Background: Fractional flow reserve (FFR) determined invasively has been globally accepted as the gold standard for determining the functional significance of coronary artery stenoses. However, despite its great importance, the invasive method has certain disadvantages, including the risk of vascular injuries, the need for vasodilation, and significant medical costs. That is why great attention was paid to the development of non-invasive methods that would enable reliable diagnosis without exposing patients to the risk of unwanted consequences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNon-ergonomic execution of repetitive physical tasks represents a major cause of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSD). This study was focused on the pushing and pulling (P&P) of an industrial handcart (which is a generic physical task present across many industries), with the aim to investigate the dependence of P&P execution on the operators' psychological status and the presence of pain syndromes of the upper limbs and spine. The developed acquisition system integrated two three-axis force sensors (placed on the left and right arm) and six electromyography (EMG) electrodes (placed on the chest, back, and hand flexor muscles).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe compliance of industrial personal protective equipment (PPE) still represents a challenging problem considering size of industrial halls and number of employees that operate within them. Since there is a high variability of PPE types/designs that could be used for protecting various body parts and physiological functions, this study was focused on assessing the use of computer vision algorithms to automate the compliance of head-mounted PPE. As a solution, we propose a pipeline that couples the head ROI estimation with the PPE detection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCoronary artery disease (CAD), one of the leading causes of death globally, occurs due to the growth of atherosclerotic plaques in the coronary arteries, causing lesions which restrict the flow of blood to the myocardium. Percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA), including balloon angioplasty and coronary stent deployment is a standard clinical invasive treatment for CAD. Coronary stents are delivered using a balloon catheter inserted across the lesion.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCirculating tumor cells (CTCs) are known to be a harbinger of cancer metastasis. The CTCs are known to circulate as individual cells or as a group of interconnected cells called CTC clusters. Since both single CTCs and CTC clusters have been detected in venous blood samples of cancer patients, they needed to traverse at least one capillary bed when crossing from arterial to venous circulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn many mammalian species, the removal of one lung [pneumonectomy (PNX)] is associated with the compensatory growth of the remaining lung. To investigate the hypothesis that parenchymal deformation may trigger lung regeneration, we used respiratory-gated micro-computed tomography scanning to create three-dimensional finite-element geometric models of the murine cardiac lobe with cyclic breathing. Models were constructed of respiratory-gated micro-computed tomography scans pre-PNX and 24 h post-PNX.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIEEE Trans Biomed Eng
January 2012
Drug delivery systems for cancer prevention and pain management have been improved related to classical cancer chemotherapy. Nanotechnology with nanoparticles offers new ways in transport of drug molecules and contrast agents by the blood flow through the circulatory system. In this study, we use multiscale mesoscopic bridging procedure of the finite elements (FE) coupled with dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) and lattice Boltzmann (LB) method to model the motion of circular and elliptical particles in a 2-D laminar flow.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: To investigate the flow and mixing at the duodenal stump after gastric resection, a computer simulation was implemented.
Methods: Using the finite element method, two different Billroth II procedure cases (A and B) were modeled. Case A was defined with a shorter and almost straight duodenal section, while case B has a much longer and curved duodenal section.