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The action potential(AP) and monophasic action potential(MAP) has been known to reliably reproduce the time course of cardiac repolarization and has been applied clinically to evaluate the mechanism of arrhythmia or the effect of antiarrhythmic drugs.

Several authors have published microcomputer systems that automatically measure the AP, MAP durations. However, these authors used a PC-based software automatically determines the AP, MAP duration at various levels of repolarization. This study devised an AP and MAP automatic analysis program by LabVIEW that uses analog output extracted from a commercially available, clinicalelectrophysiological (EP) test system(CardioLab, PruckaTM)

An optical fiber-based diagnostic system was developed to detect the acupuncture points (Bonghan Corpuscle) with small depth in human skin. A split fiber with 600 micrometer diameter was used in contact with the skin to deliver and detect the light to yield backscattered signal, which took information from both small and deep layers. The effect of backscattered signal from deep layer of skin was removed by another single fiber with the same diameter as the split fiber. Both fibers were arranged as close as possible to each other to detect the optical properties of tissue in a very small volume. The optical properties of the acupuncture point and its surrounding tissue in the skin were measured separately in the visible wavelength range (400–700nm), and significant difference was found between them. To control the consistency and reproduction of the experimental conditions of the fiber on the skin, a precise pressure sensor was employed.

There exist many different types of meditation. The mechanism why meditation improves people’s health remains unclear. Since different meditations may activate different regions in brain, we can use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate it. We may simply divide meditation into two different types, which is forced meditation (FM) and non-forced meditation (NFM). The FM type may keep a phrase in mind, observe breathing, proceed mind imaging or any other actions to keep people’s attention focused. Chinese original quiet sitting (COQS) is mainly one kind of traditional Chinese meditation. It contains two different parts: a short period of keeping phrase and receiving spiritual energy, and a long period of relaxation with no further action. The second part of it is really what we called “non-forced” type, whereas the first part is normally a forced one. In this paper, we want to find out the brain activation area precisely during FM and NFM. We studied the observing breathing meditation (OBM) and the first part of COQS as the FM type, and also studied the second part of COQS as NFM type. Our experimental results showed very different activation patterns among the brain between FM and NFM. The BOLD (Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent) signal changes had also been found. The posterior cingulated gyrus showed strong activation in OBM, the pineal gland and hypothalamus showed positive activation in the first and second stage of COQS separately. From our results, we found the basic meaning of the mechanism why meditation improves people’s health.

BUDDEUMI and BUDDEUMI’s treatment” wishes the reach for improving the effect of cupping boil and moxibustion by the synchronous using combination of moxibustion and cupping. This study suggests that BUDDEUMI has significant decreasing effects on extent and intensity of Atopic Dermatitis comparing pre-test and posttest. The effects of BUDDEUMI’s treatment are observed on the strengthening of skin breation and the detoxification of blood waste material, and BUDDEUMI is expected for the healthy article of the gaining immunity from a disease.

JOSHINA is a well proven and established alternative / herbal medicine for the treatment of colds, catarrh and flu. In order to examine any possible role which the major and trace elements might play in the medicinal properties of this herbal concoction, its elemental composition has been determined using a Plasma Quad Turbo Inductively-Coupled- Plasma Mass Spectrometer System (ICP-MS). Commercially available packets of Joshina were obtained and their contents dissolved in nitric and per-choleric acids for analysis with the ICP-MS The SPEX ICP multi -elemental Standards with appropriate concentrations were used in order to quantify the elemental concentrations in the samples. A total of 55 elements, from B to U were simultaneously detected with this technique and their concentrations determined. The concentrations of various elements in the samples ranged from around 1 ppb for rare earths to as much as 12,200 and 16,400 ppm for Na and K respectively. The efficacy of this alternative / herbal medicine would be discussed in line with its elemental composition.

