Biomedical

Abstract: Many dental clinical implant studies have fo- cused on the success of endosseous implants with a variety of surface characteristics. Most of the surface alterations have been aimed at achieving greater bone-to-implant con- tact as determined histometrically at the light microscopic ...

Oxygenation measurements are widely used in patient care. However, most clinically available instruments currently consist of contact probes that only provide global monitoring of the patient (e.g., pulse oximetry probes) or local monitoring of small areas (e.g., spectroscopy-based probes). Visualization of oxygenation over large areas of tissue, without a priori knowledge of the location of defects, has the potential to improve patient management in many surgical and critical care applications. In this study, we present a clinically compatible multispectral spatial frequency domain imaging (SFDI) system optimized for surgical oxygenation imaging. This system was used to image tissue oxygenation over a large area (16×12 cm) and was validated during preclinical studies by comparing results obtained with an FDA-approved clinical oxygenation probe. Skin flap, bowel, and liver vascular occlusion experiments were performed on Yorkshire pigs and demonstrated that over the course of the experiment, relative changes in oxygen saturation measured using SFDI had an accuracy within 10% of those made using the FDA-approved device. Finally, the new SFDI system was translated to the clinic in a first-in-human pilot study that imaged skin flap oxygenation during reconstructive breast surgery. Overall, this study lays the foundation for clinical translation of endogenous contrast imaging using SFDI.

This study was designed to evaluate the feasibility of using cylindrical ultrasound transducers mounted on a catheter for the ablation of cardiac tissues. In addition, the effects of ultrasound frequency and power was evaluated both using computer simulations and in vitro experiments. Frequencies of 4.5, 6, and 10 MHz were selected based on the simulation studies and manufacturing feasibility. These transducers were mounted on the tip of 7-French catheters and applied in vitro to fresh ventricular canine endocardium, submerged in flowing degassed saline at 37 degree C. When the power was regulated to maintain transducer interface temperature at 90-100 degree C, the 10-, 6-, and 4.5-MHz transducers generated a lesion depth of 5.9 +/- 0.2 mm, 4.6 +/- 1.0 mm, and 5.3 +/- 0.9 mm, respectively. The 10-MHz transducer was chosen for the in vivo tests since the maximum lesion depth was achieved with the lowest power. Two dogs were anesthetized and sonications were performed in both the left and right ventricles. The 10-MHz cylindrical transducers caused an average lesion depth of 6.4 +/- 2.5 mm. In conclusion, the results show that cylindrical ultrasound transducers can be used for cardiac tissue ablation and that they may be able to produce deeper tissue necrosis than other methods currently in use.

In spite of the present advances in the scaffolds fabrication and bioreactor systems, the ability to create functional thick tissue masses in vitro is still a great tissue engineering challenge. To overcome this problem, the fabrication of a capillary bed, for nutrient supply to and waste product removal from the tissue engineering construct as it grows, is essential. However, the technical construction of a capillary-like architecture is complex and challenging. This study reports, for the very first time, a simple method to design and fabricate a porous hollow membrane sheet (PHMsh) to provide both a capillary bed and a scaffold to support tissue growth. The PHMsh composed of a flexible porous sheet involving parallel porous channels and can be used as flat-, rolled-, or sandwiched-shape scaffold. The PHMsh was fabricated from poly(ϵ-caprolactone) polymer solution using solvent casting methods (i.e., immersion precipitation and air casting). Optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy were used for the morphological analyses. The PHMsh was surface treated using n-hepthylamine plasma polymer (HApp) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy confirmed successful surface coating. Human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and fibroblast cells were used to evaluate the capability of PHMsh toward cell adhesion. The HApp coating enhanced both HUVEC and fibroblast cells adhesion. The obtained preliminary results demonstrated the successful fabrication of the PHMsh, with potential application for tissue engineering scaffolds, particularly in large tissue mass generation under perfusion systems in vitro, which is our future research direction. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res, 2010

It remains unclear how metal released from implants affects cells of the immune system and, in particular, cells of the adaptive immune system, that is, T-helper lymphocytes. In this study, we investigated the effects of aluminum, chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, molybdenum, nickel, niobium, vanadium, and zirconium ions at concentrations from 0.05 to 5.0 mM on human CD4+ T lymphocytes. The DNA damage, apoptosis, necrosis, and proliferation responses of a human T-helper lymphocyte (Jurkat) cell line were evaluated to test our hypothesis that some metals will preferentially induce genotoxicity (DNA damage). Our results demonstrated that metal ions did not preferentially induce Jurkat T-lymphocyte DNA damage prior to other forms of toxicity, that is, apoptosis and/or direct necrosis. Nickel and vanadium induced the most DNA damage and were the most apoptotic metals tested, inducing >50% caspase-9 positive T cells at 0.05 mM and 0.1 mM concentrations, respectively. Cobalt and niobium were the most toxic metals, inducing <50% viability at ∼0.5 mM concentrations. Nickel and vanadium were the only metals to induce DNA damage at nearly the same concentrations that induced >50% apoptosis (i.e., <0.05 mM). All the metals tested induced T-cell apoptosis at a lower dose than that required to affect DNA damage or toxicity, implying that soluble metals released from implants may not be preferentially genotoxic to lymphocytes. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res, 2008

Based on permittivity changes, a new method to measure hematocrit (HCT) in extracorporeal blood systems is presented. Human blood samples were tested at different HCT levels pairing the values of permittivity change, obtained by means of a commercial impedance analyzer, with traditional centrifugation measurements. Data were correlated using both linear and nonlinear regression. When using the lineal model, the comparison

A simple, high-throughput and specific high-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method has been developed and validated according to the FDA guidelines for simultaneous quantification of olmesartan and pioglitazone in rat plasma. The bioanalytical method consists of liquid–liquid extraction and quantitation by triple quadrupole mass spectrometry using electrospray ionization technique, operating in multiple reaction monitoring and positive ion modes. The compounds were eluted isocratically on a C18 column with a mobile phase consisting of a mixture of methanol and water (containing 0.5% formic acid) in a ratio of 9:1. The response to olmesartan and pioglitazone was linear over the range 0.01–10 µg/mL. The validation results demonstrated that the method had satisfactory precision and accuracy across the calibration range. Intra- and inter-day precisions ranged from 0.66 to 3.32 and from 0.94 to 2.93% (%CV), respectively. The accuracy determined at three quality control levels was within 91.27–107.28%. There was no evidence of instability of the analytes in rat plasma following the stability studies. The method proved highly reproducible and sensitive and was successfully applied in a pharmacokinetic study after single dose oral administration of olmesartan and pioglitazone to the rat. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A multi-channel wireless EEG (electroencephalogram) acquisition and recording system is developed in this work. The system includes an EEG sensing and transmission unit and a digital processing circuit. The former is composed of pre-amplifiers, filters, and gain amplifiers. The kernel of the later digital processing circuit is a micro-controller unit (MCU, TI-MSP430), which is utilized to convert the EEG signals into digital signals and fulfill the digital filtering. By means of Bluetooth communication module, the digitized signals are sent to the back-end such as PC or PDA. Thus, the patient&#39;s EEG signal can be observed and stored without any long cables such that the analogue distortion caused by long distance transmission can be reduced significantly. Furthermore, an integrated classification method, consisting of non-linear energy operator (NLEO), autoregressive (AR) model, and bisecting k-means algorithm, is also proposed to perform EEG off-line clustering at the back-end. ...