This book deals with the new method of laser-driven acceleration for application to radiation biophysics and medicine. It provides multidisciplinary contributions from world leading scientist in order to assess the state of the art of innovative tools for radiation biology research and medical applications of ionizing radiation. The book contains insightful contributions on highly topical aspects of spatio-temporal radiation biophysics, evolving over several orders of magnitude, typically from femtosecond and sub-micrometer scales. Particular attention is devoted to the emerging technology of laser-driven particle accelerators and their application to spatio-temporal radiation biology and medical physics, customization of non-conventional and selective radiotherapy and optimized radioprotection protocols.

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 focuses on interdisciplinary research in the field of biomedical engineering and neuroscience. Biomedical engineering is a vast field, ranging from bioengineering to brain-computer interfaces. The book explores the system-level function and dysfunction of the nervous system from scientific and engineering perspectives. The initial sections introduce readers to the physiology of the brain, and to the biomedical tools needed for diagnostics and effective therapies for various neurodegenerative and regenerative disorders. In turn, the book summarizes the biomedical interventions that are used to understand the neural mechanisms underlying empathy disorders, and reviews recent advances in biomedical engineering for rehabilitation in connection with neurodevelopmental disorders and brain injuries. Lastly, the book discusses innovations in machine learning and artificial intelligence for computer-aided disease diagnosis and treatment, as well as applications of nanotechnology in therapeutic neurology.

Argues that developments in biomedicine in China should be at the center of our understanding of biomedicine, not at the periphery Today China is a major player in advancing the frontiers of biomedicine, yet previous accounts have examined only whether medical ideas and institutions created in the West were successfully transferred to China. This is the firstbook to demonstrate the role China played in creating a globalized biomedicine between 1850 and 1950. This was China's "Century of Humiliation" when imperialist powers dominated China's foreign policy and economy, forcing it to join global trends that included limited public health measures in the nineteenth century and government-sponsored healthcare in the twentieth. These external pressures, combined with a vast population immiserated by imperialism and the decline of the Chinese traditional economy, created extraordinary problems for biomedicine that were both unique to China and potentially applicable to other developing nations. In this book, scholars based in China, the United States, and the United Kingdom make the case that developments in biomedicine in China such as the discovery of new diseases, the opening of the medical profession to women, the mass production of vaccines, and the delivery ofhealthcare to poor rural areas should be at the center of our understanding of biomedicine, not at the periphery. CONTRIBUTORS: Daniel Asen, Nicole Barnes, Mary Augusta Brazelton, Gao Xi , He Xiaolian, Li Shenglan, David Luesink, William H. Schneider, Shi Yan, Yu Xinzhong, DAVID LUESINK is Assistant Professor of History at Sacred Heart University. WILLIAM H. SCHNEIDER is Professor Emeritus of History and Medical Humanities at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. ZHANG DAQING is Professor and Director, Institute of Medical Humanities at Peking University in Beijing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This book focuses on neuro-engineering and neural computing, a multi-disciplinary field of research attracting considerable attention from engineers, neuroscientists, microbiologists and material scientists. It explores a range of topics concerning the design and development of innovative neural and brain interfacing technologies, as well as novel information acquisition and processing algorithms to make sense of the acquired data. The book also highlights emerging trends and advances regarding the applications of neuro-engineering in real-world scenarios, such as neural prostheses, diagnosis of neural degenerative diseases, deep brain stimulation, biosensors, real neural network-inspired artificial neural networks (ANNs) and the predictive modeling of information flows in neuronal networks. The book is broadly divided into three main sections including: current trends in technological developments, neural computation techniques to make sense of the neural behavioral data, and application of these technologies/techniques in the medical domain in the treatment of neural disorders.

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 studies have shown that novel processing and modeling techniques may be used to create patient-specific prostheses, artificial tissues, and other implants using data obtained from magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography, or other imaging techniques. For example, customized prostheses may be fabricated that possess suitable features, including geometry, size, and weight, for a given medical condition. Many advances have been made in the development of patient-specific implants in the past decade, yet this information is not readily available to scientists and students. Printed Biomaterials: Novel Processing and Modeling Techniques for Medicine and Surgery provides the biomaterials scientist and engineer, as well as advanced undergraduate or graduate students, with a comprehensive discussion of contemporary medical implant research and development. The development of printed biomaterials is multidisciplinary, and includes concepts traditionally associated with engineering, materials science, medicine, and surgery. This text highlights important topics in these core fields in order to provide the fundamentals necessary to comprehend current processing and modeling technologies and to develop new ones.

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.

This volume deals with topics such as mechanism and machine design, biomechanics and medical engineering, gears, mechanical transmissions, mechatronics, computational and experimental methods, dynamics of mechanisms and machines, micromechanisms and microactuators, and history of mechanisms and transmissions. Following MeTrApp 2011 and 2013, held under the auspices of the IFToMM, these proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Mechanisms, Transmissions and Applications offer a platform for original research presentations for researchers, scientists, industry experts and students in the fields of mechanisms and transmissions with special emphasis on industrial applications in order to stimulate the exchange of new and innovative ideas.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of flow-based, microfluidic VLSI. The authors describe and solve in a comprehensive and holistic manner practical challenges such as control synthesis, wash optimization, design for testability, and diagnosis of modern flow-based microfluidic biochips. They introduce practical solutions, based on rigorous optimization and formal models. The technical contributions presented in this book will not only shorten the product development cycle, but also accelerate the adoption and further development of modern flow-based microfluidic biochips, by facilitating the full exploitation of design complexities that are possible with current fabrication techniques.

