There have been important developments in materials and therapies for the treatment of spinal conditions. Biomaterials for spinal surgery summarises this research and how it is being applied for the benefit of patients.
After an introduction to the subject, part one reviews fundamental issues such as spinal conditions and their pathologies, spinal loads, modelling and osteobiologic agents in spinal surgery. Part two discusses the use of bone substitutes and artificial intervertebral discs whilst part three covers topics such as the use of injectable biomaterials like calcium phosphate for vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty as well as scoliosis implants. The final part of the book summarises developments in regenerative therapies such as the use of stem cells for intervertebral disc regeneration.
With its distinguished editors and international team of contributors, Biomaterials for spinal surgery is a standard reference for both those developing new biomaterials and therapies for spinal surgery and those using them in clinical practice.
Summarises recent developments in materials and therapies for the treatment of spinal conditions and examines how it is being applied for the benefit of patientsReviews fundamental issues such as spinal conditions and their pathologies, spinal loads, modelling and osteobiologic agents in spinal surgeryDiscusses the use of bone substitutes and artificial intervertebral discs and covers topics such as the use of injectable biomaterials like calcium phosphate for vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty

Medical research involving human subjects has contributed to considerable advancements in our knowledge, and to medical benefits. At the same time the development of new technologies as well as further globalisation of medical research raises questions that require the attention of researchers from a range of disciplines. This book gathers the contributions of researchers from nine different countries, who analyse recent developments in medical research from ethical, historical, legal and socio-cultural perspectives. In addition to reflections on innovations in science such as genetic databases and the concept of "targeted therapy" the book also includes analyses regarding the ethico-legal regulation of new technologies such as human tissue banking or the handling of genetic information potentially relevant for participants in medical research. Country and culture-specific aspects that are relevant to human medical research from a global perspective also play a part. The value of multi- and interdisciplinary analysis that includes the perspectives of scholars from normative and empirical disciplines is a shared premise of each contribution.

This book presents a wealth of insights and new conceptualizations for the development of "Assistive Technologies for the Interaction of the Elderly." The book arranges the chaptersaccording to important aspects of maximizing the use value in innovation projects. Every chapter will include an executive summary reporting the main results, a storyline using everyday language, and scientific excursions, wherever useful.

The book shows how an innovation project should be structured towards maximum use value and how a project should be structured in order to make a difference. It describes the useful categorization of the large group of the elderly to maximize the focus of the innovation and demonstrates the user involvement into innovation activities. Of course, the assessment of such innovative projects is discussed as well as the lessons learned . The book also explores the business opportunities and the financial evaluation of aspects of assistive technology.

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This volume presents a review of the latest numerical techniques used to identify ligand binding and protein complexation sites. It should be noted that there are many other theoretical studies devoted to predicting the activity of specific proteins and that useful protein data can be found in numerous databases. The aim of advanced computational techniques is to identify the active sites in specific proteins and moreover to suggest a generalized mechanism by which such protein-ligand (or protein-protein) interactions can be effected. Developing such tools is not an easy task - it requires extensive expertise in the area of molecular biology as well as a firm grasp of numerical modeling methods. Thus, it is often viewed as a prime candidate for interdisciplinary research.

This book offers readers a comprehensive biomaterials-based approach to achieving clinically successful, functionally integrated vasculogenesis and myogenesis in the heart. Coverage is multidisciplinary, including the role of extracellular matrices in cardiac development, whole-heart tissue engineering, imaging the mechanisms and effects of biomaterial-based cardiac regeneration, and autologous bioengineered heart valves. Bringing current knowledge together into a single volume, this book provides a compendium to students and new researchers in the field and constitutes a platform to allow for future developments and collaborative approaches in biomaterials-based regenerative medicine, even beyond cardiac applications.

The volumes in this authoritative series present a multidisciplinary approach to modeling and simulation of flows in the cardiovascular and ventilatory systems, especially multiscale modeling and coupled simulations. The cardiovascular and respiratory systems are tightly coupled, as their primary function is to supply oxygen to and remove carbon dioxide from the body's cells. Because physiological conduits have deformable and reactive walls, macroscopic flow behavior and prediction must be coupled to nano- and microscopic events in a corrector scheme of regulated mechanisms when the vessel lumen caliber varies markedly. Therefore, investigation of flows of blood and air in physiological conduits requires an understanding of the biology, chemistry, and physics of these systems together with the mathematical tools to describe their functioning.
Volume 3 is devoted to the set of mediators of the cell surface, especially ion and molecular carriers and catalytic receptors that, once liganded and activated, initiate signal transduction pathways. Intracellular cascades of chemical reactions trigger the release of substances stored in cellular organelles and/or gene transcription and protein synthesis. Primary mediators are included in models of regulated cellular processes, but multiple secondary signaling components are discarded to allow simple, representative modeling and to manage their inverse problems.

