Determining Magnitudes of Forces at Known Locations through a Strain Gauge Force Transducer.

A novel strain gauge force transducer was developed to minimize the number of strain gauges needed to determine the magnitudes of loads when the locations are known. This innovative methodology requires only one strain gauge for each force magnitude desired, reducing the complexity and cost associated with traditional approaches. The theory was verified with laboratory experiments. Seven uniaxial strain gauges were attached to the underside of a simply supported, slender, aluminum beam. One or more loads were applied either directly atop strain gauges or in known positions between strain gauges. Experiments were conducted on several different single and double-load configurations to evaluate the extent of the new methodology which yielded average errors under 5% for the cases where loads were direct atop strain gauges and 6.6% for the cases where the loads were between strain gauges. These findings indicate the potential of this novel strain gauge force transducer to revolutionize load measurement in scenarios where load locations are predetermined.

Neurotransmitter Specific, Cellular-Resolution Functional Brain Mapping Using Receptor Coated Nanoparticles: Assessment of the Possibility.

Receptor coated resonant nanoparticles and quantum dots are proposed to provide a cellular-level resolution image of neural activities inside the brain. The functionalized nanoparticles and quantum dots in this approach will selectively bind to different neurotransmitters in the extra-synaptic regions of neurons. This allows us to detect neural activities in real time by monitoring the nanoparticles and quantum dots optically. Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) with two different geometries (sphere and rod) and quantum dots (QDs) with different sizes were studied along with three different neurotransmitters: dopamine, gamma-Aminobutyric acid (GABA), and glycine. The absorption/emission spectra of GNPs and QDs before and after binding of neurotransmitters and their corresponding receptors are reported. The results using QDs and nanorods with diameter 25nm and aspect rations larger than three were promising for the development of the proposed functional brain mapping approach.

Study of intracranial pressure in human brain during transcranial magnetic stimulation.

This paper presents the results of cranial force in human brain due to electromagnetic pulse during transcranial magnetic stimulation. To model the force in a realistic brain, we used three dimensional magnetic resonance image of the 26 years old female subject. Simulation results show that during TMS procedure, there is a small force generated within the cranial tissue layers along with a torque value in different layers of brain tissues. The force depends on the magnitude of the magnetic field generated by the TMS coil.

BRAIN initiative: transcranial magnetic stimulation automation and calibration.

In this paper, we introduced an automated TMS system with robot control and optical sensor combined with neuronavigation software. By using the robot, the TMS coil can be accurately positioned over any preselected brain region. The neuronavigation system provides an accurate positioning of a magnetic coil in order to induce a specific cortical excitation. An infrared optical measurement device is also used in order to detect and compensate for head movements of the patient. This procedure was simulated using a PC based robotic simulation program. The proposed automated robot system is integrated with TMS numerical solver and allows users to actually see the depth, location, and shape of the induced eddy current on the computer monitor.

Miniature antenna for sensor network on human head.

This paper proposes a novel miniaturized antenna for sensor network with focus on placement on human head. The antenna is within the volume of 3.5×3.5×1.5 mm(3). It provides directive gain in the direction outward the body.

BRAIN initiative: fast and parallel solver for real-time monitoring of the eddy current in the brain for TMS applications.

This paper introduce a fast and efficient solver for simulating the induced (eddy) current distribution in the brain during transcranial magnetic stimulation procedure. This solver has been integrated with MRI and neuronavigation software to accurately model the electromagnetic field and show eddy current in the head almost in real-time. To examine the performance of the proposed technique, we used a 3D anatomically accurate MRI model of the 25 year old female subject.

Using a priori information for regularization in breast microwave image reconstruction.

Regularization methods are used in microwave image reconstruction problems, which are ill-posed. Traditional regularization methods are usually problem-independent and do not take advantage of a priori information specific to any particular imaging application. In this paper, a novel problem-dependent regularization approach is introduced for the application of breast imaging. A real genetic algorithm (RGA) minimizes a cost function that is the error between the recorded and the simulated data. At each iteration of the RGA, a priori information about the shape of the breast profiles is used by a neural network classifier to reject the solutions that cannot be a map of the dielectric properties of a breast profile. The algorithm was tested against four realistic numerical breast phantoms including a mostly fatty, a scattered fibroglandular, a heterogeneously dense, and a very dense sample. The tests were also repeated where a 4 mm x 4 mm tumor was inserted in the fibroglandular tissue in each of the four breast types. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach, which to the best of our knowledge has the highest resolution amongst the evolutionary algorithms used for the inversion of realistic numerical breast phantoms.

Hybrid microwave tomography technique for breast cancer imaging.

This paper addresses a two-dimensional inverse scattering method with a combination of tomography and radar methods for breast cancer detection. In order to rapidly construct high resolution images displaying the location, size, permittivity and conductivity of malignant tumors inside the body, the collected reflection from the scattered fields present in the scan area is segmented and their associated dielectric property maps are calculated. The dielectric profiles are obtained by using a technique that combines frequency domain finite difference time domain (FD)2TD analysis with genetic algorithm (GA) optimization. The applications of the proposed method can vary from medical imaging to nondestructive testing of materials and structures. The proposed technique yielded promising results when applied to simulated data.