Sharif Digital Repository

We propose an algorithm based on mutual information to address the problem of online reconstruction of dynamic MRI from partial k-space measurements. Most of previous compressed sensing (CS) based methods successfully leverage sparsity constraint for offline reconstruction of MR images, yet they are not used in online applications due to their complexities. In this paper, we formulate the reconstruction as a constraint optimization problem and try to maximize the mutual information between the current and the previous time frames. Conjugate gradient method is used to solve the optimization problem. Using Cartesian mask to undersample k-space measurements, the proposed method reduces... 

Many potential therapies are currently being studied that may promote neural regeneration and guide regenerating axons to form correct connections following injury. It has been shown that adult neurons have some limited regenerative capabilities, and the lack of connection formation between neurons is not an intrinsic inability of these cells to form axons after being damaged, but rather the inhibitory microenvironment of the injured tissue prevents regeneration. In this study, the polarization and chemotaxis of neuronal stem cells (NSC) in response to quantified gradients of nerve growth factor (NGF) was examined. To accomplish this, a microfluidic device was designed and fabricated to... 

Governments in developing countries have invested in institutions of higher learning in order to develop homegrown, high technology products. Among these, the National University of Malaysia (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia), recognized as a Research University, is actively involved in projects related to medical technology through its various faculties. The net result of these activities is impressing from the point of view of patents and publications, but unfortunately not yet in terms of commercialization. This paper starts by presenting the main obstacles towards the objective of bringing a laboratory prototype to the market in the context of Malaysia. Then, a framework is presented... 

The main goal of this study is to investigate the effects of plaque structure on its stress distribution. Rupture of plaque causes cerebrovascular diseases which lead to high mortality rates all over the world. Computers are powerful tools to understand the mechanism of plaque rupture. In this study, 3D fluid structure interaction simulation is constructed in ABAQUS 6.13 to clarify the relation between stress distribution of plaque and its structure. A model of common carotid artery with distributed stenosis was chosen for the simulation. To investigate the effects of plaque structure on stress distribution, thickness of fibrous cap and lipid core size were varied in the stenosis.... 

This paper presents a two layer texture modeling method to recognize architectural distortion in mammograms. We propose a method that models a Gaussian mixture on the Curvelet coefficients and the outputs of Spiculated Lesion Filters. The Curvelet transform and the Spiculated Lesion Filters have been applied to extract textural features of mammograms in literature. However the key difference between this study and the previous ones is that in our approach, a Gaussian mixture models the textural features extracted by the Curvelet transform and the Spiculated Lesion Filters. The results of the current study are shown in the form of accuracy and the area under the receiver operating... 

In this study, the polarization and navigation of neuronal cells was studied in response to quantified gradients of nerve growth factor (NGF). To accomplish this, a microfluidic device was designed and fabricated to generate stable concentration gradients of biomolecules in a cell culture chamber within a 3D microenvironment. Numerical simulation was implemented to optimize the device geometry for generating a uniform concentration gradient of NGF which was found to remain stable for multiple hours. Neural Stem/ Progenitor Cell (NSCs) migration and differentiation was studied within this microfluidic device in response to NGF concentration and within a 3D environment of collagen matrix.... 

Inferior temporal (IT) cortex is the most important part of the brain and plays an important role in response to visual stimuli. In this study, object decoding has been performed using neuron spikes in IT cortex region. Single Unit Activity (SUA) was recorded from 123 neurons in IT cortex. Pseudo-population firing rate vectors were created, then dimension reduction was done and an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was used for object decoding. Object decoding accuracy was calculated for various window lengths from 50 ms to 200 ms and various window steps from 25 ms to 100 ms. The results show that 150 ms length and 50 ms window step size gives an optimum performance in average accuracy  

Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) is a non-invasive method for investigating the brain white matter structure. It can be used to evaluate fiber bundles in the brain. However, clinical acquisitions are often low resolution. This paper proposes a method for improving the resolution using sparse representation. In this method a non-diffusion weighted image (bO) is utilized to learn the patches and then diffusion weighted images are reconstructed based on the trained dictionary. Our method is compared with bilinear, nearest neighbor and bicubic interpolation methods. The proposed method shows improvement in terms of Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structural SIMilarity (SSIM)  

The electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is widely used for diagnosis of various types of cardiac diseases. However, in practical cases, the signal is corrupted by artifacts through the recording process. Thus, denoising of this type of biological signals seems necessary. Several methods have been suggested in recent years for the purpose of ECG denoising; some of which have been based on Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD). In this paper, an EMD-based approach is proposed which uses the time interval between two adjacent zero crossings within an Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF), defined as Instantaneous Half Period (IHP), to distinguish noise components from the main ECG signal. Noisy signal is... 

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ADS), with unknown etiology, is one of the most understudy fields of research worldwide that requires complicated and delicate analytical study methods. The purpose of this study was to compare active regions of Brain Default Mode Network (DMN) using Group Independent Component Analysis (6ICA) among resting state patients with Autism Disorder and healthy subjects. Default Mode Network consists of posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), lateral parietal cortex/angular gyrus retrosplenial cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, superior frontal gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus and temporal lobe shows more prominent activity in passive resting conditions. The diagnosis of autism... 

