Respiratory signal is one of the important physiological information indicating the status and function of the body. Recent studies have provided the possibility of being able to estimate the respiratory signal by using a change of PWV(pulse width variability), PRV(pulse rate variability) and PAV(pulse amplitude variability) in the PPG (photoplethysmography) signal during daily life. But, it is not clear whether the respiratory monitoring is possible even during sleep. Therefore, in this paper, we estimated the respiration from PWV, PRV and PAV of PPG signals during sleep. In addition, respiration rates of the estimated respiration signal were calculated through a time-frequency analysis, and errors between respiration rates calculated from each parameter and from reference signal were evaluated in terms of 1 sec, 10 sec and 1 min. As a result, it showed the errors in PWV(1s: $36.38{\pm}37.69$ mHz, 10s: $36.53{\pm}38.16$ mHz, 60s: $30.35{\pm}38.72$ mHz), in PRV(1s: $1.45{\pm}1.38$ mHz, 10s: $1.44{\pm}1.37$ mHz, 60s: $0.45{\pm}0.56$ mHz), and in PAV(1s: $1.05{\pm}0.81$ mHz, 10s: $1.05{\pm}0.79$ mHz, 60s: $0.56{\pm}0.93$ mHz). The errors in PRV and PAV are lower than that of PWV. Finally, we concluded that PRV and PAV are more effective than PWV in monitoring the respiration in daily life as well as during sleep.

Finite element analysis(FEA) has been extensively applied in the analyses of biomechanical properties of stents. Geometrically, a closed-cell stent is an assembly of a number of repeated unit cells and exhibits periodicity in both longitudinal and circumferential directions. This study concentrates on various parameters of the FEA models for the analysis of drug-eluting biodegradable polymeric stents for application to the treatment of coronary artery disease. In order to determine the mechanical characteristics of biodegradable polymeric stents, FEA was used to model two different types of stents: tubular stents(TS) and helicoidal stents(HS). For this modeling, epigallocatechin-3-O-gallate (EGCG)-eluting poly[(L-lactide-co-${\varepsilon}$-caprolactone), PLCL] (E-PLCL) was chosen as drug-eluting stent materials. E-PLCL was prepared by blending PLCL with 5% EGCG as previously described. In addition, the effects of EGCG blending on the mechanical properties of PLCL were investigated for both types of stent models. EGCG did not affect tensile strength at break, but significantly increased elastic modulus of PLCL. It is suggested that FEA is a cost-effective method to improve the design of drug-eluting biodegradable polymeric stents.

Hyaluronic acid(HA) microbeads were synthesized by dropping the sodium hyaluronate(Streptococcus) solutions in NaOH into a solution mixture of divinyl sulfone(DVS) in 2-methyl-1-propanol, followed by stirring, cleaning and drying process at room temperature. The initial experimental conditions are crosslinking time(CLTi) of 5 h, crosslinking temperature(CLTe) of room temperature, injection air pressure(IAPr) of 5 psi, and DVS concentration( DVSc) of 0.2 vol%, respectively. Then, parametric studies were performed by varying the parameters to investigate the morphology, the porosity, the swelling ratio and the size of the beads. The microbead size pattern was not regular to function of the degree of crosslink. It was observed that the swelling ratio, the degree of crosslink, and the pore size can be controlled by adjusting the CLTi, CLTe and DVSc. Among the parameters investigated, the smallest bead size can be achieved by varying the CLTi parameter. The lowest swelling ratio, as an indication of the highest degree of crosslink, can be obtained by varying CLTe.

The 'Dielectrophoretic Tweezers(DEP Tweezers)' can be used as a facile, economical toolkit for quantitative measurement of chemical and biological binding forces related to many biological interactions within a microfluidic device. Our experimental setup can probe the interaction between a single receptor molecule and its specific ligand. Immunoglobulin G(IgG) functionalized on polystyrene microspheres has been used to detect individual surface linked Staphylococcus protein A(SpA) molecules and to characterize the strength of the noncovalent IgG-SpA bond. It was measured and compared with the existing measurements. Measured single binding force of between Goat, Rabbit IgG and SpA were $17{\pm}7pN$, $74{\pm}16pN$. This work can be used to investigate several different ligand-receptor interactions and antigen-antibody interactions.

The essential tremor is an involuntary oscillatory movement of body parts. Conventional treatments of essential tremor have little effects in some patients and also leads to significant side effects. Alternative to these treatments, sensory stimulation may have beneficial effects on the essential tremor. The purpose of this study was to analyze an effect of sensory stimulation on essential tremor. Ten patients with essential tremor ($67.4{\pm}8.82$ yrs, 5 men and 5 women) participated in this study. Three-axis gyro sensors were attached on index finger, hand and forearm of patients. Task of 'arms outstretched forward' was performed with and without sensory stimulation. Vectorsum of three dimensional angular velocities (pitch, roll, yaw) was calculated. Outcome measures included root-meansquare (RMS) mean of the vector-sum amplitude, total power, peak power and peak frequency. RMS amplitude, total power and peak power were reduced by sensory stimulation (p < 0.05). Peak frequency was not affected by sensory stimulation. The results indicate that the sensory stimulation is useful to suppress the essential tremor.

