Heterogenous Core-Shell Persistent Luminescent Nanoparticles with Enhanced Afterglow Luminescence.

Persistent luminescent nanoparticles (PLNPs) are promising for many bioapplications due to their unique afterglow luminescence following the stoppage of light excitation. However, PLNPs are prone to surface quenching that results in weak afterglow luminescence. Although some efforts have been made to reduce surface quenching through designing homogeneous core-shell PLNPs, the enhancement in afterglow luminescence was insignificant.

A Systematic Review of the Design, Method of Implantation and Early Clinical Outcomes of Transcatheter Tricuspid Prostheses.

Background: Intervention for tricuspid regurgitation (TR) tends to happen concurrently with and is addressed during mitral valve surgery. Isolated TR interventions, however, are not unusual and are becoming more common. The purpose of this study was to provide a general overview of the transcatheter tricuspid valve implantation (TTVI) devices, taking into account the several design variations, and to unify the implantation technique, existing clinical results, and potential future directions for TR replacement therapy.

Investigating the biomechanical behaviour of tendon-loaded wrist joint using web-like kinematic network model.

The complexity of wrist anatomy and mechanics makes it challenging to develop standardized measurements and establish a normative reference database of wrist biomechanics despite being studied extensively. Moreover, heterogeneity factors in both demographic characteristics (e.g.

Harnessing the power of artificial intelligence in predicting all-cause mortality in transcatheter aortic valve replacement: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Objectives: In recent years, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) models to generate individualised risk assessments and predict patient outcomes post-Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) has been a topic of increasing relevance in literature. This study aims to evaluate the predictive accuracy of AI algorithms in forecasting post-TAVI mortality as compared to traditional risk scores.

Methods: Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses for Systematic Reviews (PRISMA) standard, a systematic review was carried out.

A Monte Carlo Sensitivity Analysis for a Dimensionally Reduced-Order Model of the Aortic Dissection.

Purpose: Aortic dissection is associated with a high mortality rate. Although computational approaches have shed light on many aspects of the disease, a sensitivity analysis is required to determine the significance of different factors. Because of its complex geometry and high computational expense, the three-dimensional (3D) fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulation is not a suitable approach for sensitivity analysis.

Safe and Efficacious Near Superhydrophobic Hemostat for Reduced Blood Loss and Easy Detachment in Traumatic Wounds.

Hemorrhage is the leading cause of trauma death, and innovation in hemostatic technology is important. The strongly hydrophobic carbon nanofiber (CNF) coating has previously been shown to have excellent hemostatic properties. However, the understanding of how CNF coating guides the coagulation cascade and the biosafety of CNF as hemostatic agents has yet to be explored.

The Impact of Left Ventricular Assist Device Outflow Graft Positioning on Aortic Hemodynamics: Improving Flow Dynamics to Mitigate Aortic Insufficiency.

Heart failure is a global health concern with significant implications for healthcare systems. Left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) provide mechanical support for patients with severe heart failure. However, the placement of the LVAD outflow graft within the aorta has substantial implications for hemodynamics and can lead to aortic insufficiency during long-term support.

Haemodynamic changes in visceral hybrid repairs of type III and type V thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysms.

The visceral hybrid procedure combining retrograde visceral bypass grafting and completion endovascular stent grafting is a feasible alternative to conventional open surgical or wholly endovascular repairs of thoracoabdominal aneurysms (TAAA). However, the wide variability in visceral hybrid configurations means that a priori prediction of surgical outcome based on haemodynamic flow profiles such as velocity pattern and wall shear stress post repair remain challenging. We sought to appraise the clinical relevance of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses in the setting of visceral hybrid TAAA repairs.

Effects of myocardial sheetlet sliding on left ventricular function.

Left ventricle myocardium has a complex micro-architecture, which was revealed to consist of myocyte bundles arranged in a series of laminar sheetlets. Recent imaging studies demonstrated that these sheetlets re-orientated and likely slided over each other during the deformations between systole and diastole, and that sheetlet dynamics were altered during cardiomyopathy. However, the biomechanical effect of sheetlet sliding is not well-understood, which is the focus here.

