Minisymposia
MS 1. Bioinstrumentation: Sensors, Micro, Nano and Wearable Technologies
Wednesday, 1 September, 09:15-10:45
Auditorium
Organizer: Andreas Lymberis (European Commission)
Interdisciplinary research towards integrated systems and their applications based on emerging convergence of information & communication technologies, micro-nano and bio technologies is expected to have a direct impact in healthcare, ageing population and well being. Micro-Nano-Bio Systems (MNBS) research and development activities under the European Union's R&D Programs, Information & Communication Technologies priority address miniaturised, smart and integrated systems for in-vitro testing (e.g. lab-on-chips) and systems interacting with the human (e.g. autonomous implants, endoscopic capsules and robotics for minimally invasive surgery). Projects addressing in-vitro testing focus on research, development and testing of technology building blocs (e.g. sample preparation technique, ultra sensitive detection technique, chemistry process for molecular recognition and microfluidics) and their integration into smart and miniaturised systems e.g. DNA & protein arrays, biochips, Lab on Chip and Lab on Card. Current challenges and developed solutions as well as open issues to fully meet technological and socioeconomic needs are presented in this paper as background introductory information to the mini-symposium on "MNBS in-vitro testing". Relevant examples of R&D within the group will be presented in the mini-symposium.
MS 2. Surgical Robotics – Image-Guided Robotized Surgery
Wednesday, 1 September, 14:30-16:00
Martin Fierro 1
Organizer: Philippe Poignet (University of Montpellier, France)
Image-guided surgical systems and surgical robots are primarily developed to provide patient safety through increased precision and minimal invasiveness. Even more, robotic devices should allow for refined treatments that are not possible by other means. It is crucial to determine the application accuracy of a system, to define the expected over-all task execution error. A major step toward this aim is to quantitatively analyze the effect of registration and tracking—series of multiplication of erroneous homogeneous transformations.
MS 3. Impaired Attention: Drowsiness and Microsleeps
Wednesday, 1 September, 17:30-19:00
Rio de la Plata
Organizer: Richard D. Jones (Van der Veer Institute, New Zealand)
An overview is presented of different studies on monitoring and detection of drowsiness and microsleep (MS) during driving simulation. MS events are defined as very brief and involuntary intrusions of sleep initiation into wakefulness under demands of sustained attention. They occur as spontaneous events unpredictable for the subject itself as well as for observers. A framework is presented how to utilize methods of pattern recognition and of computational intelligence in order to detect and to predict MS. Different biosignals are compared due to their value for MS detection. Data fusion at the feature level of different electroencephalographic (EEG) and electrooculograhpic (EOG) signals leads to low error rates of classification between MS and non-MS. Results of different classification algorithms are compared and the advantages as well as disadvantages of Support-Vector Machines for this task will be highlighted.
MS 4. Optical Techniques for Imaging and Perturbing Neural Activity in Vivo
Thursday, 2 September, 17:30-19:00
Retiro B
Organizer: Paul Sajda (Columbia University, USA)
Clinical evidence shows that ischemic and hemorrhagic microvascular lesions in the brain play an important role in elderly dementia, but few effective treatment or preventative strategies exist. This deficit is due, in part, to a lack of good animal models of these microvascular lesions that would allow the progression of disease to be studied and would provide a platform for the evaluation of therapeutics. We will discuss recent advances in optical techniques that allow both the targeted production of singlevessel occlusions and hemorrhages in the cortex of anesthetized rodents, as well as the quantitative analysis of the impact of these lesions on blood flow in the adjacent vascular network and on the health and function of nearby brain cells.
Neural stimulation using infrared light has recently been characterized as a novel method to stimulate peripheral nerves with higher spatial precision than electrical stimulation. Additionally, optical stimulation is contact free and has been shown to stimulate without damaging neural tissue; however, optical stimulation has not been previously achieved in the brain due to complexity ofneuronal networks. We will demonstrate the application of INS to induce neural activity in the rat somatosensory cortex in vivo and discuss our ability to detect the resulting response using different methods.
