Journal of Bioengineering & Biomedical Science

Pigmented skin lesions are the normal part of the skin, however its anomalous appearance is an annoying sign due to the presence of melanomas one of its malignant forms. Although melanoma is a deadly considerable disease, its early detection is a serious step toward mortality reduction. The proposed research discusses the outcome of introducing312 different features in a non-invasive diagnosis method for pigmented skin lesion diagnosis. To obviate the problem of qualitative interpretation, two different image sets are utilized to examine the proposed system, a set of images acquired by standard camera (clinical images) and another set of dermoscopic images captured from the magnified dermoscope. System contribution appears in using large conclusive set of features fed to different classifiers composing totally complete, new and different approaches for the purpose of disease diagnosis. Miscellaneous types of features used such as geometric, chromatic, and texture features extracted from the region of interest resulted from segmentation process. Then, the most prominent features that can cause an effect are selected by three different methods; Fisher score method, t-test, and F-test. The high-ranking features are used for the diagnosis of the two lesion groups using Artificial Neural Network (ANN), K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) as three different classifiers proposed. System performance was measured in regards Specificity, Sensitivity and Accuracy. The ANN designed with the feature selected according to fisher score method enables a diagnostic accuracy of 96. 25% and 97% for dermoscopic and clinical images respectively.

Background: The objective of the presented study is to investigate in vitro effects of low energy extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT) on the keratinocytes and their metabolic and proliferative properties for their therapeutic applications.

Materials: Primary culture of keratinocytes was isolated from clinical samples and after passaging into 12 flasks exposed to the various number of ESWT impulses (n=25, 50 and100impulses) in combination with several frequencies (1, 3 or 5Hz) and distances from the applicator head (5, 6 or 7cm with corresponding energy flux densities (EFD)=0.04, 0.025 and 0.015 mJ/mm², respectively) using modified water bath at constant temperature 37°C. Flasks were assigned to receive one combination of treatment parameters. The individually tested distances/EFD with the various impulse numbers and frequencies were summarised to experimental series. Cell viability was measured using trypan blue, cell cytotoxicity was measured using lactate dehydrogenase assay, and cell metabolic activity was measured by level of glucose metabolism.

Results: Our results indicate that low energy ESWT has both cytotoxic and stimulating effects on the keratinocytes. These effects depend on number of impulses, distance from the applicator head, and frequency. A proliferationstimulating effect and a higher viable cell count could be observed for a distance of 5 cm with 100 impulses at 1 Hz and EFD=0.04 mJ/mm2.

Conclusion: Our results indicate that ESWT (EFD=0.04 mJ/mm2, 100 impulses, 1Hz at 5 cm) augmented proliferative capacity of keratinocytes in vitro. These promising results grant further investigation and have practical potential in keratinocyte research and production.

One of the key factors in assessing the health of heart muscles is measuring their ability to pump the blood out of ventricles in each contraction, which is called ejection fraction (EF). This factor is commonly estimated by a cardiologist when analyzing an echocardiogram, which is a time-consuming and expensive procedure that can also cause some inaccurate results. In this paper, we propose a numerical, short-time, and simple methodology to estimate the EF by calculating the areas and volume under ECG signals, which is a non-invasive, bedside heart monitoring procedure. We computed the areas and volume under the segments of normal ECG signals for 50 subjects by employing trapezoidal, Simpson’s, and Boole’s rules on three orthogonal planes of 12-lead ECG signal directions and five groups of leads for sagittal, frontal and transverse planes. We found a significant correlation (p<.001) between the values for EF parameters reported by cardiologists and our results, which we evaluated by calculating the Wilcoxon Signed-Ranks test, Canberra distance, Paired samples t-test, and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). The results showed a significant correlation between the reported EF factor and the values derived by our proposed method.

Improvements in porcelain material have influenced the more frequent use of this material in tooth restoration. Researchers are constantly searching for the most efficient solution to bond restoration with dental hard tissues. The aim of this study was to examine the presence of interfacial hybrid layer gaps in the adhesive bond between the ceramic material and dental tissues immediately after cementation.

