Current Issue : July - September Volume : 2019 Issue Number : 3 Articles : 5 Articles
Microtia is a congenital malformation affecting one in 5000 individuals and is\ncharacterized by physical deformity or absence of the outer ear. Nowadays, surgical reconstruction\nwith autologous tissue is the most common clinical practice. The procedure requires a high level of\nmanual and artistic techniques of a surgeon in carving and sculpting of harvested costal cartilage of\nthe patient to recreate an auricular framework to insert within a skin pocket obtained at the\nmalformed ear region. The aesthetic outcomes of the surgery are highly dependent on the\nexperience of the surgeon performing the surgery. For this reason, surgeons need simulators to\nacquire adequate technical skills out of the surgery room without compromising the aesthetic\nappearance of the patient. The current paper aims to describe and analyze the different materials\nand methods adopted during the history of autologous ear reconstruction (AER) simulation to train\nsurgeons by practice on geometrically and mechanically accurate physical replicas. Recent advances\nin 3D modelling software and manufacturing technologies to increase the effectiveness of AER\nsimulators are particularly described to provide more recent outcomes....
This study compared the torque generation during canal shaping with a nickel-titanium\nendodontic instrument according to the extent of glide-path establishment. Seventy-five simulated\nS-shaped canal blocks were divided into five groups (n = 15) according to the number of repetitive\ninsertions to the working length using a One G glide-path instrument: groups with 5, 10, 15, and 20\ninsertions as well as group Z without glide-path establishment. When the tip of the One G file\nreached the working length, the file was moved back and forth repetitively at the working length\nfor the designated number of times for each group. The instrumentation procedure with HyFlex\nEDM had 15 pecking strokes. During instrumentation, the generated torque was transmitted to a\ncustomized data acquisition module and collected using customized software. Data were computed\nto determine the maximum torque and total stress. The maximum screw-in forces were statistically\nanalyzed using one-way analysis of variance and Tukeyâ??s post hoc comparison test with a\nsignificance level of 95%. While the maximum stress did not have significant differences among the\nfive groups (p > 0.05), groups with more than 10 repetitive insertions generated lower total stress\nduring instrumentation than did the group with 5 insertions and group Z (p < 0.05). Under the\nlimitations of this study, repetitive insertions of glide-path establishment files at the working length\nreduced stress generation during the shaping using nickel-titanium instruments....
This work presents a heterogeneous immunoassay using the integrated functionalities of\na channel and droplets in a digital microfluidic (DMF) platform. Droplet functionality in DMF\nallows for the programmable manipulation of discrete sample and reagent droplets in the range of\nnanoliters. Pressure-driven channels become advantageous over droplets when sample must be\nwashed, as the supernatant can be thoroughly removed in a convenient and rapid manner while the\nsample is immobilized. Herein, we demonstrate a magnetic bead-based, enzyme-linked\nimmunosorbent assay (ELISA) using.............
Background: Arterial spin labeling (ASL) provides a noninvasive way to measure cerebral\nblood flow (CBF). The CBF estimation from ASL is heavily contaminated by noise\nand the partial volume (PV) effect. The multiple measurements of perfusion signals in\nthe ASL sequence are generally acquired and were averaged to suppress the noise.\nTo correct the PV effect, several methods were proposed, but they were all performed\ndirectly on the averaged image, thereby ignoring the inherent perfusion information\nof mixed tissues that are embedded in multiple measurements. The aim of the present\nstudy is to correct the PV effect of ASL sequence using the inherent perfusion information\nin the multiple measurements.\nMethods: In this study, we first proposed a statistical perfusion model of mixed tissues\nbased on the distribution of multiple measurements. Based on the tissue mixture that\nwas obtained from the high-resolution structural image, a structure-based expectation\nmaximization (sEM) scheme was developed to estimate the perfusion contributions of\ndifferent tissues in a mixed voxel from its multiple measurements. Finally, the performance\nof the proposed method was evaluated using both computer simulations and\nin vivo data.\nResults: Compared to the widely used linear regression (LR) method, the proposed\nsEM-based method performs better on edge preservation, noise suppression, and\nlesion detection, and demonstrates a potential to estimate the CBF within a shorter\nscanning time. For in vivo data, the corrected CBF values of gray matter (GM) were\nindependent of the GM probability, thereby indicating the effectiveness of the sEMbased\nmethod for the PV correction of the ASL sequence.\nConclusions: This study validates the proposed sEM scheme for the statistical perfusion\nmodel of mixed tissues and demonstrates the effectiveness of using inherent\nperfusion information in the multiple measurements for PV correction of the ASL\nsequence....
The positive outcome of lung cancer treatment is strongly related to the earliness of the\ndiagnosis. Thus, there is a strong requirement for technologies that could provide an early detection\nof cancer. The concept of early diagnosis is immediately extended to large population screening,\nand then, it is strongly related to non-invasiveness and low cost. Sensor technology takes advantage\nof the microelectronics revolution, and then, it promises to develop devices sufficiently sensitive to\ndetect lung cancer biomarkers. A number of biosensors for the detection of cancer-related proteins\nhave been demonstrated in recent years. At the same time, the interest is growing towards the\nanalysis of volatile metabolites that could be measured directly from the breath. In this paper, a\nreview of the state-of-the-art of biosensors and volatile compound sensors is presented....
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