Project Title: Microwave and Electrical Stimulation of Human Adult Stem
Cells
Description: Electrical stimulation is
commonly used clinically to enhance bone fracture repair or muscle
regeneration. While clinically the
impact of electricity on wound healing appears to be well accepted, there is
almost no information on the mechanistic basis for this response at the
cellular or macromolecular levels. This
type of information would be helpful in developing a better understanding on
how to apply such energy to optimize specific outcomes, versus the current mode
of trial and error to final suitable treatment regimes. Developing an understating of the mechanisms
involved in microwave and electrical inputs on stem cells and eventually cell
and tissue repair will contribute to improvements in understanding
environmental impacts on human health in general, as well as provide new
directions into novel treatments through the use of microwave or electrical
devices.
Team: This is a
joint project between the Department of Biomedical Engineering (Professor Vo
Van Toi and Professor David Kaplan), Chemical & Biological Engineering
(Professor Vunjak-Novakovic), Electrical Engineering (Professor Mohamed Afsar),
and Computer Science (Durwood Marshall).
Undergraduate students involved: Rachel Bill (Senior), Julie Fox
(Senior) and Birgit Unfried (Senior), all double majors in Electrical
Engineering and Biomedical Engineering.
Project Title: Relationship Between EEG and NIRS
Description: Near-infrared spectroscopy
(NIRS) is an optical technique that has a great potential for non-invasive
medical diagnostics. It can penetrate
through several centimeters of tissue and has been successfully applied to the
non-invasive study of skeletal muscle (for muscle perfusion and oxygenation),
breast (for tumor detection), and brain (for functional studies) in human
subjects. In this project, NIRS and EEG
sensors will be combined into opto-electrical sensors to be arrayed for
concurrent physiologic and functional studies of the brain. Successful outcomes will result in enhanced
imaging tools to investigate brain physiology and potentially improved clinical
neurodiagnosis that may depend heavily on cerebral metabolic activity (for
example, early prediction/advance warning of impending seizure onset in
patients with epilepsy, precise mapping of cortical seizure propagation, and
differentiating complex partial epilepsy from severe migraine with aura). The
short-term goal is to develop an enhanced tool to investigate the relationship
between the electrical neuronal activation (measured with EEG) and the vascular
response resulting in a focal increase in blood flow (measured with NIRS). This
may help elucidate the mechanisms of neurovascular coupling that are associated
with brain activation. The long-term goal is to develop a novel monitoring and
diagnostic tool that improves the clinical outcome for patients affected by
epilepsy and migraine with aura.
Team: This project involves
faculty from Biomedical Engineering (Professor Sergio Fantini and Professor Vo
Van Toi), Tufts Medical School (Professor Peter Bergethon), and Psychology
(Professor Nalini Ambadi).
Undergraduate students involved: Jeff Martin (Senior), David Lin
(Senior), Matthew Hoimes (Senior) and
Anita Rhora (Senior), all double majors in Electrical Engineering and
Biomedical Engineering.
Project Title:
Relationship among human posture, dental position and muscle strength
Description: The short term goal is to
determine the range of neck motion and head position in healthy adults, to be
followed by establishing quantitative standards by which researchers and
medical providers can systematically assess neck pain and mobility in patients.
These standards will greatly improve the current evaluation of treatment and
diagnosis methods used to assess craniofacial pain as well as muscle strength
in patients.
Team: This is a joint project
between the Department of Biomedical Engineering (Professor Vo Van Toi) and the
Craniofacial Pain Center of the Tufts Dental School (Professor Noshir Mehta and
Professor Albert Forgione), and includes undergraduate students Edward
Tangchitnob (Senior), Aeric Solow (Senior), and Steven Boutrous (Junior). They
are students double major in Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering.
Description: The goal of this project is to develop a healthcare
information technology (HIT) network to enhance the information transmission
between patients, healthcare professionals and the medical instruments involved
in the diagnostics and treatments. This novel network is based on the Internet
and wireless techniques. It will be
capable of recording data from an instrument or from a medical personnel,
storing, presenting and transmitting data at any time, from and to
anyplace. HIT will connect individual
patients, their own healthcare personnel (physicians, nurses, administrators),
and health stations. A health station
is a complex having adequate medical devices. It can be part of a healthcare
establishment (Hospital, HMO) as in the current situation or a stand-alone
establishment. This concept is similar to that of a gas station or car-service
station. Any patient belonged to the
network can get access to a health station.
Team: This is a joint project between Biomedical
Engineering Department at Tufts University (Professor Vo Van Toi) and Tufts
Healthcare Center. Graduate students: Shahla Almasri, Selma Holden, Jean-Francois Marois and Stephanie DeChiaro. All are Master’s degree
students.
Description: A computer controlled
dynamic dosimetry phantom was created to simulate tumor motion so that new
techniques in radiation delivery could be tested for accuracy in radiation
treatment. A two – dimensional computer
controlled phantom was developed to replicate tumor movement more precisely
spatially and temporally. The design of
the phantom composed of three main parts: a mechanical platform, an electrical
interface and a computer system. A calibrated
camera system was used to test the accuracy of the phantom’s motion. The phantom was able to simulate the actual
tumor trajectories in a predicable fashion, retracing the tumor movements.
Team:
This is a joint project between the Biomedical Engineering Department at Tufts
University (Professor Vo Van Toi) and the Massachusetts General Hospital
(Professor Steven Jiang and Gregory C. Sharp) with the
collaboration of graduate students Sheri Weinberg, and Dianna Lo. They are students double
major in Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering.
Project
Title: Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Anatomical Layer Specificity in the Cat
Retina
Description: This study investigates
the visual resolution of three distinct anatomical “layers”, or strips, in the
cat retina using T2-weighted, diffusion-weighted, and Gd-DTPA contrast-enhanced
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The ability to separately resolve different layers
of the retina, including the separation of the retinal and choroidal
vasculatures, substantially extends the diagnostic capabilities of MRI.
Team: This is a joint project
between the Biomedical Engineering Department at Tufts University (Professor Vo
Van Toi), Center for Comparative NeuroImaging, Department of Psychiatry
University of Massachusetts Medical School (Professor Timothy Duong, graduate
students: Q Shen, H Cheng, Z Li, T Chang, G Nair), and the Department of
Biomedical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Professor Ross Shonat)