Smart Embedded Systems for Biomedical Applications

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Quasi-Digital Biosensor-Interface for a Portable Pen to Monitor Anaesthetics Delivery

Monitoring of patient response to the anaesthetic drugs is an attractive improvement for achieving a correct balance of sedation level, increasing the chance of success in the right procedure of anaesthesia. Nowadays, there are no commercial tools able to offer real-time monitoring of anaesthetics, indeed, there is still a lack in sensing technologies able to maintain high performances in long term monitoring within a portable miniaturised hardware system. To overcome these limitations, we are here presenting the innovative concept of a portable pen-device able to sense anaesthetic compounds over time. This study is based on an electrochemical sensor to be fully integrated into a complete pen-shaped point-of-care for the monitoringof anaesthesia delivery. The design of the system is based on a bio-inspired event-based approach that is guaranteeing low complexity, low power consumption and is therefore suitable to be scaled to fit the barrel of a pen. An exhaustive comparison between the proposed system and a lab instrument proves that the presented approach obtains comparable performances in terms of sensitivity and resolution with the ones obtained by expensive commercial instrumentation, meanwhile, the results show a 95 % power consumption reduction and a 92 % area decrease w.r.t. previously presented implementation

FPGA accelerator of algebraic quasi cyclic LDPC codes for NAND flash memories

In this article, the authors implement an FPGA simulator that accelerates the performance evaluation of very long QC-LDPC codes, and present a novel 8-KB LDPC code for NAND flash memory with better performance

New Approach for Making Standard the Development of Biosensing Devices by a Modular Multi-Purpose Design

The fast widening of biosensing applications, such as healthcare, drug delivery, food, and military industries, is increasing the need for generality and compatibility among different sensors. To address this challenge, we present here an innovative approach for the fast development of new electronic biosensing systems, linking a custom-designed front-end with a multi-purpose system. We envision an open tool to help designers to focus on the target molecule and related detection method instead of designing each time a dedicated electronic device. The architecture of the proposed system is based on a modular approach, where only the front-end and the software need to be custom re-designed according to the application. Considering current research and applying a rigorous definition of the technical requirements, the core of the system is designed to fit the highest number of biosensing methods. The flexibility of this approach is successfully demonstrated with three different types of biosensors, i.e., amperometric, ion-sensitive, and memristive

Raspberry Pi Driven Flow-Injection System for Electrochemical Continuous Monitoring Platforms

Nowadays, there is an immense interest regarding new bio-sensing technologies, highlighting the need for effective validation of their capabilities. This necessity is more crucial when examining the proprieties of a sensor for continuous monitoring of a concentration trend in time, before in vivo implementations. In the framework of personalised medicine, it is imperative to introduce a robust way to parametrise the highly variable responses of human metabolism. We propose a novel solution for the design of an automatic flow-injection environment that validates continuous monitoring systems performances. The setup is also validated for reproducing a paracetamol concentration trend in buffer solution

A Flexible Front-End for Wearable Electrochemical Sensing

This work presents the design and the realization of a flexible front-end circuitry for electrochemical sensing with wearable devices. The hardware combines readout circuitry for amperometric and Open Circuit Potential (OCP) measurements. The sensing platforms are dedicated to lactate and lithium detection in sweat, hence allowing the monitoring of athletes under physical effort. The wearability of the system is ensured by the flexibility of the electronic substrate, its small dimensions that fit an armband case, and the wireless transmission through a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) module. The power consumption of the system has been evaluated to be 200mW, with 3.6V on board power supply

Raspberry-Pi Based System for Propofol Monitoring

Anesthesia inducted with propofol is a nowadays largely adopted technique in hospital environments. The correct balancing of this compound is essential to avoid under- or over-dosages that may result in serious side-effects. Therefore, we are here presenting the design and the validation of a custom-made, low-cost and portable Point-of-Care (PoC) system based on electrochemical detection for propofol monitoring. Fouling phenomenon due to phenolic oxidation of propofol has been overcome by adopting a Pencil Graphite Electrode (PGE) 3H as sensor. The validation of the system focused on testing the measurement speed through scan-rate analysis, which is important due to the fast clearance of propofol metabolism; and on interference study with Paracetamol (APAP), since it is an analgesic compound frequently administered with propofol in medical practices

Portable memristive biosensing system as effective point-of-care device for cancer diagnostics

Memristive biosensors have been proved as excellent candidates for ultrasensitive biosensing. In this work, a novel portable bio-detection system based on memristive biosensors is designed, developed and tested for providing a significantly fast, automatic and simultaneous sensing output of multiple memristive biosensors on a single chip. The suggested compact and independent bio-sensing prototype is achieved through the realization of an electronic board designed for addressing the specifications of the memristive biosensor signal acquisition. Memristive bio-sensing-chips are specially designed and fabricated as well. The system was tested for successfully sensing of Prostate Specific Antigen, one of the main biomarkers of prostate cancer, at fM concentrations. Overall, this novel scheme resembles to a memristive-biosensing-kit approach, paving the way for fast and ultrasensitive PoC (point-of-care) devices.</p

Raspberry Pi Based System for Portable and Simultaneous Monitoring of Anesthetics and Therapeutic Compounds

Personalized drug dosage is crucial to ensure optimal benefit in patient's treatments. Therefore, many efforts are done in developing integrated, low-cost and portable point- of-care sensing systems able to continuously monitor the drug concentration. To satisfy this request, a portable multi-channel system is here presented and validated. The system is able to run different electrochemical techniques independently on each channel. Thanks to the flexibility of the system it is possible to configure it for different medical applications, as for anesthesia practices. The Raspberry Pi has been chosen as main control unit since it offers high performances and excellent features with low- costs

Live Demonstration: An IoT Cloud-Based Architecture for Anesthesia Monitoring

Medical Internet of Things (IoT) solutions are already paving the way towards the realization of Smart Hospitals. Following this trend, we propose an IoT cloud-based network for anesthesia on-line monitoring. This architecture allows the anesthesiologist to remain simultaneously connected to all the patients under his/her responsibility. To do so, the Android app, running on the anesthesiologists tablet/smartphone, plays the central role of the architecture. From one side, it receives data from the Therapeutic Drug Monitoring (TDM) system on the patient; on the other side, it pushes data to the cloud, exploiting the Pryv middleware solution, enabling teleconsulting. All the communications exploits Wi-Fi, therefore, all data are also stored locally in the physical devices's memory to face Internet unavailability. The flexibility and the portability of our monitoring architecture ensure the possibility to interface with any medical device which can wirelessly send the measured data. Therefore, a variety of medical monitoring applications can also be addressed