Sharif Digital Repository

Fusion surgery or fixation of vertebrae in the spine is used to treat scoliosis, fractures, infections, tumors, spinal cord injuries, and disc herniation. In this type of surgery, two or more vertebrae are connected by special screws called pedicle screws to eliminate movement between the vertebrae. Given the serious risks of spinal fusion surgery, if the slightest mistake is made at the entry point or angle of the screw inside the vertebrae, the risk of spinal cord injury is very high, which is one of the complications of fusion surgery. Therefore, in order to increase the accuracy of screw placement, patient-specific template guides are used as drill guides in this operation. For this... 

In the last decade, Intrusion Detection Systems has attracted attention due to their importance in network security, but still they've shortcomings. Generating a lot of low level alerts is the main problem. Many of these alerts are actually false positives. One suggested solution is Alert Correlation Analysis. Because of false positives alert correlation techniques are not able to build accurate scenarios, but the accuracy of alerts can be verified with the aid of the information logged in the host systems. In this dissertation after surveying the current alert correlation techniques, a model will be introduced to effectively verify the generated alerts and to apply correlation techniques to... 

In this research, synthesis of new heterogeneous catalysts has been studied. These catalysts were prepared in three different areas of the synthesis of coordination polymers and metal-organic frameworks, supported palladium nanoparticles on these polymers, and production of metal oxide nanoparticles. At first, metal organic frameworks of cobalt and manganese transition metals were synthesized through hydrothermal method. In order to prepare these frameworks, 1,4-benzenedicarboxylic acid (terephthalic acid) and 2-amino-1,4-benzenedicarboxylic acid ligands were utilized as spacer ligands. X-ray analysis indicated that the structure of polymers is composed of secondary building units (SBUs) of... 

The properties of metamaterials can be tailored through modification of their microstructures geometry. In this regard, a vast range of metamaterials have been designed. Auxetic metamaterials are a novel class of materials exhibiting the interesting characteristic of negative Poisson’s ratio. Theoretically, auxetic metamaterials have improved mechanical properties such as shear modulus and fracture toughness. The design and modeling of auxetic metamaterials is not completed yet. In order to exploit the interesting properties of auxetic metamaterials, their potential applications have been investigated in medical, sports, automobile and defense industries, so far. In the present work, the... 

Low back pain is the most prevalence musculoskeletal pain that people experience in their life. Some cases of low back pain are called non-specific. These are cases for which the reason of pain is not well defined. The aim of this study is to propose a simple approach to diagnose and cluster low back pain patients which helps clinicians to evaluate patients by an affordable and simple tool. In this study, data are collected in two steps using Inertial Sensors. Inertial Sensors consist of a 3-axis gyroscope and a 3-axis accelerometer which represent the kinematic parameters of lumbar movement. In the first step, we examine 24 healthy and 28 patients with low back pain and in the second, 84... 

There are numerous ways available to achieve low temperatures that cryocoolers might be among the most important of them. In the meantime, the pulse tube refrigerator has a special place due to its simple geometry and not be using any moving parts. This simple property make the pulse tube refrigerator one of the most popular methods to achieve low temperatures. Nowadays, a pulse tube refrigerator is used for cooling in the range of 4 to 123 Kelvin in two form of one-stage and two-stage and up to an approximate power of 1 KW. Today, due to the temperature and the amount of power required for cooling, as well as the time it takes to reach that temperature, this chiller is used in medical,... 

Heartbeat is the result of contractions of over 10 billion cardiac cells. These cells’ cytoplasms are connected to each other by gap junctions which are arrays of intercellular protein channels. Thus action potential can propagate from one cell to another and cause its contraction. In core-conductor model, one-dimensional microscopic representation of cardiac tissue, cells are attached to each other to form a ladder network. The parallel elements are connected to each other by series resistors which represent gap junctions. These resistors are nearly always considered as static elements. In this thesis I have investigated the effects of incorporating the dynamicity of gap junction resistors... 

Simulation of cardiovascular system functionality during various physiological conditions is essential at different diagnostic and clinical levels. A first step in studying the roots of cardiovascular diseases and abnormal activity is to study a practical yet complete model of the cardiovascular system. In this thesis we introduced a new approach for defining the distributed model of the cardiovascular system. Initially, we chose an appropriate subsystem, namely Arch of Aorta, and proposed a distributed model for it. The elements of the proposed model were nonlinear RLC elements that simulate resistance, blood viscosity and vessel elasticity respectively. To minimize the system complexity,... 