In Italy, hospitals of different dimensions have been equipped, in the last years, with a clinical engineering structure that is leaded by a bioengineer whose main role is management of bioinstrumentation in terms of planning for purchases and maintenance. Nevertheless, if we think that hospital structures, particularly those with considerable dimensions, are subject to a nearly continuous upkeep process, we can locate a new crucial role for bioengineers: being the main referents of upkeep process together with hospital’s CEO. The process of upkeep and development of a hospital is always a complex multi-project that involves many steps starting from a deep planning effort. In this process, we maintain, the bioengineer should be involved starting from scratch.

The quality concept seems confusing, but from a Clinical Engineering’s point of view, essentially it means to add security and reliability increasing the effectiveness of medical procedures, by the appropriate management process of Healthcare Technologies. However, reliable and dynamic information is necessary. That can be extracted from the hospital environment by using Information Technology (IT) tools. The availability and the access to this information are very important to taking decisions, also identifications of the factors which contribute to Quality Programs in these services is allowed. A gradual implementation of this program can be a management’s instrument for the useful resources of health organizations.

The objective of this paper is to propose a neural network (NN) model to predict sequential human bio signal data for decreasing the risk of acute and likely fatal diseases and syndromes in patients (e.g., COPD and hypertension) based on a simulated learning algorithm. Our approach uses a sequential neural network with back-propagation learning. The modeling is done using time-varying inputs such as heart rate, SpO2, and blood pressure as measured and communicated by wireless devices. The output of the prediction system results into distinct classification levels for patient’s condition through sequential points. Such a prediction facilitates an early detection of exacerbating risk factors thereby saving a sudden death and other high risk diseases. The system is plausible to be used for the prevention and management of high risk diseases.

A new hands free mouse cursor position control device “Toe Mouse” was developed. The mouse is controlled by a toe with three dimensional pressure sensor unit and the user could handle keyboard and other devices with both hands during a PC operation. The Toe Mouse consists of three parts, which are (1) a toe button, (2) a pressure sensor unit, and (3) a control unit connected to a PC by USB channel. In order to design the optimum interface between cursor control and presser generation by the toe, kinematic characteristics of the big toe was measured. Seven healthy subjects pushed a button placed under the right big toe and three components of the pressure were measured by the pressure sensor unit. These subjects were requested to push the button for five directions (right, left, anterior, posterior and downward) with three kinds of effort (maximum, sustainable and minimum) each. The maximum value among lateral, anterior and posterior pressure was about 3.5kgf and the maximum downward pressure force was about 19.2kgf. The recording direction of pressure was different from the direction of the user’s intention and large downward pressure was observed in every task. However, subjective orthogonal directions (right, left, anterior and posterior) of individual user were warped but clearly separated with each other. Then we could transform these subjective directions to the objective orthogonal ones. The detail of the Toe Mouse was described and its usability was evaluated in this study. The result showed that the Toe Mouse would be used comfortably by not only healthy people but also disabled and elderly people.

There is in the developing world a great number of idle medical equipment, due to the absence of experienced professionals to conduct an effective purchasing plan in its several phases, including vendors proposals evaluation. As artificial neural networks are typically applied for pattern recognition and function approximation, it was developed a decision-making computational model, based on artificial neural networks, which entries were grades given to physical risk, cost and strategic importance to a chosen medical equipment. The outputs were also grades attributed by clinical engineers according to the importance of five factors (clinical, financial, quality, safety and technical) during the equipment evaluation. The use of the model’s outcome allows any clinical engineer to identify the proposal that best attend the health unit requirements. To validate this model, a national inquiry (32 clinical engineers) was conducted using an electronic chart that permitted to: (a) establish a major professional profile of the inquired engineers; (b) determine which were the most important criteria considered during a medical equipment procurement process and (c) generate 95 examples that were used to train, and to test, diverse types of artificial neural networks. Hence, to represent the knowledge of clinical engineers (for the evaluation process of purchasing proposals) who worked at public hospitals, with three to ten years of experience, the best results were encountered for an ensemble of 100 two-hidden-layers perceptrons trained with the Backpropagation algorithm. The neural networks responses presented average reliability superior than 85% in all cases studied. Therefore, a connectionist computational model can be useful during a decision making process to help hospital managers to choose an appropriate medical equipment.