• Biomedical Engineering Letters
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.365-371
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• 2018

Uninterrupted monitoring of multiple subjects is required for mass causality events, in hospital environment or for sports by medical technicians or physicians. Movement of subjects under monitoring requires such system to be wireless, sometimes demands multiple transmitters and a receiver as a base station and monitored parameter must not be corrupted by any noise before further diagnosis. A Bluetooth Piconet network is visualized, where each subject carries a Bluetooth transmitter module that acquires vital sign continuously and relays to Bluetooth enabled device where, further signal processing is done. In this paper, a wireless network is realized to capture ECG of two subjects performing different activities like cycling, jogging, staircase climbing at 100 Hz frequency using prototyped Bluetooth module. The paper demonstrates removal of baseline drift using Fast Fourier Transform and Inverse Fast Fourier Transform and removal of high frequency noise using moving average and S-Golay algorithm. Experimental results highlight the efficacy of the proposed work to monitor any vital sign parameters of multiple subjects simultaneously. The importance of removing baseline drift before high frequency noise removal is shown using experimental results. It is possible to use Bluetooth Piconet frame work to capture ECG simultaneously for more than two subjects. For the applications where there will be larger body movement, baseline drift removal is a major concern and hence along with wireless transmission issues, baseline drift removal before high frequency noise removal is necessary for further feature extraction.

• Biomedical Engineering Letters
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.337-344
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• 2018

Additive manufacturing (AM) is an alternative metal fabrication technology. The outstanding advantage of AM (3D-printing, direct manufacturing), is the ability to form shapes that cannot be formed with any other traditional technology. 3D-printing began as a new method of prototyping in plastics. Nowadays, AM in metals allows to realize not only net-shape geometry, but also high fatigue strength and corrosion resistant parts. This success of AM in metals enables new applications of the technology in important fields, such as production of medical implants. The 3D-printing of medical implants is an extremely rapidly developing application. The success of this development lies in the fact that patient-specific implants can promote patient recovery, as often it is the only alternative to amputation. The production of AM implants provides a relatively fast and effective solution for complex surgical cases. However, there are still numerous challenging open issues in medical 3D-printing. The goal of the current research review is to explain the whole technological and design chain of bio-medical bone implant production from the computed tomography that is performed by the surgeon, to conversion to a computer aided drawing file, to production of implants, including the necessary post-processing procedures and certification. The current work presents examples that were produced by joint work of Polygon Medical Engineering, Russia and by TechMed, the AM Center of Israel Institute of Metals. Polygon provided 3D-planning and 3D-modelling specifically for the implants production. TechMed were in charge of the optimization of models and they manufactured the implants by Electron-Beam Melting ($EBM^{(R)}$), using an Arcam $EBM^{(R)}$ A2X machine.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Research
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.183-192
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• 2018

Although hyaluronic acid (HA) has been developed as a nanoparticle (NP; 320-400 nm) for a drug delivery system, the tissue targeting efficacy and the pharmacokinetics of HA-NPs are not yet fully understood. After a dose of 5 mg/kg of cyanine 5.5-labeled HA-NPs or HA-polymers was intravenously administrated into mice, the fluorescence was measured from 0.5 h to 28 days. The HA-NPs fluorescence was generally stronger than that of HA-polymers, which was maintained at a high level over 7 days in vivo, after which it gradually decreased. Upon ex vivo imaging, liver, spleen, kidney, lung, testis and sublingual gland fluorescences were much higher than that of other organs. The fluorescence of HA-NPs in the liver, spleen and kidney was highest at 30 min, where it was generally maintained until 4 h, while it drastically decreased at 1 day. However, the fluorescence in the liver and spleen increased sharply at 7 days relative to 3 days, then decreased drastically at 14 days. Conversely, the fluorescence of HA-polymers in the lymph node was higher than that of HA-NPs. The results presented herein may have important clinical implications regarding the safety of as self-assembled HA-NPs, which can be widely used in biomedical applications.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.254-259
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• 2019

In this study, we synthesized the pine leaf extract intercalated layered Mg-phyllosilicate nanoparticles (PLE/MgP) via one-pot synthesis. MgP was successfully synthesized with the octahedral and tetrahedral structure by XRD analysis and a gap of interlayer distance (d-spacing) between MgP sheets by the intercalation of PLE was confirmed. As a result of the investigation of antimicrobial activity against cutaneous microorganisms by the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and bactericidal concentration (MBC) analyses, the antimicrobial activity of PLE/MgP was more improved than that of MgP or PLE. The prepared sandwich-structured PLE/MgP organic/inorganic hybrid materials will be useful in the field of numerous applications containing cosmetic and biomedical materials.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.639-643
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• 2021

In this study, fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP) nanoparticle as an adhesive for fabricating a three-dimensional multilayered microfluidic device was studied. The formation of evenly distributed FEP nanoparticles layer with 3 ㎛ in thickness on substrates was achieved by simple spin coating of FEP dispersion solution at 1500 rpm for 30 s. It is confirmed that FEP nanoparticles transformed into a hydrophobic thin film after thermal treatment at 300 ℃ for 1 hour, and fabricated polyimide film-based microfluidic device using FEP nanoparticle was endured pressure up to 2250 psi. Finally, a three-dimensional multilayered microfluidic device composed of 16 microreactors, which are difficult to fabricate with conventional photolithography, was successfully realized by simple one-step alignment of FEP coated nine polyimide films. The developed three-dimensional multilayered microfluidic device has the potential to be a powerful tool such as high-throughput screening, mass production, parallelization, and large-scale microfluidic integration for various applications in chemistry and biology.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.293-303
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• 2021