In this paper a multi-scale image enhancement strategy using wavelets as applied to digital mammograms is presented. For multiresolution wavelet analysis redundant dyadic discrete wavelet transform is utilized to allow translation invariance and low resolution enhancement capability. Two alternative nonlinear gain adjustments, piecewise linear and Gaussian form of gain adjustment are used for coefficient modification for the enhancement of subtle details such as microcalcification and low resolution edges of different lesion types. The results of comparing these methods of gain adjustment are presented. This comparing has done by defining new parameters for measuring quality of image based... 

The main goal of this study is to investigate the role of vascular graft thickness in wall stress gradient in anastomosis region. Atherosclerosis is a common heart disease causes high mortality rates every year. The gold standard treatment of atherosclerosis is replacing with autologous vein extracted from patient's body. Since proper autologous vein is limited, researchers have made efforts to achieve compliance engineered blood vessels. Mechanical stress has great effect on both smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells and it is considered as a stimulus in plaque formation. In this study, we evaluate the role of thickness in wall stress of anastomosis region. For this purpose, two... 

This paper presents recent developments on effects of rest and fatigue loading on properties of healthy vertebra discs. A comparison of different approaches used in literature to study the properties of intervertebral disc is presented. The major achievements in this area so far are discussed in the context of their advantages and disadvantages. The past approaches are based on bio-mechanical models which mostly used statistical techniques for the analysis and estimation of fatigue loaded Intervertebral Disc (IVD). However, those modeling techniques were not flexible enough for analysis of customized tests. In this paper, we applied System Identification (SI) based NLARX modeling technique... 

Sit-to-stand (STS) is an important functional task affected by low back pain (LBP). It requires fundamental coordination among all segments of the body to control important performance variables such as body's center of mass (CM) and head positions. This study was conducted to determine whether LBPs could coordinate their multiple joints to achieve the task stability to the same extent as healthy controls. About 11 non-specific chronic LBP and 12 healthy control subjects performed STS task at three postural difficulty levels: rigid surface - open eyes (RO), rigid surface - closed eyes (RC) and narrow surface - closed eyes (NC). Motion variability of seven body segments, CM and head positions... 

A one dimensional model of the pulmonary arterial network along with systemic circulation was introduced to quantify the human pulmonary artery hemodynamics. A lumped parameter model of the right ventricle was used as the inlet boundary condition. A time varying elastance related the volume and pressure of the right ventricle was imposed in the model. By using a four element Windkessel model, blood flow rate throughout the right ventricle was in hand. An asymmetric structured tree was chosen as the outlet boundary conditions. Simulation was based on solving one-dimensional equations of conservation of mass and momentum by using finite volume method. Blood flow rate, pressure and velocity... 

The recruitment pattern of trunk muscles is determined using a three-dimensional model of the spine with two joints and six symmetric pairs of muscles in which both equilibrium and stability requirements are satisfied. Model predictions are verified using Anybody Modeling System (AMS) and Abaqus. The model is used to test the hypothesis that antagonistic muscle activities are necessary for the spinal stability. The model with stability constraints predicts muscle activities greater than those predicted without stability consideration. In agreement with experimental data, the stability-based model predicts antagonistic muscle activities. It is shown that spinal stability increases with trunk... 

This study is conducted with the aim of validating the Saadat non-invasive blood pressure (NIBP) module accuracy and reliability against direct intra arterial pressure measurement (IBP) according to the ANSI/AAMI SP10-2002 guidelines. Measurement and comparison procedure were done in a static population of 19 adult patients with brachial catheterized arterial line with total measurements of 195 under supervision of a highly experienced cardiovascular anesthesiologist in accordance with the ANSI/AAMI SP10-2002 regulation. Data analysis was performed based on the protocol criteria. In order to represent relationships between the test device and the reference method, Bland-Altman graphical... 

Heart is a complex system and we can find its function in electrocardiogram (ECG) signal. The records show high mortality rate of heart diseases. So it is essential to detect and recognize ECG arrhythmias. The problem with ECG analysis is the vast variations among morphologies of ECG signals. Premature Ventricular Contractions (PVC) is a common type of arrhythmia which may lead to critical situations and contains risk. This study, proposes a novel approach for detecting PVC and visualizing data with respect to ECG morphologies by using manifold learning. To this end, the Laplacian Eigenmaps - One of the reduction method and it is in the nonlinear category - is used to extract important... 

Analysis of the heart rate (HR) variation due to respiration, known as respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), is a method to assess the autonomic nervous system (ANS) function. In this paper a physiologically-based mathematical model consisting of the cardiorespiratory system and ANS control has been used in order to study the cardiovascular response (mean arterial blood pressure and HR) to breathing with different respiration rates and tidal volumes. Simulation results show that RSA has its maximal amplitude at the respiration frequency of 0.12 Hz and that RSA amplitude varies linearly by tidal volume. These results are in agreement with real data from the literature. In addition, the... 

The front part of a cell is divided to two regions called lamellum and lamellipodium (lamellipodial). This part plays an essential role for cell migration. Indeed, there are many protein filaments called actin in lamellum and lamellipodium, which induce the cell motion with polymerization in the leading edge of the cell. The actin filaments adhere to the extracellular matrix (ECM) by means of focal adhesions and they have contact by myosin motor proteins. The myosin motor proteins cause actin retrograde and anterograde flow exerted contractile stress on them. The focal adhesions exert frictional stress on the actin filaments. In this work, we developed a two-dimensional continuum model of...