This book is based on a graduate course entitled, Ubiquitous Healthcare Circuits and Systems, that was given by one of the editors at his university. It includes an introduction and overview to the field of biomedical ICs and provides information on the current trends in research. The material focuses on the design of biomedical ICs rather than focusing on how to use prepared ICs.

This monograph presents the latest results related to bio-mechanical systems and materials. The bio-mechanical systems with which his book is concerned are prostheses, implants, medical operation robots and muscular re-training systems. To characterize and design such systems, a multi-disciplinary approach is required which involves the classical disciplines of mechanical/materials engineering and biology and medicine. The challenge in such an approach is that views, concepts or even language are sometimes different from discipline to discipline and the interaction and communication of the scientists must be first developed and adjusted. Within the context of materials' science, the book covers the interaction of materials with mechanical systems, their description as a mechanical system or their mechanical properties.

Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) technology is a rapidly expanding area of science. It has applications in biotechnology, medicine, clinical diagnostics, chemical engineering, and pharmaceutics. As the LOC systems increase in importance and complexity, it is important for scientists to become familiar not only with the technology, but also with the potential applications. The editors of this book have brought together expert authors from many countries to produce a comprehensive volume focusing on the applications of LOC technology in the biomedical and life sciences. The first section includes chapters on LOC biomolecule separation. Separation of biomolecules is an important element of various clinical laboratories and is required for many "down stream" analytical applications. Various electrophoresis and liquid chromatography applications for proteins and DNA are described, as well as methods for cell separation, with an emphasis on blood cell separation, which have many important clinical applications. The second part includes chapters on analysis and manipulation technologies. Authors describe protein, genetic (mainly PCR), and transcriptome analysis with examples from research and clinical applications, as well as cell manipulation and analysis including cell viability analysis and microorganism capturing. A skillful selection of topics of exceptional importance to current science ensures that this book will be of major value to a wide range of molecular biologists, clinical scientists, microbiologists, biochemists, and anyone interested in LOC technology or developing applications for LOC devices.

This manual offers a stand-alone reading companion, unique in simplifying the practical components of Bioinformatics in a unique and user-friendly manner. It covers the practical component of syllabi used at most leading universities and discusses the most extensively used tools and methodologies in Bioinformatics. Research in the biological sciences has made tremendous strides in recent years due in part to the increased automation in data generation. At the same time, storing, managing and interpreting huge volumes of data has become one of the most challenging tasks for scientists. These two aspects have ultimately necessitated the application of computers, giving rise to a highly interdisciplinary discipline-Bioinformatics. Despite the richness of bioinformatics resources and methods, the exposure of life sciences undergraduates and postgraduates to bioinformatics is extremely limited. Though the internet offers various tools for free, and provides guides for using them, it fails to help users interpret the processed data. Moreover, most sites fail to update their help pages to accommodate software upgrades. Though the market is flooded with books discussing the theoretical concepts in Bioinformatics, a manual of this kind is rarely found. The content developed to meet the needs of readers from diverse background and to incorporate the syllabi of undergraduate and postgraduate courses at various universities.

This book presents the methodology and techniques of thermographic applications with focus primarily on medical thermography implemented for parametrizing the diagnostics of the human body. The first part of the book describes the basics of infrared thermography, the possibilities of thermographic diagnostics and the physical nature of thermography. The second half includes tools of intelligent engineering applied for the solving of selected applications and projects. Thermographic diagnostics was applied to problematics of paraplegia and tetraplegia and carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS). The results of the research activities were created with the cooperation of the four projects within the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic entitled Digital control of complex systems with two degrees of freedom, Progressive methods of education in the area of control and modeling of complex object oriented systems on aircraft turbocompressor engines, Center for research of control of technical, environmental and human risks for permanent development of production and products in mechanical engineering and Research of new diagnostic methods in invasive implantology.

