Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Displacement Micropump with Check Valves for Diabetes Care—The Challenge of Pumping Insulin at Negative Pressure
The displacement micropump with passive check valves is an attractive solution for precise insulin infusion in patients with type I diabetes. Unlike most insulin pumps that push insulin from a cartridge using a piston, a displacement micropump will first pull insulin from the reservoir before infusing it into the patient. This dual sequence introduces new challenges in terms of insulin stability, notably if the reservoir is not pressurized. After an introduction to displacement micropumps and a brief review of the insulin degradation mechanism, micropump design rules are discussed in light of microfluidic theory.
  • 71
  • 14 May 2024
Topic Review
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is opening new therapeutic possibilities of fighting against COVID-19 by enabling new prevention, diagnosis, drug delivery, and treatment methods. Nanomedicine is known as the branch of medicine involved in preventing and curing various diseases using nanoscale materials, such as biocompatible nanoparticles and nanorobots, for various applications, including diagnosis, delivery, and sensing. In addition, nanomedicines have exhibited important features, such as efficient transport through fine capillary blood vessels and lymphatic endothelium, longer circulation duration and blood concentration, higher binding capacity to biomolecules such as endogenous compounds including proteins, higher accumulation in target tissues, reduced inflammatory or immune responses, and oxidative stress in tissues.
  • 842
  • 09 May 2024
Topic Review
Personalized Wearable Biomedical Devices
Wearable devices have emerged as promising tools for personalized health monitoring, utilizing machine learning to distill meaningful insights from the expansive datasets they capture. Within the bio-electrical category, these devices employ biosignal data, such as electrocardiograms (ECGs), electromyograms (EMGs), electroencephalograms (EEGs), etc., to monitor and assess health. 
  • 46
  • 16 Apr 2024
Topic Review
Algorithms for Liver Segmentation in Computed Tomography Scans
Oncology has emerged as a crucial field of study in the domain of medicine. Computed tomography has gained widespread adoption as a radiological modality for the identification and characterisation of pathologies, particularly in oncology, enabling precise identification of affected organs and tissues. However, achieving accurate liver segmentation in computed tomography scans remains a challenge due to the presence of artefacts and the varying densities of soft tissues and adjacent organs.
  • 97
  • 15 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Biocidal Action of Hydrogen Peroxide Vapour and Mechanism
Disinfection is described as a process that eliminates many or all pathogenic microorganisms on inanimate objects, with the exception of bacterial endospores. Disinfection is usually carried out by chemical or physical means. Among other settings, disinfection is of utmost importance in hospital environments due to pathogens living on hospital surfaces being the direct cause for hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). However, the presence of a wide range of pathogens and biofilms, combined with the indiscriminate use of antibiotics, presents infection control teams in healthcare facilities with ongoing challenges in the selection of biocides and application methods. This necessitates the development of biocides and innovative disinfection methods that overcome the shortcomings of conventional methods. The use of hydrogen peroxide vapour to be a superior alternative to conventional methods. Hydrogen peroxide vapour to be very close to an ideal disinfectant due to its proven efficacy against a wide range of microorganisms, safety to use, lack of toxicity concerns and good material compatibility.
  • 92
  • 14 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Ultrasound Image Analysis with Vision Transformers
Ultrasound (US) has become a widely used imaging modality in clinical practice, characterized by its rapidly evolving technology, advantages, and unique challenges, such as a low imaging quality and high variability. There is a need to develop advanced automatic US image analysis methods to enhance its diagnostic accuracy and objectivity. Vision transformers, a recent innovation in machine learning, have demonstrated significant potential in various research fields, including general image analysis and computer vision, due to their capacity to process large datasets and learn complex patterns. Their suitability for automatic US image analysis tasks, such as classification, detection, and segmentation, has been recognized. 
  • 93
  • 13 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Continuum Robots and Magnetic Soft Robots
Magnetic soft robots, as an innovative branch of the soft robotics discipline, are eye-catching because of their excellent controllability and high flexibility under the control of magnetic fields. Thanks to the properties of magnetic materials, this type of robot can be manufactured into extremely fine micro guide wires, making it particularly applicable in fields such as minimally invasive pipeline interventional treatment or interventional laser surgery. Although magnetic soft robots and continuum robots belong to the same category of soft robots, they show obvious differences and complementarities in design concepts, application scenarios, and technical implementation. Especially from the perspective of structural size, continuum robots have encountered certain challenges in miniaturization, and magnetic soft robots can be regarded as an important expansion and deepening of continuum robots in terms of size reduction.
  • 79
  • 11 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Technologies for Plasmon-Based Fluorescence Enhancement
Fluorescence is a widely used phenomenon in various scientific and technological fields, including biology, chemistry, medicine, and materials science. The fluorescence signal provides valuable information about molecular interactions, concentrations, and structural changes. Fluorescence exhibits numerous valuable applications, encompassing the detection of single molecules, fluorescence nanoscopy, biological labeling, and optoelectronic device functionality, among many others. Fluorescence enhancement is imperative for enhancing the sensitivity and precision of a wide range of scientific and technological applications that heavily rely on fluorescence detection. It is a crucial requirement to elevate the performance and reliability of these applications.
  • 103
  • 11 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Characterization Technique for Exosomes
Exosomes distributed by extracellular vesicles carry various information highly consistent with cells, becoming a new type of biomarker for tumor screening. However, although conventional characterization technologies can quantify size and morphology for exosomes, they are limited in related fields such as function tracing, protein quantification at unit point, and microstructural information.
  • 127
  • 08 Mar 2024
Topic Review
Thermographic Techniques for Skin Cancer Diagnosis
Infrared (IR) thermography is one of the most promising technologies now available for the early detection of malignant diseases (such as skin and breast cancers). Its significant strengths are the absence of contact and dangerous radiation; it is also a non-invasive and cost-effective technique.
  • 113
  • 05 Mar 2024
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