Engineering orthotopic tumor spheroids with organ-specific vasculatures for local chemoembolization evaluation.

Developing a three-dimensional (3D) tumor model with vasculature systems suitable for testing endovascular interventional therapies remains a challenge. Here we develop an orthotopic liver tumor spheroid model that captures the organ-level complexity of vasculature systems and the extracellular matrix to evaluate transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) treatment. The orthotopic tumor spheroids are derived by seeding HepG2 cell colonies with controlled size and location surrounding the portal triads in a decellularized rat liver matrix and are treated by clinically relevant drug-eluting beads embolized in a portal vein vasculature while maintaining dynamic physiological conditions with nutrient and oxygen supplies through the hepatic vein vasculature.

Morphological, functional, and biomechanical progression of LV remodelling in a porcine model of HFpEF.

Heart failure (HF) with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) accounts for about half of heart failure cases, but the progression of cardiac biomechanics during pathogenesis is not completely understood. We investigated a published porcine model of HFpEF, generated by progressive constriction of an aortic cuff causing progressive left ventricle (LV) pressure overload, and characterized by hypertrophy, diastolic dysfunction and overt HF with elevated plasma beta natriuretic peptide (BNP). We characterized morphological and functional features and performed image-based finite element modelling over multiple time points, so as to understand how biomechanics evolved with morphological and functional changes during pathogenesis, and to provide data for future growth and remodeling investigations.

Stretchable and Self-Adhesive PEDOT:PSS Blend with High Sweat Tolerance as Conformal Biopotential Dry Electrodes.

Dry epidermal electrodes that can always form conformal contact with skin can be used for continuous long-term biopotential monitoring, which can provide vital information for disease diagnosis and rehabilitation. But, this application has been limited by the poor contact of dry electrodes on wet skin. Herein, we report a biocompatible fully organic dry electrode that can form conformal contact with both dry and wet skin even during physical movement.

A fluid-structure interaction investigation of intra-articular pressure and ligament in wrist joint.

Understanding the stresses on the scapholunate interosseous ligament (SLIL) and its interaction with synovial fluid pressure could be vital to improve wrist treatment for various wrist conditions such as arthritis, sprains and tendonitis. This study investigated the interaction between the intra-articular pressure, specifically the synovial fluid pressure change and the SLIL stresses in a computational model during wrist radioulnar deviation (RUD). Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans were used to acquire the anatomical model of the carpal bones and ligament, while the kinematics of scaphoid and lunate were obtained through dynamic computerized tomography (CT) scans.

Effects of Hypertrophic and Dilated Cardiac Geometric Remodeling on Ejection Fraction.

Both heart failure (HF) with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) and heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) can present a wide variety of cardiac morphologies consequent to cardiac remodeling. We sought to study if geometric changes to the heart during such remodeling will adversely affect the ejection fraction (EF) parameter's ability to serve as an indicator of heart function, and to identify the mechanism for it. A numerical model that simulated the conversion of myocardial strain to stroke volume was developed from two porcine animal models of heart failure.

How does the Nature of an Excipient and an Atheroma Influence Drug-Coated Balloon Therapy?

The advent of drug-eluting stents and drug-coated balloons have significantly improved the clinical outcome of patients with vascular occlusions. However, ischemic vascular disease remains the most common cause of death worldwide. Improving the current treatment modalities demands a better understanding of the processes which govern drug uptake and retention in blood vessels.

A novel coating method to reduce membrane infolding through pre-crimping of covered stents - Computational and experimental evaluation.

A covered stent has been used to treat carotid artery stenosis to reduce the chance of embolization, as it offers improved performance over bare-metal stents. However, membrane infolding of covered stents can affect efficiency and functionality for treating occlusive disease of first-order aortic branches. In order to mitigate the degree of infolding of the stent once it was re-expanded, we proposed a new coating method performed on the pre-crimped stent.

Using a reduced-order model to investigate the effect of the heart rate on the aortic dissection.

The computational cost of a three-dimensional (3D) fluid-structure interaction (FSI) simulation of a dissected aorta has prevented researchers from investigating the effect of a wide range of the heart rate on the hemodynamic quantities in the disease. We have presented a systematic procedure to develop a zero-dimensional (0D) model for a dissected aorta. A series of numerical experiments were used to calculate the values for the resistance, inertance, and compliance of each lumen with irregular geometries.

