Journal of Biomimetics, Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering Vol. 44

Abstract: The objective of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of different hardness of personalized custom insoles on plantar pressure redistribution in healthy young males during walking and running. Six males participated in the walking and running test (age: 24±1.6 years, weight: 67.9±3.6 kg, height: 175.5±4.7 cm). All subjects were instructed to walk and run along a 10m pathway wearing two different hardness insoles (i.e., hard custom insoles (CHI) and soft custom insole (CSI)) and control insole (CI) at their preferred speed. Peak pressure, mean pressure, maximum force, pressure-time integral were collected to analyze using SPSS. The plantar pressure of forefoot and medial midfoot were significantly increased and of lateral forefoot and lateral midfoot were decreased by both kinds of custom insoles in running tests. While the CHI significantly increased plantar pressure of the medial forefoot compared with the CSI and CI both in walking and running tests. The custom insoles showed significantly higher plantar pressure on medial midfoot. But CSI seems better than CHI because of redistributing the plantar pressure by increasing the plantar pressure of whole forefoot. Moreover, CSI showed significantly lower plantar pressure than CI and CHI at lateral midfoot during running test. The CHI causes significant high pressure at medial forefoot (MF), which may raise the risk of forefoot pain.

Abstract: The knee at times undergoes a surgical process to substitute the weight-bearing surfaces of the knee joint. This procedure relieves the pain and disability around the knee joint. This research paper studied the knee arthroplasty, also referred to as knee replacement. This work was aided with computer vision for visual and accuracy. Autodesk fusion 360 and the stl files were used to generate cemented, posterior stabilised knee prosthesis and imported into the COMSOL Multiphysics software. Then, the three-dimensional models of the total knee arthroplasty (TKA) prosthetic structure are produced. The prosthetic components are modelled as linear isotropic elastic materials. Finite element (FE) simulations using COMSOL Multiphysics on a CAD model of a knee are effectuated to show the effect of several loads and strains on the knee. FE analysis of the model indicates that the orthotropic model depicts a more realistic stress distribution of the knee as it reveals the detailed anatomy of the entire knee structure. The computational results of this work displayed a fair agreement with experimental information from the literature.

Abstract: Degradation of images and segmentation are the two most demanding fields for medical image processing, particularly when explicitly applied. The involvement of noise not only deteriorates the visual quality but also the precision of the segmentation which is vital to the medical diagnosis process of development. The complicated and monotonous main task is to manually denoise medical images such as CT, ultrasound and large numbers of clinical routine MRI images. The medical image must be denoised automatically. The proposed approach is associated with less complexity, this follows from the fact that, the design of system and time for optimization. Results show their efficacy for noise removal in medical ultrasound and MRI images .The final results of the proposed scheme in terms of noise reduction and structural preservation are excellent. However the proposed scheme is compared with existing methods and the performance of the proposed method in terms of visual quality, image quality index, peak SNR and PSNR is shown to be superior to existing methods.

Abstract: MR Brain Image Segmentation is an important step in brain image analysis. It facilitates the automatic interpretation or diagnosis that helps in surgical planning, estimating the changes in the brain’s volume for various types of tissues, and recognizing different neural disorders. Many neurological disorders like epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, tumor, and cancer can be effectively quantified and analyzed by finding the volume of the brain tissues such as White Matter (WM), Gray Matter (GM), and Cerebro Spinal Fluids (CSF). In manual segmentation of brain MRIs physicians manually determines the boundaries of different objects of interest and it is time-consuming and difficult. Thus, several accurate automatic brain MRI segmentation techniques with different levels of complexity have been proposed. This paper proposes an advanced thresholding technique for the segmentation of brain MRIs based on the biologically inspired Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm. Here the texture features are assumed as heuristic data. The experimental results for the T1-weighted brain MRIs have shown high accuracy than the conventional such as Fuzzy C-Means (FCM), Expectation-Maximization (EM), Improved Bacterial Foraging Algorithm (IBFA), and Improved Particle Swarm Optimization (IPSO).