We have developed an ultra wide-field of view Optical Coherence Tomography(OCT) which has capability to 2D and 3D views of cross-sectional structure of in vivo human retina. Conventional OCT has a limitation in visualizing the entire retina due to a reduced field of view. We designed an optical setup to significantly improve the lateral scanning range to be more than 20 mm. The entire human retinal structure in 2D and 3D was reported in this paper with the developed OCT system. Also, we empirically searched an optimized image size for real time visualization by analyzing variation of the frame rate with different lateral scan points. The size was concluded to be $1024{\times}2000{\times}300$ pixels which took 9 seconds for visualization.

Ultrasonic shears is currently in wide use as an energy device for minimal invasive surgery. There is an advantage of minimizing the carbonization behavior of the tissue due to the vibrational energy transfer system of the transducer by applying a piezoelectric ceramic. However, the vibrational energy transfer system has a pitfall in energy consumption. When the movement of the forceps is interrupted by the tissue, the horn which transfers the vibrational energy of the transducer will be affected. A study was performed to recognize different tissues by measuring the impedance of the transducer of the ultrasonic shears in order to find the factor of energy consumption according to the tissue. In the first stage of the study, the voltage and current of the transducer connecting portion were measured, along with the phase changes. Subsequently, in the second stage, the impedance of the transducer was directly measured. In the final stage, using the handpiece, we grasped the tissue and observed the impedance differences appeared in the transducer To verify the proposed tissue distinguishing method, we used the handpiece to apply a force between 5N and 10N to pork while increasing the value of the impedance of the transducer from 400 ${\Omega}$.. It was found that fat and skin tissue, tendon, liver and protein all have different impedance values of 420 ${\Omega}$, 490 ${\Omega}$, 530 ${\Omega}$, and 580 ${\Omega}$, respectively. Thus, the impedance value can be used to distinguish the type of tissues grasped by the forceps. In the future study, this relationship will be used to improve the energy efficiency of ultrasonic shears.

This study is about the development of the wrist rehabilitation system for the patient who has limited capability of movement after stroke. Electromyography triggered training system (ETTS) can play the role between complete passive training and patient activating training system. Surface EMG was measured on pronator teres muscle and biceps brachii muscle for wrist pronation and supination. Our system detects whether the subject makes muscular effort for pronation or supination or nothing in every 50 ms. When the effort level exceeds the preset percentage of maximal voluntary contraction, the motor rotates according to the direction of the intention of the subject. EMG triggers the motor rotation for the wrist rehabilitation training until the preset angle. To evaluate its performance, the maximum voluntary contraction level was measured for 4 subjects at first. With the audio-visual instruction to rotate the wrist (pronation or supination) the subjects made effort to follow the instruction. After calculating root mean square (RMS) for 50 ms, the controller determines whether there was muscular effort to rotate while holding the motor. When there was an effort to rotate, the controller rotates the motor 0.8 degree. By comparing the RMS values from two channels of EMG, the controller determines the rotational direction. The onset delay is $0.76{\pm}0.24$ s and offset delay is $0.65{\pm}0.22$ s for pronation. For supination the onset delay is $1.24{\pm}0.41$ s and offset delay is $0.77{\pm}0.22$ s. The system responded fast enough to be used for rehabilitation training. The controller perceived the direction of rotation 100% correctly for the pronation and 97.5% correctly for supination. ETTS was developed and the fundamental functions were validated for normal subjects. The clinical validation should be done with patients for real world application. With ETTS, the subjects can train voluntarily over the limitation of the range of motion which increases the effectiveness of the rehabilitation training.

Moments of inertia of limb segments are essential to calculate parameters related to the segmental rotation. To analyze the human motion accurately and specifically, moments of inertia obtained from the individual are required. In this study, a simple method to determine a subject-specific moment of segmental inertia using a dynamometer is introduced. In order to evaluate the method, one male participated to test for his forearm plus hand on a commercial dynamometer. Three passive speeds, i.e. 240, 270, and $300^{\circ}/s$, were chosen to confirm whether the moment of inertia values at each speed approach to a fixed value. The same procedure was repeated on the day after to evaluate whether the method is reproducible. As the results, there were no significant differences among the speeds and between the days. The value of the moment of the forearm inertia was 0.216 $kg{\cdot}m^2$ that is apparently higher compared to values by previous models. Nonetheless, it seems to be acceptable based on our body mass index analysis using reported subject height and mass in each previous study. According to our results, the developed method could be useful to determine the segmental moment of inertia of an individual, showing no significant differences among the speeds and between the days. Thus, we believe that our results are reliable according to two appropriate evaluation procedures. This finding would be helpful to calculate segmental rotation related parameters of an individual.