitive flexibility in males and females differentially. Our work also demonstrates the feasibility of using fNIRS as a practical and objective technique for the examination of hemodynamics in the PFC during acute stress

Detection of Squamous Cell Carcinoma and Corresponding Biomarkers Using Optical Spectroscopy

1) Investigate the use of optical reflectance spectroscopy to differentiate malignant and non-malignant tissues in head and neck lesions; 2) Characterize corresponding oxygen tissue biomarkers that are associated with pathologic diagnosi

Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy at Short Source-Detector Separations: Simulations, Experiments and Theoretical Modeling

Diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) has widely been used as a non-invasive optical technique to measure tissue perfusion in vivo. DCS measurements are quantified to yield information about moving scatterers using photon diffusion theory and are therefore obtained at long source-detector separations (SDS). However, short SDS DCS could be used for measuring perfusion in small animal models or endoscopically in clinical studies. Here, we investigate the errors in analytically retrieved flow coefficients from simulated and experimental data acquired at short SDS. Monte Carlo (MC) simulations of photon correlation transport was programmed to simulate DCS measurements and used to (a) examine the accuracy and validity of theoretical analyses, and (b) model experimental measurements made on phantoms at short SDS. Experiments consisted of measurements from a series of optical phantoms containing an embedded flow channel. Both the fluid flow rate and depth of the flow channel from the liquid surface were varied. Inputs to MC simulations required to model experiments were obtained from corrected theoretical analyses. Results show that the widely used theoretical DCS model is robust for quantifying relative changes in flow. We also show that retrieved flow coefficients at short SDS can be scaled to retrieve absolute values via MC simulations

Computational modeling of time-resolved fluorescence transport in turbid media for non-invasive clinical diagnostics.

Fluorescence spectroscopy and imaging methods, including fluorescence lifetime sensing, are being developed for a variety of non-invasive clinical diagnostic procedures, including applications to early cancer diagnosis. Here, both the theoretical developments and experimental validations of a versatile, numerical Monte Carlo code that models photon migration in turbid media to include simulations of time-resolved fluorescence transport are presented. The developed numerical model was used to study, for the first time, the dependence of time-resolved fluorescence signals emanating from turbid media on the optical transport coefficients, fluorophore properties and source-detector configurations in single-layered turbid media as well as more complex multi-layered turbid media. The numerical codes presented here can be adapted to model a wide range of experimental techniques measuring the optical responses of biological tissues to laser irradiation and are demonstrated here for two specific applications (a) to model time-resolved fluorescence dynamics in human colon tissues and (b) to extract the frequency-dependent optical responses of a model adult human head to an incident laser-source whose intensity was harmonically modulated i.e. simulating frequency-domain measurements. Specifically, measurements of time-resolved fluorescence decays from a previous clinical study aimed toward detecting differences in tissue pathologies in patients undergoing gastro-intestinal endoscopy were simulated using the Monte Carlo model and results demonstrated that variations in tissue optical transport coefficients (absorption and scattering) alone could not account for the fluorescence decay differences detected between tissue pathologies in vivo. However, variations in fluorescence decay time as large as those detected clinically between normal and pre-malignant tissues (of 2 ns) could be accounted for by simulated variations in tissue morphology or biochemistry while intrinsic fluorophore lifetimes were held constant. Potential applications of the numerical code for the construction of optimized fiber-probes for efficient clinical diagnostics and the reconstruction of tissue optical properties to match experimental measurements, possibly in real-time via the use of heuristic scaling procedures, are discussed.Ph.D.Applied SciencesBiomedical engineeringOpticsPure SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/125246/2/3186780.pd

Physics based analytical modelling of silicon carbide (SiC) MESFET considering different ion implantation energy with high temperature annealing

Includes bibliographical references (pages 59-81)A Physics based analytical model of ion implanted SiC MESFET has been developed considering the high temperature annealing effects. The diffusion of implanted impurities has been calculated with appropriate activation energy of impurity atoms. The impurity distribution of impurities has been estimated by incorporating of impurity diffusion in the bulk during high temperature. The I-V characteristics, threshold voltage and transconductance have been computed for two ion implantation energies (100KeV and 150KeV) considering the high temperature annealing. A comparative study on I-V characteristics for two ion implantation energies has been conducted to understand the diffusion of impurities during high temperature annealing and its effect on the channel current. The ion implantation process parameters have been extracted from SRIM. The threshold voltage was extensively studied to observe the threshold voltage shift for enhancement and depletion due to ion dose and high temperature annealing. The transconductance was studied to understand the frequency response in the influence of high temperature annealing

Internal refractive index changes affect light transport in tissue

This investigation explores the effect of index of refraction, as an optical property, on light transport through optically turbid media. We describe a model of light propagation that incorporates the influence of refractive index mismatch at boundaries within a domain. We measure light transmission through turbid cylindrical phatoms with different distributions of refractive index. These distributions approximate the heterogeneous, layered nature of biological tissue. Finite element method model calculations of diffuse transmittance through these phantoms show good agreement with the trends observed experimentally. We see that phase measurements of light that propagates through approximately 90 (mm) of scatter-dominated media may vary by 10 degrees depending upon the values of refractive index of the medium. Amplitude measurements are not as sensitive to this parameter as phase. Model calculations of diffuse reflectance from a semi-infinite slab geometry with different layers also shows good agreement with Monte Carlo simulations. We conclude that incorporating refractive index into light transport models may be worthwhile. Applying such a model in tomographic image reconstruction may improve the estimation of optical properties of biological tissues.</p