Nanotechnology plays a key leading role in developing tools able to identify, measure, and study cellular events at the nanometric level as well as in contributing to the disclosure of unknown biological interactions and mechanisms, which opens the door for advances including nanodevices for diagnostic and therapy, drug delivery systems, and regenerative medicine. In Nanotechnology in Regenerative Medicine: Methods and Protocols, expert researchers in the field provide an overview of a very wide range of currently used technologies and methods that involve nanotechnology principles applicable to tissue regeneration. Being that the application of nanotechnology to regenerative medicine is a very broad field, this book focuses its interests on particular areas such as its use as a means to produce efficient platforms and structures for tissue engineering, delivery systems and biosensors, as well as the use of some techniques to study materials surfaces and the interactions between cells, biomolecules, and surfaces at the nanoscale. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology (TM) series format, chapters include introductions to their related topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and accessible, Nanotechnology in Regenerative Medicine: Methods and Protocols provides established scientists, junior researchers, and students involved in the bioengineering, biotechnology, and biomedical fields with a sound foundation in a variety of vital nanotechnology approaches in regenerative medicine.

This book reviews the current understanding of the mechanical, chemical and biological processes that are responsible for the degradation of a variety of implant materials. All 18 chapters will be written by internationally renowned experts to address both fundamental and practical aspects of research into the field. Different failure mechanisms such as corrosion, fatigue, and wear will be reviewed, together with experimental techniques for monitoring them, either in vitro or in vivo. Procedures for implant retrieval and analysis will be presented. A variety of biomaterials (stainless steels, titanium and its alloys, nitinol, magnesium alloys, polyethylene, biodegradable polymers, silicone gel, hydrogels, calcium phosphates) and medical devices (orthopedic and dental implants, stents, heart valves, breast implants) will be analyzed in detail. The book will serve as a broad reference source for graduate students and researchers studying biomedicine, corrosion, surface science, and electrochemistry.

This monograph presents the latest developments and applications of computational tools related to the biosciences and medical engineering. Computational tools such as the finite element methods, computer-aided design and optimization as well as visualization techniques such as computed axial tomography open completely new research fields with a closer joining of the engineering and bio/medical area. Nevertheless, there are still hurdles since both directions are based on quite different ways of education. Often even the "language" is sometimes different from discipline to discipline. This monograph reports the results of different multi-disciplinary research projects, for example, from the areas of scaffolds and synthetic bones, implants and medical devices and medical materials. It is also shown that the application of computational methods often necessitates mathematical and experimental methods.

This book reviews the state-of-the-art in multiscale computer modeling, in terms of both accomplishments and challenges. The information in the book is particularly useful for biomedical engineers, medical physicists and researchers in systems biology, mathematical biology, micro-biomechanics and biomaterials who are interested in how to bridge between traditional biomedical engineering work at the organ and tissue scales, and the newer arenas of cellular and molecular bioengineering.

This volume represents a valuable collection of mobile health (mHealth) emerging technologies. Chapters focus on three main areas of mHealth: technologies for in vitro and environmental testing, mHealth technologies for physiological and anatomical measurements and mHealth technologies for imaging. This book is designed to make mHealth more accessible and understandable to engineers, medical professionals, molecular biologists, chemical, and physical science researchers developing mHealth technologies. Written in the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series format, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, technical information about materials and reagents, step-by-step, readily reproducible laboratory protocols, and key tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and practical, Mobile Health Technologies : Methods in Molecular Biology aims to improve access to medical procedures including early detection, diagnostics and treatment through the development of new portable and accessible devices, and that this will lead to improved health technologies.

The book is the proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation (ICNR 2014), held 24th-26th June 2014 in Aalborg, Denmark. The conference featured the latest highlights in the emerging and interdisciplinary field of neural rehabilitation engineering and identified important healthcare challenges the scientific community will be faced with in the coming years. Edited and written by leading experts in the field, the book includes keynote papers, regular conference papers, and contributions to special and innovation sessions, covering the following main topics: neuro-rehabilitation applications and solutions for restoring impaired neurological functions; cutting-edge technologies and methods in neuro-rehabilitation; and translational challenges in neuro-rehabilitation. Thanks to its highly interdisciplinary approach, the book will not only be a highly relevant reference guide for academic researchers, engineers, neurophysiologists, neuroscientists, physicians and physiotherapists working at the forefront of their field, but will also help to act as bridge between the scientific, engineering and medical communities.