Separation membranes used in water filtration, protein purification or biomedical filtration device frequently undergo membrane fouling for several reasons. The formation of biofilm on the membrane surface by bacteria causes a severe problem for durability of the membrane. For the protein separation, the membrane pores get blocked due to surface hydrophobicity of the membrane. There are several approaches controlling the membrane fouling and one of them is the incorporation of silver nanoparticles. Antibacterial properties of silver nanoparticles are well known and thus widely used in several applications. In this review, we have focused on the membranes where silver nanoparticles or its derivatives are either incorporated in the active layer of thin film composite membranes or uniformly distributed throughout the whole membranes.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.241-252
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• 2021

Rapid industrialization with growing population leads to environmental water pollution. Demand in generation of clean water from waste water is ever increasing by scarcity of rain water due to change in weather pattern. Colorimetric detection of heavy metal present in clean water is very simple and effective technique. In this review membrane based colorimetric detection of mercury (II) ions are discussed in details. Membrane such as cellulose, polycaprolactone, chitosan, polysulfone etc., are used as support for metal ion detection. Nanofiber based materials have wide range of applications in energy, environment and biomedical research. Membranes made up of nanofiber consist up plenty of functional groups available in the polymer along with large surface area and high porosity. As a result, it is easy for surface modification and grafting of ligand on the fiber surface enhanced nanoparticles attachment.

• Current Optics and Photonics
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.550-564
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• 2022

Optical microscopy is a useful tool for study in the biological sciences. With an optical microscope, we can observe the micro world of life such as tissues, cells, and proteins. A fluorescent dye or a fluorescent protein provides an opportunity to mark a specific target in the crowd of biological samples, so that an image of a specific target can be observed by an optical microscope. The optical microscope, however, is constrained in resolution due to diffraction limit. Super-resolution microscopy made a breakthrough with this diffraction limit. Using a super-resolution microscope, many biomolecules are observed beyond the diffraction limit in cells. In the case of volumetric imaging, the super-resolution techniques are only applied to a limited area due to long imaging time, multiple scattering of photons, and sample-induced aberration in deep tissue. In this article, we review recent advances in super-resolution microscopy for volumetric imaging. The super-resolution techniques have been integrated with various modalities, such as a line-scan confocal microscope, a spinning disk confocal microscope, a light sheet microscope, and point spread function engineering. Super-resolution microscopy combined with adaptive optics by compensating for wave distortions is a promising method for deep tissue imaging and biomedical applications.

• Biomaterials Research
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.249-258
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• 2018

Background: Mucoadhesive polymers, which may increase the contact time between the polymer and the tissue, have been widely investigated for pharmaceutical formulations. In this study, we developed a new polysaccharide-based mucoadhesive polymer with thermogelling properties. Methods: Hexanoyl glycol chitosan (HGC), a new thermogelling polymer, was synthesized by the chemical modification of glycol chitosan using hexanoic anhydride. The HGC was further modified to include thiol groups to improve the mucoadhesive property of thermogelling HGC. The degree of thiolation of the thiolated HGCs (SH-HGCs) was controlled in the range of 5-10% by adjusting the feed molar ratio. The structure of the chemically modified polymers was characterized by $^1H$ NMR and ATR-FTIR. The sol-gel transition, mucoadhesiveness, and biocompatibility of the polymers were determined by a tube inverting method, rheological measurements, and in vitro cytotoxicity tests, respectively. Results: The aqueous solution (4 wt%) of HGC with approximately 33% substitution showed a sol-gel transition temperature of approximately $41^{\circ}C$. SH-HGCs demonstrated lower sol-gel transition temperatures ($34{\pm}1$ and $31{\pm}1^{\circ}C$) compared to that of HGC due to the introduction of thiol groups. Rheological studies of aqueous mixture solutions of SH-HGCs and mucin showed that SH-HGCs had stronger mucoadhesiveness than HGC due to the interaction between the thiol groups of SH-HGCs and mucin. Additionally, we confirmed that the thermogelling properties might improve the mucoadhesive force of polymers. Several in vitro cytotoxicity tests showed that SH-HGCs showed little toxicity at concentrations of 0.1-1.0 wt%, indicating good biocompatibility of the polymers. Conclusions: The resultant thiolated hexanoyl glycol chitosans may play a crucial role in mucoadhesive applications in biomedical areas.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.522-530
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• 2022

In this study we aimed to develop novel ZnO-NP/chitosan/β-glycerophosphate (ZnO-NP/CS/β-GP) antibacterial hydrogels for biomedical applications. According to the mass fraction ratio of ZnO-NPs to chitosan, mixtures of 1, 3, and 5% ZnO-NPs/CS/β-GP were prepared. Using the test-tube inversion method, scanning electron microscopy and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, the influence of ZnO-NPs on gelation time, chemical composition, and cross-sectional microstructures were evaluated. Adding ZnO-NPs significantly improved the hydrogel's antibacterial activity as determined by bacteriostatic zone and colony counting. The hydrogel's bacteriostatic mechanism was investigated using live/dead fluorescent staining and scanning electron microscopy. In addition, crystal violet staining and MTT assay demonstrated that ZnO-NPs/CS/β-GP exhibited good antibacterial activity in inhibiting the formation of biofilms and eradicating existing biofilms. CCK-8 and live/dead cell staining methods revealed that the cell viability of gingival fibroblasts (L929) cocultured with hydrogel in each group was above 90% after 24, 48, and 72 h. These results suggest that ZnO-NPs improve the temperature sensitivity and bacteriostatic performance of chitosan/β-glycerophosphate (CS/β-GP), which could be injected into the periodontal pocket in solution form and quickly transformed into hydrogel adhesion on the gingiva, allowing for a straightforward and convenient procedure. In conclusion, ZnO-NP/CS/β-GP thermosensitive hydrogels could be expected to be utilized as adjuvant drugs for clinical prevention and treatment of peri-implant inflammation.