Antidiabetic and hypolipidemic effects of mahanimbine (carbazole alkaloid) from murraya koenigii (rutaceae) leaves

Murraya koenigii leaves (Rutaceae) are used traditionally in Indian Ayurvedic system to treat diabetes. The purpose of the study is to investigate the effect of mahanimbine (carbazole alkaloid from Murraya koenigii leaves) on blood glucose and serum lipid profiles on streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. Diabetes was induced in adult male Wistar rats by intra-peritoneal injection of streptozotocin (45mg/kg). Mahanimbine (50 and 100mg/kg) were administrated as a single dose per week to the diabetic rats for 30 days. The control group received 0.3% w/v sodium carboxy methyl cellulose for the same duration. Fasting blood sugar and serum lipid profiles were measured in the diabetic and non-diabetic rats. In addition, in vitro alpha amylase and alpha glucosidase inhibitory effects of mahanimbine were performed. Results: In the diabetic rats, the elevated fasting blood sugar, triglycerides, low density lipoprotein, very low density lipoprotein levels were reduced and high density lipoprotein level was increased by mahanimbine at a dose of 50 and 100mg/kg (i.p). In addition, mahanimbine showed appreciable alpha amylase inhibitory effect and weak alpha glucosidase inhibitory effects when compared with acarbose. Conclusions: The present study indicated that mahanimbine possess anti-hyperglycemic and anti-lipidemic effects. Thus results suggesting mahanimbine has beneficial effect in the management of diabetes associated with abnormal lipid profile and related cardiovascular complications.Keywords: Streptozotocin; Hypoglycemic; Hypolipidemic; Mahanimbin

Antidiabetic and hypolipidemic effects of mahanimbine (carbazole alkaloid) from murraya koenigii (rutaceae) leaves

Murraya koenigii leaves (Rutaceae) are used traditionally in Indian Ayurvedic system to treat diabetes. The purpose of the study is to investigate the effect of mahanimbine (carbazole alkaloid from Murraya koenigii leaves) on blood glucose and serum lipid profiles on streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. Diabetes was induced in adult male Wistar rats by intra-peritoneal injection of streptozotocin (45mg/kg). Mahanimbine (50 and 100mg/kg) were administrated as a single dose per week to the diabetic rats for 30 days. The control group received 0.3% w/v sodium carboxy methyl cellulose for the same duration. Fasting blood sugar and serum lipid profiles were measured in the diabetic and non-diabetic rats. In addition, in vitro alpha amylase and alpha glucosidase inhibitory effects of mahanimbine were performed. Results: In the diabetic rats, the elevated fasting blood sugar, triglycerides, low density lipoprotein, very low density lipoprotein levels were reduced and high density lipoprotein level was increased by mahanimbine at a dose of 50 and 100mg/kg (i.p). In addition, mahanimbine showed appreciable alpha amylase inhibitory effect and weak alpha glucosidase inhibitory effects when compared with acarbose. Conclusions: The present study indicated that mahanimbine possess anti-hyperglycemic and anti-lipidemic effects. Thus results suggesting mahanimbine has beneficial effect in the management of diabetes associated with abnormal lipid profile and related cardiovascular complications.Keywords: Streptozotocin; Hypoglycemic; Hypolipidemic; Mahanimbin

An electro-oculogram based vision system for grasp assistive devices - A proof of concept study

Humans typically fixate on objects before moving their arm to grasp the object. Patients with ALS disorder can also select the object with their intact eye movement, but are unable to move their limb due to the loss of voluntary muscle control. Though several research works have already achieved success in generating the correct grasp type from their brain measurement, we are still searching for fine controll over an object with a grasp assistive device (orthosis/exoskeleton/robotic arm). Object orientation and object width are two important parameters for controlling the wrist angle and the grasp aperture of the assistive device to replicate a human-like stable grasp. Vision systems are already evolved to measure the geometrical attributes of the object to control the grasp with a prosthetic hand. However, most of the existing vision systems are integrated with electromyography and require some amount of voluntary muscle movement to control the vision system. Due to that reason, those systems are not beneficial for the users with brain-controlled assistive devices. Here, we implemented a vision system which can be controlled through the human gaze. We measured the vertical and horizontal electrooculogram signals and controlled the pan and tilt of a cap-mounted webcam to keep the object of interest in focus and at the centre of the picture. A simple ‘signature’ extraction procedure was also utilized to reduce the algorithmic complexity and system storage capacity. The developed device has been tested with ten healthy participants. We approximated the object orientation and the size of the object and determined an appropriate wrist orientation angle and the grasp aperture size within 22 ms. The combined accuracy exceeded 75%. The integration of the proposed system with the brain-controlled grasp assistive device and increasing the number of grasps can offer more natural manoeuvring in grasp for ALS patients

Enhancement and labelling of OCT images

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a noninvasive technique for visualizing retinal cross-sections, assisting in diagnosing and monitoring retinal diseases. This study presents an effective OCT image noise reduction and segmentation method. Due to the high resolution of our primary image database, a visual comparison of filter performance was challenging. To address this, we utilized a high-noise image dataset from Duke University, enabling a better evaluation of noise reduction filters. Our method was compared against eight widely-used image filters, including Gaussian, Low pass,Wavelet domain filtering, Lee filter, Anisotropic diffusion, Bilateral filter, Total variational filter, and BM3D filter. Both visual and quantitative analyses were conducted using no-reference performance parameters, namely Gradient Magnitude Similarity Deviation (GMSD), Standard Deviation of Wavelet Coefficients (SDWC), Focus Measure with Tengrade Variance (FMTV), Perception-based Image Quality Evaluator (PIQE), and Visual Information Fidelity (VIF). The results demonstrated the superiority of our proposed filter in terms of noise reduction performance while maintaining the sharpness of retinal layers. Quantitative analysis revealed notable performance gains, including improvements of 63.27% to 83.24% with GMSD, consistent edge strength enhancement of 9.4% to 9.97% using SDWC, gains in image quality between 51.99% and 54.64% with FMTV, performance improvements ranging from 7.25% to 23.97% in terms of PIQE, and a substantial increase in performance varying from 16.31% to 27.69% when assessing the impact on retinal layer quality using VIF. Using the Kruskal-Wallis test, our proposed noise reduction method shows statistical significance for all quantitative parameters. Additionally, our clustering algorithm effectively separated the foreground, including retinal layers and vitreous detachment, from the background and identified an area representing the region between retinal layers where fluid accumulates. We’ve successfully achieved OCT image enhancement, along with distinct foreground and background segmentation