Primarily intended for biotechnology graduates, this handbook provides an overview of the requirements, opportunities and drawbacks of Biotech Entrepreneurship, while also presenting valuable training materials tailored to the industrial and market reality in the European Biotech Business. Potential investors and business consultants will find essential information on the benefits and potential risks involved in supporting biotech businesses. Further, the book addresses a broad range of Biotechnology fields, e.g. food biotech, industrial biotech, bioinformatics, animal and human health. Readers will learn the essentials of creating innovations, founding a biotech start-up, business management strategies, and European funding sources. In addition, the book discusses topics such as intellectual property management and innovation transfer. The book offers a comparative analysis of different countries' perspectives and reviews the status quo in Western and Eastern European regions, also in comparison with other leading biotech countries such as the USA and Canada. A long list of potentially profitable biotech start-up ideas and a collection of success stories involving European companies are also included. The book is based on the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project "Supporting biotechnology students oriented towards an entrepreneurial path" (www.supbioent.usamv.ro), which involved the collaboration of Life Sciences and Economics departments at higher education institutions throughout Western and Eastern Europe.

The rapid development of new technologies has created a lasting impact in the healthcare sector during the past decades. Due to this influence, potential clinical problems have decreased while the quality of healthcare delivery and overall user friendliness has increased and contributed to cost-effective healthcare systems. Biomedical and Clinical Engineering for Healthcare Advancement is an essential reference source that discusses growth in healthcare applications driven by the adoption of new technologies, as well as the expansion of machine learning algorithms for clinical decision making. It focuses on combining vision, motion, data acquisition, and automated control to accelerate the development of affordable and portable medical devices. Featuring research on topics such as artificial intelligence, drug delivery, and retinal imaging, this book is ideally designed for healthcare professionals, biomedical engineers, biomedical professionals, clinicians, hospital directors, physicians, medical students, and clinical researchers.

Damage to the central nervous system resulting from pathological mechanical loading can occur as a result of trauma or disease. Such injuries lead to significant disability and mortality. The peripheral nervous system, while also subject to injury from trauma and disease, also transduces physiological loading to give rise to sensation, and mechanotransduction is also thought to play a role in neural development and growth. This book gives a complete and quantitative description of the fundamental mechanical properties of neural tissues, and their responses to both physiological and pathological loading. This book reviews the methods used to characterize the nonlinear viscoelastic properties of central and peripheral neural tissues, and the mathematical and sophisticated computational models used to describe this behaviour. Mechanisms and models of neural injury from both trauma and disease are reviewed from the molecular to macroscopic scale. The book provides a comprehensive picture of the mechanical and biological response of neural tissues to the full spectrum of mechanical loading to which they are exposed. This book provides a comprehensive reference for professionals involved in pre prevention of injury to the nervous system, whether this arises from trauma or disease.

Analysis of information transfer has found rapid adoption in neuroscience, where a highly dynamic transfer of information continuously runs on top of the brain's slowly-changing anatomical connectivity. Measuring such transfer is crucial to understanding how flexible information routing and processing give rise to higher cognitive function. "Directed Information Measures in Neuroscience" reviews recent developments of concepts and tools for measuring information transfer, their application to neurophysiological recordings and analysis of interactions. Written by the most active researchers in the field the book discusses the state of the art, future prospects and challenges on the way to an efficient assessment of neuronal information transfer. Highlights include the theoretical quantification and practical estimation of information transfer, description of transfer locally in space and time, multivariate directed measures, information decomposition among a set of stimulus/responses variables and the relation between interventional and observational causality. Applications to neural data sets and pointers to open source software highlight the usefulness of these measures in experimental neuroscience. With state-of-the-art mathematical developments, computational techniques and applications to real data sets, this book will be of benefit to all graduate students and researchers interested in detecting and understanding the information transfer between components of complex systems.

Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) devices integrate and scale down laboratory functions and processes to a miniaturized chip format. Many LOC devices are used in a wide array of biomedical and other analytical applications including rapid pathogen detection, clinical diagnosis, forensic science, electrophoresis, flow cytometry, blood chemistry analysis, protein analysis, and DNA analysis. LOC devices can be fabricated from many types of material including various polymers, glass, or silicon - or combinations of these materials. A broad variety of fabrication technologies are used for LOC device fabrication. LOC systems have several common features including microfluidics and sensing capabilities. Microfluidics deals with fluid flow in tiny channels using flow control devices (e.g. channels, pumps, mixers, and valves). Sensing capabilities, usually optical or electrochemical sensors, can also be integrated into the chip. This invaluable book describes the latest methods and novel technologies being developed for the fabrication of LOC devices and the new approaches for fluid control and manipulation. Expert authors from around the world describe and discuss the newest technologies for the prototyping of devices, including replication and direct machining methods of fabrication. Part I of the book covers all aspects of fabrication including laser micromachining, silicon and glass micromachining, PMMA and COC microfluidic substrates, and xurography (LOC prototyping with a cutting plotter). Part II focuses on fluid control and manipulation for LOC systems. As well as providing examples of the use of pumps in microfluidics, the topics covered include electrokinetic pumping (electroosmois), electrochemical pumping and electrowetting, and the fabrication of a microchip for rapid polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This comprehensive volume presents the current technologies in the field and includes theoretical and technical information to enable both the understanding of the technology and the reproduction of experiments. The book will help the reader to understand current LOC technologies, to perform similar experiments, to design new LOC systems, and to develop new methodologies and applications. It is an essential book for biologists and clinicians using LOC technology and developing applications and also for engineering, chemical, and physical science researchers developing analytical technologies. It will also be useful as a teaching tool for bioengineering, biomedical engineering, and biology.