Thirty human third molars were divided into three experimental groups. In each of the teeth, a cylinder-shaped Black’s Class 1 cavity was prepared. An IPS e.max inlay was made by lost wax casting. In order to bond the inlay with the tooth structures, three composite cements were used: Multilink Auto mix, Rely X Ultimate Clicker and selfetching, self-adhesive Rely X U200 Auto mix. After cementation, dental micro sections were taken in order to perform microscopic observations. The final stage of the study consisted of evaluation and measurements under 5x and 10x magnifications with a Nikon MA 200 light microscope.

The outcome of this study indicates differences in the adhesion of the cement to both the dental hard tissue and ceramics. The finest bonding between cement and ceramic was obtained when Multilink Auto mix was used. Also, Rely X U200 Auto mix gave satisfactory results. The least acceptable adhesion of cement to ceramic occurred when Rely X Ultimate Clicker was used.

Based on comparative studies, it may be concluded that self-adhesive cements indicate significantly lower bonding quality in comparison to cements with their own bonding systems. Despite more complex adhesive procedures, multistage bonding systems demonstrate better bonding.

Industrial effluents containing wastewater from textile and dyestuff industries is one of the most difficult to be treated. Since it contains various kinds of synthetic dyes with complex aromatic molecular structures, illustrating the need for a non-specific method of decolorization. Due to the low biodegradability of synthetic dyes, they can cause serious environmental pollution. Hence there's an urgent need to develop treatment system for bioremediation of dye containing industrial effluents to reduce pollution in a non-toxic manner and provide environmentally friendly treatment technology for sustainable development. In recent years white-rot fungi have attracted increasing attention as their lignolytic enzymes have the ability to degrade recalcitrant compounds and synthetic dyes. Owing to extracellular, nonspecific, free radical based lignolytic systems of WRF; they can completely eliminate a variety of xenobiotics, including synthetic dyes and industrial dyes giving rise to non-toxic compounds. Hence five white-rot fungi (isolated from nature) were evaluated for their potential to declorize two dyes Rhodamine-B and Methyl Orange in order to develop them in future as target organisms for treatment of Industrial effluents. All the fungal isolates showed high rates of decolorization, with KV10 and KV12 removing 76% color within 96 hrs. All the fungi not only decolorized the dyes but also degraded them as is evident from the shift in their absorption spectra. Linear increase in laccase production by all five fungi, was observed with a simultaneous increase in extent of decolorization, irrespective of the type of dye. The presence of the dyes in liquid medium had little or no effect on the mycelial growth, at the concentration tested.

We have preliminarily presented three Digital Signal Processing (DSP)-based Computer-Aided Biomedical/ Bioengineering devices. They are Computer-Aided Drug Resistance Calculator (Patent Application Publication No: US20150370964), Computer-Aided Vaccine Potency Assessor (InnoCentive (USA) Challenge Winning Solver Award ID: 9933477) and Computer-Aided Pharmaco-Investigator.

Here, we present the fourth biomedical/bioengineering device, which is to be labeled Computer-Aided Drug Potency Decoder. Its role is to determine and distinguish drug effectiveness. All the DSP-based devices including those mentioned here engaged aggregate contributions from all the Molecular descriptors and point mutations. This is in order to obtain the entirety of the pharmacological activities involved. It is therefore vital that all the Molecular descriptors and point mutations need be identified and engaged. This is to ensure that accurate pharmacological activities are obtained. Engagement of incomplete and incorrect Molecular descriptors and point mutations will lead to deriving incorrect pharmacological activities. Engaging false results hence inaccurate pharmacological activities portend danger to the end-users (patients). There are no known procedures or algorithms to determine complete and accurate Molecular descriptors and point mutations for use in the DSP-based Computer- Aided devices. However, the researcher has developed a procedure that engages all Molecular descriptors and point mutations, and presents accurate findings. This procedure needs be incorporated into all the devices.