Ever since the birth of molecular biology, the tantalizing possibility of treating disease at its genetic roots has become increasingly feasible. Gene therapy - though still in its infancy - remains one of the hottest areas of research in medicine. Its approach utilizes a gene transfer vehicle ('vector') to deliver therapeutic DNA or RNA to cells of the body in order to rectify the defect that is causing the disease. Successful therapies have been reported in humans in recent years such as cures in boys with severe immune deficiencies. Moreover, gene therapy strategies are being adapted in numerous biomedical laboratories to obtain novel treatments for a variety of diseases and to study basic biological aspects of disease. Correction of disease in animal studies, is steadily gaining ground, highlighting the immense potential of gene therapy in the medical profession.This book will cover topics that are at the forefront of biomedical research such as RNA interference, viral and non-viral gene transfer systems, treatment of hematological diseases and disorders of the central nervous system. Leading experts on the respective vector or disease will contribute the individual chapters and explain cutting-edge technologies. It also gives a broad overview of the most important gene transfer vectors and most extensively studied target diseases. This comprehensive guide is therefore a must-read for anyone in the biotechnology, biomedical or medical industries seeking to further their knowledge in the area of human gene therapy.

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.

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.

This detailed new edition provides complete and easy access to a variety of antibody engineering techniques. The volume explores topics such as the generation of native, synthetic, or immune antibody libraries, the selection of lead candidates via the different powerful and innovative display technologies, Fc engineering, as well as their production, characterization, and optimization of antibodies. Written for the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series, chapters include introductions to their respective 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 up-to-date, Antibody Engineering: Methods and Protocols, Third Edition presents the reader with an extensive toolbox to create the powerful molecules of tomorrow.

This book contains the full papers presented at the MICCAI 2013 workshop Computational Methods and Clinical Applications for Spine Imaging. The workshop brought together researchers representing several fields, such as Biomechanics, Engineering, Medicine, Mathematics, Physics and Statistic. The works included in this book present and discuss new trends in those fields, using several methods and techniques in order to address more efficiently different and timely applications involving signal and image acquisition, image processing and analysis, image segmentation, image registration and fusion, computer simulation, image based modelling, simulation and surgical planning, image guided robot assisted surgical and image based diagnosis.

The book is divided in 4 parts. In the first one, the importance of the analysis of the cardiac dynamics using the ambulatory monitoring technique is presented. The second part contains the description of foundations of impedance cardiography (ICG), the models used to describe the ICG technique and the description of available systems for ambulatory monitoring of cardiac hemodynamics. The third part is devoted to the validation of the ambulatory ICG method, the verification of the quality of long term ICG recordings and the discussion of the limitations of this technique. In the last part, some clinical and research applications of the ICG ambulatory monitoring are presented. The simultaneous recordings of electrocardiogram (ECG) and ICG in the transient cardiac arrhythmia events illustrate the potential applications of that method for quantitative analysis of hemodynamics when the implementation of the stationary methods would be either difficult or not possible to do. The book is followed by references, alphabetical index and appendices containing the technical data of the available systems for portable monitoring of cardiac hemodynamics.

This book presents a systematic approach to analyzing the challenging engineering problems posed by the need for security and privacy in implantable medical devices (IMD). It describes in detail new issues termed as lightweight security, due to the associated constraints on metrics such as available power, energy, computing ability, area, execution time, and memory requirements. Coverage includes vulnerabilities and defense across multiple levels, with basic abstractions of cryptographic services and primitives such as public key cryptography, block ciphers and digital signatures. Experts from Computer Security and Cryptography present new research which shows vulnerabilities in existing IMDs and proposes solutions. Experts from Privacy Technology and Policy will discuss the societal, legal and ethical challenges surrounding IMD security as well as technological solutions that build on the latest in Computer Science privacy research, as well as lightweight solutions appropriate for implementation in IMDs.

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.

In this book, leading authors in the field discuss developments of Ambient Assisted Living. The contributions have been chosen and invited at the 7th AAL congress, Berlin. It presents new technological developments which support the autonomy and independence of individuals with special needs. As the technological innovation raises also social issues, the book addresses micro and macro economical aspects of assistive systems and puts an additional emphasis on the ethical and legal discussion. The presentation is supported by real world examples and applications.

This book delves into the biotechnological applications of Quorum sensing (QS)- a peculiar gene-regulatory process of some microorganisms. Quorum Sensing allows a large bacterial population to work together in a coordinated manner to carry out metabolic activities, which individual bacterium cannot. The different chapters describe how, associating bioremediation process with energy generation is an economical proposal, for reducing pollution and managing biowastes. The book discusses how QS can be exploited for biotechnological applications in generating bioproducts, bioenergy, bioremediation, biosensors, health and agricultural activities. It further highlights how QS is becoming an integral part of synthetic biology for genetic circuits for producing: (i) novel products, (ii) biosensors, (iii) bioactive molecules, etc. The book is divided into different sections for a clear understanding of the applicability of QS in, the Environment, Energy, Agriculture and Health sectors.