Systems-level neuronal mechanisms that coordinate the temporally, anatomically, and functionally distributed neuronal activity into coherent cognitive operations in the human brain have remained poorly understood. In humans, neuronal oscillations and synchronization can be recorded non-invasively with electro- and magnetoencephalography (EEG and MEG) that have excellent temporal resolution and an adequate spatial resolution when combined with source-reconstruction methods. In this book, leading authors in the field describe how recent methodological advances have paved the way to several major breakthroughs in the observations of large-scale synchrony from human non-invasive MEG data. This volume also presents the caveats influencing analyses of synchronization. These include the non-homogeneous sensitivity of MEG to superficial cortical sources, and, most importantly, the multitude of consequences of linear mixing. Linear mixing is an immense confounder in the sensor-level analyses of synchronization, but is also present at the source level. Approaches that can be used to avoid or compensate for these issues are then discussed. Thereafter, several authors take up a number of the functional roles that large-scale synchronization has in cognition. The authors assess how the spatio-temporal and -spectral organization and strength of both local and large-scale synchronized networks are associated with conscious sensory perception, visual working memory functions, and attention. These chapters summarize several lines of research showing how the strength of local and inter-areal oscillations in both cortical and subcortical brain structures is correlated with cognitive functions. Together these data suggest that synchronized neuronal oscillations may be a systems-level neuronal mechanism underlying the coordination of distributed processing in human cognition. In line with this argument, other authors go on to describe how oscillations and synchronization are altered in clinical populations, complementing the data presented on healthy subjects. Importantly, this book includes chapters from authors using many different approaches to the analyses of neuronal oscillations, ranging from local oscillatory activities to the usage of graph theoretical tools in the analyses of synchronization. In this way the present volume provides a comprehensive view on the analyses and functional significance of neuronal oscillations in humans. This book is aimed at doctoral and post-doctoral students as well as research scientists in the fields of cognitive neuroscience, psychology, medicine, and neurosciences.

This thesis reports on the development of a fully integrated and automated microsystem consisting of low-cost, disposable plastic chips for DNA extraction and PCR amplification, combined with a reusable glass capillary array electrophoresis chip, which can be employed in a modular-based format for genetic analysis. In the thesis, DNA extraction is performed by adopting a filter paper-based method, followed by an "in-situ" PCR carried out directly in the same reaction chamber of the chip without elution. PCR products are then co-injected with sizing standards into separation channels for detection using a novel injection electrode. The entire process is automatically carried out by a custom-made compact control and detection instrument. The author thoroughly tests the system's performance and reliability by conducting rapid genetic screening of mutations on congenital hearing loss and pharmacogenetic typing of multiple warfarin-related single-nucleotide polymorphisms. The successful development and operation of this microsystem establishes the feasibility of rapid "sample-in-answer-out" testing in routine clinical practice.

Recent developments in stem cell biology have opened new directions in cell therapy. This book provides the state-of-the-art developments in using biomaterials as artificial niches for engineering stem cells, both for the purpose of better understanding their biology under 3D biomimetic conditions as well as for developing new strategies for efficient long term maintenance and directed differentiation of stem cells into various therapeutic lineages. Animal and human stem cells of both embryonic and adult origin are discussed with applications ranging from nerve regeneration, orthopedics, cardiovascular therapy, blood cell generation and cancer therapy. Both synthetic and natural biomaterials are reviewed with emphasis on how material-stem cell interactions direct specific signaling pathways and ultimately modulate the cell fate. This book is valuable for biomaterial scientists, tissue engineers, clinicians as well as stem cell biologists involved in basic research and applications of adult and embryonic stem cells.