To actualize and making the outputs of a project effectual, it is necessary to conduct an effective management during a project. This case may not be possible without accurately planning for activities, management and controlling all phases of a project ignoring the risk management of that project. If risks of a project cannot be detected before conducting a project, it is possible to challenge the performance and even effectiveness of the project. In current conditions, the most important problem of managers and executives of construction projects through the country is risk management of projects, not acknowledging with definitions of risk, models of risk management and lack of a model for... 

Disconnections in neural paths from the central nervous system to the muscles or vice versa cause different neuropathies, thus paralysis in different limbs may occur. As a result of the lack of muscular activity and the decrease in blood perfusion in paralyzed limbs, problems like osteoporosis, increase in the risk of breaking, decline in muscle size, cardiovascular diseases, renal dysfunction, bedsores, etc may happen. In order to induce movement in paralyzed limbs, thus preventingmentioned problems, rowing exercise through Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) may be utilized. In FES, electrical Stimulation using current stimulating pulses is applied to contracting and relaxing muscles,... 

A Balanced Scorecard (BSC) model is proposed to evaluate performance of Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) management systems. This model includes key performance indicators at three integrated levels. It has been tested and verified in a project-based organization in Iran, active in the area of power and energy. Results show that the company has done well in implementing HSE management processes, but no so well in growth and learning. This model may be used as a basis for comparing different companies and various proposed programs in the field of HSE management systems. The model includes indicators and sub-indicators in each category particularly related to stakeholders, processes, and... 

World-wide, Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) takes hundreds of thousands of lives each year. This chronic heart disease causes poor performance of the heart and insufficient blood pumping to the organs. A significant percentage of patients with CHF require heart transplants for their survival. The high cost of heart transplant, shortage of donor hearts and possibility of its rejection by recipients are serious problems of this type of treatment. Therefore a large number of heart patients are potential beneficiaries of artificial blood pumps such as Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) and Total Artificial Heart (TAH). Performance of these systems must be compliant and complementary to the existing... 

In this study, factors which lead in failures in reengineering processes in project based companies have been investigated. The research used qualitative methods, and finally using theme analysis to identify the main factors.Consequently, the main causes of failure of re-engineering projects have been identified and classified in six basic categories including: organizational leadership, planning, human resources management, mental models causing resistance, culture and organizational climate and communication. That each of these themes includes some subset of the agents it represents. In this study, a suitable pattern for organizations which intend to perform reengineering has been... 

Supply chain management has been developed extensively in second half of last century and the development has been continued up to present century. Nowadays Development and conformity of production and inventory control methods with JIT philosophy in production line level is one of the topics that received much attention from researchers. An increasing interest in the scope of JIT philosophy is on the extension and adaptation of Pull policies such as Kanban and CONWIP for materials and production control. In a real-life environment, companies are subjected to various types of uncertainties such as stochastic processing times and variable demand. This uncertain environment could cause lots... 

In this study a variational framework for joint segmentation and motion estimation is provided for inspecting heart in Cine MRI sequences. In the first work, a functional including Mumford-Shah segmentation and optical flow based dense motion estimation is proposed. However, the motion estimation technique is replaced with warping estimation in the second work to reach in more regular and smooth motion field based on tracking of cardiac boundaries. Both of these functionals are then approximated by using the phase-field method to make them suitable for extracting Euler-Lagrange equations. Numerical solution to the optimization problem, when the time and image spaces are discretized by finite... 

In many modern medical procedures, needle insertion is an inevitable part of the diagnosis or treatment protocols. The accuracy of the needle insertion is adversely affected by a number of factors. A needle, frequently assumed to be flexible, is inserted into a soft tissue and induces complex mechanical interactions that may result in considerable uncertainties. Tissue intrinsic characteristics as well as its deformation and rotation may cause dramatic complexities. This work considers the needle movement inside the tissue from the dynamics and control point of view. The proposed approach can be regarded as an initial step towards automation of needle insertion procedures; it can also be... 

Medical needle interventions are a common technique for accessing tissue structures.In these procedures, needles are used, for example, to extract biopsy samples, brachytherapy, and to insert drugs. In TRUS guided prostate brachytherapy application, Physicians used ulterasound imaging to steer the needle and insert radioactive seeds into cancerous tumors to irradiate surrounding tissue over several months. Prostate rotation, deformation, and unavailability of imaging data during part of the insertion path result in misplaced seeds. To overcome these problems, in this research, we modeled the prostate, its membrane and the surrounding fatty tissue as linearly elastic homogenous material, and...