Biomedical Engineering

Face Off: Intelligent Computer Vision Based Simulation Technology of Facial Plastic Surgery [ 下載 PDF ]

Yu-Ching Lee, Chin-Wei Hsu, Chi-Yuan Chen, Hsin-Ya Ko, Ching-Wei Wang

This paper presents a fully automatic computer vision system for producing simulated/prediction outcomes after facial plastic surgery. The system is able to simulate the outcomes of aging, becoming younger, skin replacement, surgery of eye browses, eyes, noses, mouths, chin, cheek and hairlines. Apart from simulation for facial plastic surgery, the technique is also popularly applied to filming and gaming industries such as avatars. The technology introduced in this paper includes automatic facial landmark detection models, image registration, image transformation and fusion techniques. We further introduce the applications of the simulation technology of facial plastic surgery and potentials of the technology.

A Sensing System of Human Postures and Its Unsupervised Learning of Pattern Recognitions [ 下載 PDF ]

Shen-Jhe Haung, Chien-Chang Chen, Terry B. J. Kuo, Henry Horng-Shing Lu

The article proposes a wearable physiological signal sensing system associated with an unsupervised learning technique. The hardware mainly includes a three-axis accelerometer and a XenonBlue wireless transmission module. Then the framework of density functional theory of the quantum mechanics was employed to extract the cluster boundaries of datasets and their corresponding cluster numbers. The proposed system provides requiring detections and correlation analyses between the changing human postures and the time-dependent biomedical signals for the long-term experiments. The technique also can be used for real-time detections and analyses for accident circumstances and then dangerous alarms. In a nutshell, the system not only provides highly plausibility and objectivity but also reinforces the commercialization.

Introduction to Respiratory Measurement Devices [ 下載 PDF ]

Tzu-Chien Hsiao, Jing-Syu Sie

Human breathing plays an important role on the mechanism of gas exchange. The difference of breathing type, inhaling depth, or respiratory rate are the key factors which affect the autonomic nervous system, heart rate, cardiac output, blood pressure, and other reactions. The sleep apnea, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or other functional respiratory disorders cause clinical evidences on breathing. And the use of slow, deep, and abdominal breathing can activate the parasympathetic nerve system to relax. Therefore, monitoring respiratory function, evaluating thoracoabdominal movement performance, investigating the cardiopulmonary coupling on the smart care and physical fitness enhancement become the development focus in Biomedical Engineering. This paper introduces the respiratory principle, different measurement methods and devices as well as compares the characteristics of the measuring devices and the clinical applications.

Semiconductor-Based Field-Effect Device for In- Vitro Biomolecular Sensing [ 下載 PDF ]

I-Shun Wang, Po-Han Chen, Chih-Ting Lin

Within the demands of medical technologies, in-vitro diagnosis is important because it helps to physicians to determine diseases. As a consequence, various kinds of in-vitro diagnosis technologies have been proposed and evaluated. In different kinds of in-vitro diagnosis, label-free semiconductor field-effect sensing devices obtain attentions because of its characteristics of real-time, high sensitivity/selectivity, and low cost. These characteristics offer great potentials in the developing personal healthcare technologies. Therefore, this article aims to review recent developments in label-free field-effect biomolecular sensing devices and promote fundamental knowledge of related technologies.

Development of Electrokinetic Microfl uidic Biochips for Rapid Screening of Dengue Infection [ 下載 PDF ]

Tien-Chun Tsai, Guey-Chuen Perng, Hsien-Chang Chang

Dengue fever, one of the most important mosquito-borne human viral diseases, spreads over the world, especially in the tropical and subtropical countries, resulting in millions of dollars lost annually. Although the disease mainly transmits through the bite of the mosquitoes, escalating cases on blood transfusion as well as stem and organ transplantations have been reported in recent years, suggesting presence of healthy subjects with asymptomatic virus infection. The disease progression in dengue is time-dependent in addition to the initial clinical symptoms that are very similar to common flu illness at febrile stage. Development of precision and rapid diagnostic test is therefore urgently needed. Currently, the rapid screening for viral non-structural protein 1 (NS1) is a major practice in clinic. However, false-negative results are often observed due to the diverse immune response in patients, different disease stages, and insufficient sensitivity that is even more salient in the asymptomatic carriers. The current study develops a novel dielectrophoresis-based microfluidic biochip for rapidly quantifying dengue virus, providing much more pragmatic approaches with precision and rapid diagnosis. Thus, it will be greatly benefit for dengue surveillance and early therapy.