Abstract: The QT interval on the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is known to have an important role in monitoring heart’s electrical activity because the presence of QT interval prolongation can be associated with life-threatening cardiac events. This interval can be identified and measured using either manual or automated techniques. Currently, studies on automated QT interval measurement algorithms are becoming a growing field, as they can provide the best solution to overcome misdiagnosis and timely issues resulting from manual identification. However, the physiological variability of the QRS complex and the fluctuation of the isoelectric line are prevalent issues that need to be considered in the automatic method. In this report, an algorithm to identify the QRS onset and T-wave offset for measuring the corrected QT interval (QTc) is proposed. This method uses an improved Pan-Tompkins algorithm from the previous work with independent of the isoelectric line approach for detecting the QRS onset and the T offset. The algorithm was implemented in Matlab and applied to the 60 seconds duration of 27 records in the PPUKM database with a sampling frequency of 500 Hz. The performance of the algorithm achieved a sensitivity of 100% for QRS onset detection and 100% for T offset detection. As for the accuracy, the algorithm’s performance obtained 100% for QRS onset detection and 99.56% for T offset detection. The mean error results with respect to manual annotation were 37±18.5 ms for QRS onset detection and 32±22.3 ms for T offset detection which was within ANSI/AAMI-EC57:1998 standard tolerance. The proposed algorithm exhibits reliable automated QTc measurement. Besides insensitive to morphological variations of ECG waves, the computational method is simple and possibly implemented as the basis for future software development for portable device applications.

Abstract: Background: Currently silk fibroin is used more and more in the biomedical researches, including a potential research direction in creating wound dressing. Turmeric powder is a natural drug with many properties suitable for treatment of burns such as anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, especially reducing formation of scars. Methods: In this study, sericin is removed from the silk to obtain fibroin fiber. Fibroin fiber and turmeric powder are dissolved by formic acid adding calcium chloride (CaCl₂). Created fibroin films (FF) are then evaluated in some characteristics such as surface structure, chemical structure, tensile strength, absorbency, dehydration rate, biodegradation ability, pH determination, preventing bacteria ability and cytotoxicity test. Results: All results indicated that created FF is fulfilled with all the required properties of wound dressings. Conclusions: This study is the first step to creating foundation and orientation for the development of commercial wound dressings.

Abstract: The ceramics in the system CaO–MgO–SiO₂ has recently attracted a great deal of attention because they display a good in vitro bioactivity and have potential use as bone implants. Biphasic calcium-magnesium-silicate ceramics were prepared by a sol-gel method. The dried gel with chemical composition 3CaO.MgO.2SiO₂ was thermally treated at 1200 °C for 2 hrs. The structural behavior of the synthesized ceramics was examined by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Merwinite crystalline phase and akermanite phase were recognized. Then, porous akermanite/merwinite scaffolds were prepared to utilize polymer sponge method and evaluated by employing SEM. Furthermore, bone marrow stromal cells (BMSC) adhesion and proliferation on the scaffolds were evaluated by MTT assay test. Differentiation of the cells was assessed by measuring alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity. The results demonstrated that BMSC adhered and spread well on akermanite scaffolds and proliferated with the increase in the culture time, and the differentiation rate of osteoblasts on scaffolds was comparable to that on blank culture plate control. Thus, the obtained results presented that the akermanite/merwinite scaffolds deserve attention for bone tissue engineering applications.

Abstract: Introduction: Carbonate apatite type B (C-Ap) has been used as a bone replacement material because of its osteoconductive properties. Clinically, the pores formed in bone replacement material aid in cell mobility and nutrient supply, thereby increasing the bone regeneration ability. CO₃^2- ions found in this material are useful for maintaining a stable physiological environment in the bone in order for it to be easily absorbed by osteoclasts. Porous C-Ap type B is formed using the dissolution–precipitation method by immersing porous anhydrous CaSO₄ in a mixture of carbonate and phosphate solutions. Purpose: The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of immersion ofCaSO₄using the dissolution–precipitation method on the formation of porous C-Ap type B with calcium sulfate precursor hemihydrate. Method: Porous C-Ap type B was produced usinga mixture of calcium sulfate hemihydrate precursors with 50 wt% polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) porogen and distilled water. After hardening, the calcium sulfate dihydrate containing PMMA was burned in an oven at 700°C for 4 h to remove the PMMA. The specimen was immersed in a mixture of sodium phosphate (Na₃PO₄) and sodium carbonate (Na₂CO₃) for 6, 12, and 24 h. Phase testing through X-ray diffraction (XRD) using CuKα radiation at 40 kV and 40 mA was performed. Attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA) was used for detecting the functional groups of CO₃^2- and PO₄^2-. Results: XRD results showed the formation of C-Ap at 6 and 12 h, but the anhydrous CaSO₄ phase remained; alternatively, this phase was absent after 24 h of immersion phase andFTIR showed the presence of the functional groups of CO₃^2- compounds. Conclusion: Porous C-Ap type B can be formed from CaSO₄ precursors after 24 h of immersion using the dissolution–precipitation method.