MS 5. Towards Future Truly Wearable Medical Devices: From Application to ASIC
Thursday, 2 September, 17:30-19:00
Martin Fierro 2
Organizer: Esther Rodriguez-Villegas (Imperial College London, UK)
The major obstacles to wearable technology development cannot be overcome in isolation. Applications specific requirements, guides, specifications and aims are essential. There are three major research areas that will be covered in detail: 1) Sensor attachment issues. Keeping a physiological sensor attached to the body for days, weeks or months at a time is not a trivial problem. Adhesives become unstuck, and detailed considerations of the adhesive strength, longevity, bio-compatibility, noise, and system weight are required; 2) Low power electronics. A classical wearable bio-sensor must contain a front-end analogue amplifier, an analogue-to-digital converter, and a wireless transmitter. It has been estimated that for truly wearable systems all of these stages must operate with an average power consumption of less than 140 μW; 3) What is the physiological application? Even focusing on wearable EEG technologies there are many potential end usage situations. To realise truly wearable technologies the differing requirements must drive and guide the entire system design. It is not enough to solve just issues 1) and 2) above without considering these needs and the needs of the end user.
MS 6. The Pressure-Volume Relationship
Thursday, 2 September, 17:30-19:00
Auditorium
Organizers: Myriam Herrera (Universidad Nacional de Tucuman, Argentina), Kenji Sunagawa (Kyushu University, Japan)
The pressure-volume relationship of the heart was first reported more than a century ago. It was not widely accepted, however, until the mid-1970s. The pressure-volume diagram became a central theme of cardiac mechanics once it was shown to be a good representation of ventricular mechanics. Early in 1980s, the introduction of the ventricular interaction with afterload using effective arterial elastance made it possible to translate ventricular mechanical properties represented by the pressure-volume relationship to the pumping ability of the heart. Furthermore incorporating the framework of ventricular arterial interaction into the classic Guyton’s circulatory equilibrium early in 2000s enabled us to express quantitatively how mechanical properties of the ventricles and vascular systems determine the circulatory equilibrium. Successful quantitative descriptions of circulatory equilibrium using the pressure-volume concept would promote basic cardiovascular physiology and accelerate its clinical applications.
MS 7. Targeting the Arterial Wall: Hypertension, Diabetes, Atherosclerotic Plaques, Cryografts and Endothelial Dysfunction
Friday, 3 September, 09:15-10:45
Libertador B
Organizers: Pedro Forcada (Hospital Austral, Buenos Aires, Argentina), Ramiro Sanchez (Favaloro Foundation University Hospital)
Non invasive methods of arterial evaluation shifted in recent decades from the experimental field to the arena of cardiovascular prevention and clinical applications. The use of techniques based mainly in ultrasound and a variety of other methods using NMR, camera gamma, multislice tomography, thermography etc. improved image evaluation of vessels structure and the atherosclerotic process as well as several techniques using tonometry, oscilometry and pletismography enabled the functional evaluation of several vascular beds from aorta to arterioles. Techniques as Intima Media Thickness (IMT), plaques detection and (Pulse Wave velocity) PWV have been strongly suggested by European and American Guidelines to assess subclinical vascular atherosclerotic disease as target organ damage, and when they are present, they have been clearly associated to an increased risk of cardiovascular complications and death. The role of atherosclerotic plaques analysis and endothelial function evaluation are still less precise and the interaction between all theses techniques needs further study, but seems to be a promising field to understand and prevent cardiovascular disease.
MS 8. Standards
Friday, 3 September, 09:15-10:45
Gomez Losada
Organizers: Carole C. Carey (U.S. Food and Drug Administration), Yan-Ting Zhang (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (IEEE-SA) is a leading standards developing organization of global industry standards in a wide-range of industries, including biomedical and healthcare. Medical device standards address design, testing, safety and other topics. Standards are widely accepted specifications or best practices developed by experts and based more often on consensus. This session will provide a brief overview of the IEEE Standards development process from securing sponsorship, submitting the project authorization request (PAR), forming the working group, to drafting the standard. The process continues with the invitation-to-ballot, then the Review Committee evaluation and finally, the Final Vote from the Standards Board. As an example, the session will include a case study with a tutorial presentation on the current work-in-progress IEEE P1708, “Draft Standard for Wearable Cuffless Blood Pressure Measuring Devices”. The purpose is to introduce the proposed standard to a wider audience, elicit comments, and promote an interactive discussion. IEEE P1708 is sponsored by the IEEE EMB Standards Committee.
