Sharif Digital Repository

Innovations in laser, microwaves, and similar technologies have significantly advanced thermal treatments for diseases or even injuries concerning skin tissue. For a thorough understanding in the underlying mechanisms of bioheat transfer behavior of skin,a1D unsteady non-dimensional hyperbolic model of heat transfer through this tissue with metabolic heat generation which is subject to specific boundary conditions, is solved numerically using the finite difference method. A thermal shock is generated at the base of the tissue, which moves forward with a finite speed. A Numerical solution for a simple one-layer skin tissue is obtained. Then, the effects of various parameters, time step,... 

When classical Fourier law of heat conduction is not applicable due to finite speed of heat propagation in a medium, non-Fourier heat conduction is used. In non-Fourier heat conduction, heat transfer is studied considering finite speed of heat flux (thermal wave) or temperature gradient or both (dual phase lag). Biological tissues like skin are one of the materials which show non-Fourier behavior during usual heating processes. In this research heat transfer in human skin is modeled by Fourier, thermal wave and dual phase lag (DPL) models. The equations are solved using the finite difference method and the temperature distribution across the tissue is calculated. In thermal wave model,... 

The goal of the research presented in this thesis is assessment of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) reflectometry as a potential method for non-invasive detection of skin cancers. The reasons for choosing mm-waves are lower penetration, higher resolution and technology maturity. The main work of this research is numerical simulation of reflection from skin and other media as well as reflection measurement of some skin-equivalent phantoms at mm-wave frequencies. By exposing the skin to mm-waves and studying the characteristics of the reflected wave malignant lesions are differentiated from benign and normal skin tissues. Since Oxygen molecules have strong attenuation peaks around 60 GHz band, this... 

Human face detection is an important research area with several applications such as human computer interface (HCI), face recognition, surveillance systems, security systems, and content-based image retrieval (CBIR). Face detection problem can be stated as “determining whether there are human faces in the image” and if there are “returning the location of each human face in the image” regardless of its position, size, scale, orientation, and lighting condition. In this thesis, we have proposed a new face detection method which combines the AdaBoost algorithm with skin color information and support vector machine (SVM). First, a cascade classifier based on AdaBoost is used to detect faces in... 

Tissue engineering has the potential to revolutionize our health care system. Conceptually, lost or malfunctioning tissues will be replaced by man-made biological substitutes to restore, maintain, or improve function. Tissue engineering has already shown great promise to contribute to treatments of a myriad of diseases including osteoarthritis, cancer, diabetes, skin burns, cardiovascular conditions and various traumatic injuries. Tissue engineering is a highly multidisciplinary discipline that demands integration of knowledge, tools and skills from biology, chemistry, engineering and medicine. Integrating nano- and microtechnologies into clinically sized implants represents a major... 

Drag reduction is one of the most important topics in aerodynamics. Several techniques have been represented to reduce this force, such as surface roughness reduction, blowing, suction, cooling the fluid, etc. Blowing and creating a film of a secondary lower viscosity fluid is the technique used here. In our computations, we used large eddy simulation approach considering viscosity ratio variations effects. Investigations were performed for multiple squared cross sectional jets inclined normally into a turbulent cross flow. Each jet generates a pair of counter rotating vortex pair (CRVP) at its downstream while entering the cross flow. Two horseshoe vortices and a couple of wake vortices... 

Progress aerodynamic and structural applications has lead to solid-fluid interaction (SFI) engineering. One major application of SFI is to improve of aerodynamic characteristics of airplanes. One option is to use elastic shells.this field of study is so novel and a challenge for future researches. This what current thesis is focused on We use numerical simulation in both fluid and solid parts.In other word, we employ the finite –element method to solve the solid mechanics governing equation and the finite volume element method to treat the fluid dynamics governing equations. The fluid governing equations are 2D navier- stokes equations and the solid part is the 1D Euler – Bernoulli equations... 

Melanoma is a malignant skin cancer which is caused by cancerous growth of melanocytes. If not treated at its early development stages, melanoma is the deadliest form of cancer. The best way to cure melanoma is to treat it in its earliest stage of development. Since a melanoma leasion is similar to benign moles (regaring its shape and appearance) at its early stages of development, it is often mistaken for moles and left untreated. Therefore, automatic melanoma detection can increase the survival rate of patients by detecting melanoma in its early stages. In this thesis, a new method for automatic diagnosis of melanoma using segmented dermoscopic images is provided. Almost all related... 

In recent years, there has been a growing research interest in segmenting skin regions in color images. Skin segmentation aims at locating skin regions in an unconstrained input image. Skin detection is considered as an important preprocess in many applications such as face detection, face tracking, and filtering of objectionable web images. The most attractive properties of skin detection include low computational cost, increase of the total processing speed, and being invariance against rotation, scale, partial occlusion, and pose change. Because of the diversity of various image processing tasks, there exists no optimum method that can perform properly for all applications. Most of the... 

Skin, as the largest organ of the body and the first protector against external injuries, plays an important role in maintaining human health. Therefore, providing a method for complete treatment of skin lesions is very important. In the last century, tissue engineering approaches, with the introduction of skin scaffolds, have been instrumental in the process of skin tissue regeneration and treatment. The aim of the present study is to construct an optimal bilayer scaffold to mimic the two outer layer of the skin (epidermis and dermis). Besides, the effects of placenta extract on acceleration of wound healing was investigated by an in-vivo test. both layer of scaffold are porous hydrogels,... 

