Search results for "Biomedical engineering"
showing 10 items of 2020 documents
NOVEL COMPOSED GALACTOSYLATED NANODEVICES CONTAINING A RIBAVIRIN PRODRUG AS HEPATIC CELL-TARGETED CARRIERS FOR HCV TREATMENT
2013
In this paper, we describe the preparation of liver-targeted nanoparticles potentially able to carry to hepatocytes a ribavirin (RBV) prodrug, exploiting the presence of carbohydrate receptors in the liver (i.e., ASGPR in hepatocytes). These particles were obtained starting from a galactosylated phospholipid-polyaminoacid conjugate. This latter was obtained by chemical reaction of ALPHA, BETA -poly(N-2-hydroxyethyl) (2-aminoethylcarbamate)-DL-aspartamide (PHEA-EDA) with 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphoethanolamine-N-(succinyl) sodium salt (DPPE), and subsequent reaction with lactose, obtaining PHEA-EDA-DPPE-GAL copolymer. To enhance the entrapment into obtained nanostructures, a hydroph…
Nanoprobing the acidification process during intracellular uptake and trafficking
2015
Abstract Many nanoparticular drug delivery approaches rely on a detailed knowledge of the acidification process during intracellular trafficking of endocytosed nanoparticles (NPs). Therefore we produced a nanoparticular pH sensor composed of the fluorescent pH-sensitive dual wavelength dye carboxy seminaphthorhodafluor-1 (carboxy SNARF-1) coupled to the surface of amino-functionalized polystyrene NPs (SNARF-1-NP). By applying a calibration fit function to confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) images, local pH values were determined. The acidification and ripening process of endo/lysosomal compartments containing nanoparticles was followed over time and was found to progress up to 6h to …
Design and validation of a wireless Body Sensor Network for integrated EEG and HD-sEMG acquisitions
2022
Sensorimotor integration is the process through which the human brain plans the motor program execution according to external sources. Within this context, corticomuscular and corticokinematic coherence analyses are common methods to investigate the mechanism underlying the central control of muscle activation. This requires the synchronous acquisition of several physiological signals, including EEG and sEMG. Nevertheless, physical constraints of the current, mostly wired, technologies limit their application in dynamic and naturalistic contexts. In fact, although many efforts were made in the development of biomedical instrumentation for EEG and High Density-surface EMG (HD-sEMG) signal ac…
Bivariate nonlinear prediction to quantify the strength of complex dynamical interactions in short-term cardiovascular variability.
2005
A nonlinear prediction method for investigating the dynamic interdependence between short length time series is presented. The method is a generalization to bivariate prediction of the univariate approach based on nearest neighbor local linear approximation. Given the input and output series x and y, the relationship between a pattern of samples of x and a synchronous sample of y was approximated with a linear polynomial whose coefficients were estimated from an equation system including the nearest neighbor patterns in x and the corresponding samples in y. To avoid overfitting and waste of data, the training and testing stages of the prediction were designed through a specific out-of-sampl…
Real-time estimation of plasma insulin concentration from continuous glucose monitor measurements
2015
Continuous glucose monitors can measure interstitial glucose concentration in real time for closed-loop glucose control systems, known as artificial pancreas. These control systems use an insulin feedback to maintain plasma glucose concentration within a narrow and safe range, and thus to avoid health complications. As it is not possible to measure plasma insulin concentration in real time, insulin models have been used in literature to estimate them. Nevertheless, the significant interand intra-patient variability of insulin absorption jeopardizes the accuracy of these estimations. In order to reduce these limitations, our objective is to perform a real-time estimation of plasma insulin co…
Extensive Assessment of Blood Glucose Monitoring During Postprandial Period and Its Impact on Closed-Loop Performance.
2017
[EN] Background: Closed-loop (CL) systems aims to outperform usual treatments in blood glucose control and continuous glucose monitors (CGM) are a key component in such systems. Meals represents one of the main disturbances in blood glucose control, and postprandial period (PP) is a challenging situation for both CL system and CGM accuracy. Methods: We performed an extensive analysis of sensor¿s performance by numerical accuracy and precision during PP, as well as its influence in blood glucose control under CL therapy. Results: During PP the mean absolute relative difference (MARD) for both sensors presented lower accuracy in the hypoglycemic range (19.4 ± 12.8%) than in other ranges (12.2…
Properties of erythrocyte light refraction in diabetic patients.
2001
Since hyperglycaemia changes the erythrocyte cell membrane fluidity and impairs cell deformity, our goal was to characterize hemoglobin and red blood cell (RBC) light refractive property changes in diabetic patients. Microscopic investigation was carried out on intact and fixed RBCs. To determine the refractive index (RI): smears of peripheral blood were air dried and fixed for 3 min in methanol. Mixtures of polyvinylpyrolidine and buffer of different pH (1:1) were used as embedding media. Intact RBCs were mixed with a buffered embedding medium, placed on a slide and overlaid with a coverslip. Interference microscopy was used for RI measurements at 18 different pH (pH=2-13). The results sho…
Noncontact speckle-based optical sensor for detection of glucose concentration using magneto-optic effect
2016
We experimentally verify a speckle-based technique for noncontact measurement of glucose concentration in the bloodstream. The final device is intended to be a single wristwatch-style device containing a laser, a camera, and an alternating current (ac) electromagnet generated by a solenoid. The experiments presented are performed in vitro as proof of the concept. When a glucose substance is inserted into a solenoid generating an ac magnetic field, it exhibits Faraday rotation, which affects the temporal changes of the secondary speckle pattern distributions. The temporal frequency resulting from the ac magnetic field was found to have a lock-in amplification role, which increased the observ…
PsychDT Working Group
2015
Background: Diabetes technology is a cornerstone of diabetes management in the 21st century, with advances in available devices over recent years playing a central role in the way that health care has progressed. Psychosocial interventions have been shown to have a positive impact on glycemic control, reduce psychological distress and reduce costs of health care. Addressing and improving psychosocial outcomes that complement biomedical improvements and looking to the future are crucial to enhance patient acceptance of artificial pancreas (AP) systems. Methods: To achieve closer collaboration and comparability across different AP research trials, a working group was established. Results: Exi…
Intraportal transplantation of allogenic pancreatic islets encapsulated in barium alginate beads in diabetic rats.
2003
The survival of microencapsulated islets transplanted into the unmodified peritoneal cavity is limited, even if capsular overgrowth is restricted to a minimum, due to an insufficient oxygen supply to the islets. Therefore, research efforts should focus on finding or creating a transplantation site, which permits a closer contact between the encapsulated islets and the blood. For this reason, the liver could be an interesting candidate. The aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that the intraportal transplantation of allogenic islets encapsulated in small-sized barium alginate beads is safe and succeeds to induce normoglycemia in diabetic rats. The intraportal transplantation o…