MS 9. Penetrating and non penetrating micro-electrode arrays in the treatment of human pathology
Friday, 3 September, 09:15-10:45
Auditorium
Organizers: Bradley Greger (University of Utah, USA), Paul House (University of Utah, USA)
Many facilities around the world have begun utilizing arrays of micro-electrodes in human research and clinical trials. These micro‐electrode arrays create a grid of sensors, similar to the electrocorticography electrodes, except at a much smaller scale. In some cases these micro‐electrodes rest on the surface of the brain, while others penetrate into the parenchyma. Micro‐electrode arrays have been used for various neural prosthetic applications as well as the study of epilepsy. This relatively new technology may be able to serve the foundation for devices that restore communication and control of their environment in paralyzed patients, and provide new insight and improved treatment for electrophysiological diseases like epilepsy. However, much is still unknown about the how these devices interface with brain, and the risks/benefits of penetrating versus non-penetrating electrodes.
MS 10. Advances in Neurocomputation
Friday, 3 September, 14:30-16:00
Auditorium
Organizer: Metin Akay (University of Houston, USA)
We describe our work investigating sparse decoding of neural activity, given a realistic mapping of the visual scene to neuronal spike trains generated by a model of primary visual cortex (V1). We use a linear decoder which imposes sparsity via an L1 norm. The decoder can be viewed as a decoding neuron in which there are relatively few non-zero synaptic weights. We conclude that sparse coding is well-justified from a decoding perspective in that it results in a minimum number of neurons and maximum accuracy when sparse representations can be decoded from the neural dynamics.
Lower extremity rehabilitation has seen recent increased interest. New tools are available to help effect gait retraining in both adults and children. However, it remains difficult to determine optimal ways to plan interventions due to difficulties in continuously monitoring outcomes in patients undergoing rehabilitation. We introduce an extension of the Force Field Adaptation Paradigm, used to quantitatively assess upper extremity motor adaptation, to the lower extremity.
Nicotine, an addictive substance in cigarette, triggers glutamatergic synaptic plasticity on ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine (DA) neurons. The functional coupling between prefrontal cortex (PFC) and VTA has been demonstrated, but little is known how PFC mediates nicotinic modulation in VTA DA neurons. We tested the hypothesis that systemic exposure to nicotine significantly increases the VTA DA neuron’s complexity of firing. The results suggest PFC plays an important role in mediating VTA activity and that the LZ complexity method is a useful tool for the characterization of the dynamical changes in VTA DA neurons firing activities.
MS 11. Latest developments on Personal Health Systems for management of patients with chronic diseases (in 2 parts)
Part I
Friday, 3 September, 17:30-19:00
Auditorium
Part II
Saturday, 4 September, 17:30-19:00
Auditorium
Organizer: Griet Van Caenegem (European Commission)
The minisymposium will focus on current R&D activities and future challenges related to personalised healthcare for persons at risk or with chronic health conditions. The European healthcare system is facing an increasing demand by citizens for best quality healthcare, increasing costs of managing chronic diseases and the need for prolonged medical care for the ageing society. Healthcare expenditure in Europe is already significant (8.5% of GDP on average) and rising faster than economic growth itself. ICT are key enablers of the Personal Health Systems (PHS) needed for the transformation of today's health systems to be patient centred, and of the empowerment of individuals to be more involved in the management of their health. PHS can facilitate high quality, personalised care, with better use of the available healthcare resources. This is through more efficient management of diseases at the point of need, health information processing and quicker transfer of knowledge to clinical practice and also through prevention and prediction of diseases (i.e. avoidance of unnecessary and costly treatments) by appropriate lifestyle management. The presentations will demonstrate new PHS solutions for the management of several diseases.
MS 12. Innovations and New Tendencies of Bioengineering in the Industry
Saturday, 4 September, 17:30-19:00
Gomez Losada
Organizer: Martha Zequera-Diaz (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia)
If the changes in medicine in the last 30 years are analyzed, it is possible to see that health technology has played a mayor role on most of the fundamental advances in medicine. Right now, beginning the XXI Century, it is well accepted that the most important revolution expected in Health Care is the empowerment of the individuals on their own health management. Innovation in health care technologies will continue being paramount, not only in the advances of medicine and in the self health management of patients but also in allowing the sustainability of the public health care system. As the technology on health care becomes more important, the role of the biomedical engineer will turn to be more crucial for the society. The biomedical engineer will be a key element fundamentally in three different sectors: the health care technology industry, the health care administration and the health care provision institutions.
Real commercial outcomes are necessary towards realising the aim of using biomedical engineering developments towards improving quality of human life. We examine some of the issues, including the opportunities, challenges and pitfalls towards this exercise. We conclude with the need for transparency and for the need for Government involvement at the policy level, while encouraging the industry to be financially viable in an open market style without biasing the outcomes.