Shape memory micro-anchors with magnetic guidance for precision micro-vascular deployment.

Transcatheter medical micro-devices through circulatory system show great potential for therapy but lack strategies to stably anchor them at the desired site in vascularized tissues to take actions. Here a shape memory functionalized biodegradable magnetic micro-anchor (SMA) is developed to achieve magnetic guided endovascular localization through precisely controlled shape transformation. The SMA comprises anisotropic polylactide-based microparticle embedded with superparamagnetic FeO nanoparticles, exhibiting thermally activated tunable shape recovery modes at a body-friendly temperature range to accomplished an efficient endovascular anchoring effect in both decellularized liver organ and rabbit ear embolization models.

Nanoparticles-reinforced poly-l-lactic acid composite materials as bioresorbable scaffold candidates for coronary stents: Insights from mechanical and finite element analysis.

Current generation of bioresorbable coronary scaffolds (BRS) posed thrombogenicity and deployment issues owing to its thick struts and overall profile. To this end, we hypothesize that the use of nanocomposite materials is able to provide improved material properties and sufficient radial strength for the intended application even at reduced strut thickness. The nanocomposite formulations of tantalum dioxide (TaO), L-lactide functionalized (LA)-TaO, hydroxyapatite (HA) and LA-HA with poly-l-lactic acid (PLLA) were evaluated in this study.

Visualization and Evaluation of Chemoembolization on a 3D Decellularized Organ Scaffold.

Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) has emerged as the mainstay treatment for patients suffering from unresectable intermediate hepatocellular carcinoma and also holds the potential to treat other types of hypervascular cancers such as renal cell carcinoma. However, an model for evaluating both embolic performance and drug-release kinetics of the TACE embolic agents is still lacking since the current models greatly simplified the vascular systems as well as the extracellular matrices (ECM) in the organs. Here, we developed a decellularized organ model with preserved ECM and vasculatures as well as a translucent appearance to investigate chemoembolization performances of a clinically widely used embolic agent, i.

Full cardiac cycle asynchronous temporal compounding of 3D echocardiography images.

It is important to improve echocardiography image quality, because the accuracy of echocardiographic assessment and diagnosis relies on image quality. Previous work on 2D temporal image compounding for image frames with matching cardiac phases (synchronous), and for temporally neighbouring image frames (asynchronous) over small ranges of time frames showed good improvement to image quality. Here, we extend this by performing asynchronous temporal compounding to echocardiographic images in 3D, involving all frames within a cardiac cycle, via a robust 3D cardiac motion estimation algorithm to describe the large image deformations.

Assessment of transient changes in oxygen diffusion of single red blood cells using a microfluidic analytical platform.

Red blood cells (RBCs) capability to deliver oxygen (O) has been routinely measured by P50. Although this defines the ability of RBCs to carry O under equilibrium states, it cannot determine the efficacy of O delivery in dynamic blood flow. Here, we developed a microfluidic analytical platform (MAP) that isolates single RBCs for assessing transient changes in their O release rate.

High-throughput functional profiling of single adherent cells hydrogel drop-screen.

Single-adherent-cell phenotyping on an extracellular matrix (ECM) is essential to determine cellular biological functions, such as morphological adaptations and biomolecule secretions, correlated to medical treatments and metastasis, yet there is no available platform for such high-throughput screening. Here, a novel hydrogel drop-screen device was developed to rapidly measure large-scale single-cell morphologies and multiple secretions on substrates for phenotype profiling. Single cells were first anchored to microfluidically fabricated gelatin particles providing mechanical stimulations similar to those from ECM in vivo.

Multiscale modeling of a modified Blalock-Taussig surgery in a patient-specific tetralogy of Fallot.

Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) is a congenital heart anomaly that causes a drastic reduction in the oxygen level. In this study, we coupled a lumped-parameter model with a patient-specific three-dimensional (3D) model which included a modified Blalock-Taussig (MBT) shunt. By forming a closed loop, we investigated the effects of certain parameters on the flow rates and the pressures at different locations of the developed network.