Development of Electrochemical Biosensors for Continuous Glucose Monitoring [ 下載 PDF ]

Jia-De Yan, Ching-Chou Wu

Glucose biosensors are one of the most successful biotechnical products, which are widely applied in the fields such as blood glucose detection, cellular activity estimation of bioreactor and beverage industry monitoring. Particularly, the blood glucose monitoring of diabetic patients is the most significant application. Recently, continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) has been the mainstream trend in the development of glucose biosensors. Compared with the traditional self-monitoring of blood glucose, CGM can reduce the pain of sampling finger blood and supply a real time signal of blood glucose to doctors for diagnosis. The electrochemical CGM biosensors can be divided into two categories, invasive or non-invasive biosensors. Invasive CGM biosensors were fabricated as needle-type electrodes, which were inserted into subcutaneous tissue or vein for in vivo glucose monitoring. Non-invasive CGM biosensors were used to measure the glucose concentration of excreted body fluid, such as urine, saliva and tear. Furthermore, the reverse iontophoresis technique was used to obtain the glucose-containing fluid from skin by electroosmotic flow. This review aims to introduce the development of electrochemical CGM biosensors in past decade.

When Mechanical Engineers Meet Unmet Clinical Needs [ 下載 PDF ]

Yu-Tang Wen, Bing-Shiang Yang

Medical technology industry is one of the rapidly developing industries. The government has invested heavily in this industry and it needs multi-disciplinary cooperation, such as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science and biotechnology. The expertise focuses on creating high practical value, economic value, and the benefit of mankind to improve human life. This article will give some examples of medical devices and assistive technologies developed by the biomechanical and mechanical engineering principles for unmet clinical needs.

3D Printing Implementation in Clinical Development [ 下載 PDF ]

Yi-Wen Chen

The development of modern medicine is considering multidisciplinary such as many frontier technologies. The healthcare systems focus on implement the advanced technologies in treatments of challenge diseases and creation of innovative biomedical industry. 3D Printing in medicine has been initiated and broadly applied since the mature of printing technology and the highly appreciation of surgeons and doctors. Through the high frequency collaborations between surgeons and engineers, many clinical specialists and diseases has been adopted 3D Printed products such as education models, surgical guides, prosthesis, and tissue transplantation. This gave an opportunity to make 3D Printing technology as a useful tool for customized and precision medicine.

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Thickness Measurement of Transparent Target Using A Confocal Sensor [ 下載 PDF ]

Bo-Rong Lu, Chen-Liang Fan, Pi-Ying Cheng, Chun-Jen Weng

The work shows a confocal displacement sensor with a varifocal lens, which is driven through different current to change its focal length. The study shows the measuring results of the thickness of transparent object. With power meter measuring the power and LabVIEW program recording the power-current graph, which with two peak powers are presented and the current gap between two peaks could be transferred to two displacements to what the spacing is between is the thickness.

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In Situ Liquid Cell TEM Applied on the Observation of Hydrogen Nanobubble Growth Dynamics [ 下載 PDF ]

Shih-Yi Liu, Tsu-Wei Huang, Fan-Gang Tseng, Fu-Rong Chen

Recently, the invention of in situ liquid cell electron microscopy overcomes the limitation which liquid specimen is hard to be observed through conventional TEM (transmission electron microscope) or SEM (scanning electron microscope) and enables imaging physical phenomena or chemical reactions within liquid with nm–A scale spatial resolution become routinely available. The significant progress fields benefit from this breakthrough technique could cover from material science to biomedical science. Here, we use in situ liquid cell TEM to investigate the generation and stability of hydrogen nanobubble and distinguish the different stabilities between a group of hydrogen nanobubbles and a single hydrogen nanobubble, moreover we also develop the method to quantify the hydrogen molecules amount within single nanobubble and finally we demonstrate the bubble dynamics via in situ liquid cell SEM with homemade liquid stage.