Skin as the largest organ of the body is constructed of three distinctive layers referred to as epidermis, dermis, and hypodermis. Epidermis is the outermost layer of the skin and acts as body’s first barrier against infectious agents and contains mostly sweat glands. Dermis is the mid-layer of the skin which makes up to 70% of the skin and plays a significant role in maintaining body’s metabolism and is home to a huge part of skin’s vascular network, nerve cells and hair follicles. Hypodermis on other hand, is the deepest layer of the skin and mainly acts as a bonding layer between upper skin layers and the soft tissue underneath. Although skin is proved to have a profound ability to... 

Skin tissue as the first protective barrier to the body is always exposed to the most injuries. The purpose of this project is to design an optimum skin scaffold capable of drug delivery for skin wounds healing. To this end, the skin scaffold has been considered as a combination of a hydrogel structure containing polymer microspheres carrying growth factor. Polyvinyl alcohol and sodium alginate polymers were utilized to make the hydrogel substrate. The hydrogel structure was optimized from the viewpoint of the percentage of gelation, water absorption, porosity, mechanical properties, biodegradability, biocompatibility and considering the volume percent of utilized polymers and the... 

Wound healing by engineered scaffolds is a new step in bio-technology and medical studies in recent years. The goal of the current study is to propose a novel structure for a tissue-engineered scaffold to be used in wound healing. Influenced from the multi-layered structure of natural human skin, the fabricated scaffold consists of two layers to maximize similarity with natural skin. This product is comprised of an electrospun layer made of polycaprolactone and polyvinyl alcohol and a hydrogel layer made of chitosan and gelatin. In order to form a porous medium in the hydrogel layer, freeze-gelation was used instead of freeze drying. The evaluation of fabricated scaffolds was performed by... 

Morphing concepts can potentially improve the performance and fuel consumption of modern aircrafts. Smart materials can reduce the weight and complexity, and also are of the best choices to improve efficiency and reliability for realizing morphing wings. Developing of a simple model and optimization of smart piezocomposite actuators position of a thin wing with variable camber is considered. The goal is to gain desired properties in incompressible subsonic regime. Lifting surfaces of a composite wing are simplified using shell model. Keeping the problem simple, a piezocomposite patch is used to change the shell curvature. Basic modes are extracted from FEM software and behavior of bimorph... 

As the first barrier in front of external damages, skin is prone to the largest number of damages applied to one’s body. Acute wounds are considerably prevalent world-widely, imposing very high costs to governments. The purpose of the current project, is to propose a novel skin scaffold capable of growth factor delivery for enhancing the wound healing process in acute wounds. Such a scaffold should be able to decrease the required time for healing process, also to improve the quality of the regenerated skin compared to available commercial products. Furthermore, it should be highly biocompatible, biodegradable, and non-toxic. In this project, to manufacture the artificial skin scaffold, a... 

The main goal of this project is to fabricate the scaffolds including Polycaprolactone and Polyvinyle alcohol nanofibers in order to use as artificial skin. For this purpose, electrospinning parameters have been optimized for various injection rates and the scaffolds containing different percent of PCL and PVA have been made. By investigating the cell growth on these scaffolds, the one made up PVA/PCL (30% ) has been introduced as the best scaffold. To improve biological properties of chosen scaffold, a layer of collagen was coated. The angiogenesis capacity has been improved by adding Heparin to PVA nanofibers. Based on assay of heparin release, it was shown that Heparin is released within... 

In this work, wool keratin/polyethylene oxide (PEO) nanofibrous scaffolds were fabricated by electrospinning method. Bacterial cellulose nanofibrils (BCNFs) were embedded in the electrospun keratin/PEO nanofibers. Incorporation of BCNFs into the nanofibers enhances their hydrophilicity, mechanical properties and cell viability, adhesion and proliferation. Water contact angle of the nanofibers decreased from 126˚ to 83˚by addition of 1 wt % BCNFs. A thermogelling hydrogel based on carboxylated pluronic (Pl-COOH) and gum tragacanth (GT) was fabricated and polymer conjugation was confirmed by FTIR and H-NMR spectroscopy. Morphological and viscoelastic properties of GT-grafted Pl-COOH hydrogels... 

Any factor that causes an additional pressure drop to the reservoir is called damage. Damages due to drilling, well completion and production can cause additional pressure drop to formation. In this study, damage caused by mechanical damage, well deviation from vertical (angled well), partially completed well and horizontal well and formation damage behavior during the occurrence of water and gas coning phenomenon have been investigated by simulation and the results have been verified with the analytical models available for calculating the formation skin factor. Also, by studying and examining the data and the results obtained from the simulation of the horizontal well skin factor in a data... 

Wound healing is a complex and regular process. It makes more challenge when the volume of wound exudate becomes uncontrollable. To solve this problem, hydrofiber wound dressings which contain carboxymethyl cellulose fibers are being used. Fast absorption and keeping the moisture in balance specially in chronic wounds, is one of the major features of hydrofiber wound dressings. In this research, which was conducted with the aim of investigating the synergy effect of active glasses and Hydrofiber commercial wound dressing for the healing of skin wounds, especially chronic wounds, the sol-gel method has been used to synthesize bioactive glasses based on borosilicate, replacing a part of CaO... 

In recent years, it is expected that the fabrication of multilayer scaffolds and the use of different methodologies in one product can be a new progressing method in skin substitute production. Accordingly, this project aims to fabricate a bilayered composite scaffold with a combination of hydrogel and electrospinning method. We have tried to prepare a scaffold made of oxidized alginate (OAL), gelatin (G), and silk fibroin (SF) without using corrosive solvents and toxic crosslinking agents as a scaffold and drug delivery system. As different biological, chemical, physical, and mechanical factors play a vital role in the healing process, we have characterized the proposed scaffold via DSC,...