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An in-building hospital information and navigation system called BlueCompass is designed and developed as a mobile application in this work. BlueCompass aims to provide a path finding and information of each service unit of Songklanagarind Hospital which is a case study hospital in this work. QR code and Bluetooth beacon technologies are utilized for pinpointing the user and the service unit locations. The path finding feature provide four results including the overall path as a text, the overall path as a map similar to the Google Map Direction option, the voice and the augmented reality option. To achieve the sustainability of the system, BlueCompass also allows its information to be maintained and updated via a web interface. Even though BlueCompass is designed specifically for Songklanagarind Hospital, the idea can be used for other area.

Overweight and obesity are growing health complications mostly associated with metabolic and musculoskeletal comorbidities. The knowledge about the effects of obesity on the plantar pressure distribution in diabetic population is lacking. The purpose of this study was to assess the differences regarding plantar pressure distribution in participants with diabetic neuropathic feet who had a different body mass index (BMI). Peak plantar pressure was measured in 12 participants during level walking. The subjects were classified into three categories, each containing 4 participants, as non-obese, overweight and obese according to their BMI values. Peak plantar pressure was determined for the hindfoot, midfoot and forefoot regions using Pedar-X® in-shoe pressure measurement system. Lower peak plantar pressure was observed in midfoot compared to the hindfoot and forefoot. There was no significant difference in peak plantar pressure between the groups for forefoot and hindfoot. However, the obese group showed a significant higher peak plantar pressure in midfoot compared to the non-obese and overweight diabetic foot with neuropathy. Therefore, the high peak plantar pressure at the midfoot can cause a foot pain in obese diabetic neuropathic foot.

The applying posteroanterior (PA) load through the spinous process of the vertebral bone is one of the methods for assessment and treatment for back pain in physical therapy. Central PA mobilization is crucial to be investigated the harmful effect on osteoporotic vertebral bone. Therefore, the objective of our study was to investigate the effect of PA load on elderly L1 lumbar vertebra geometry with different bone properties. The finite element model of L1 vertebra was generated from elderly computed tomography images. A 100 N PA load was applied at posterior aspect of spinous process of L1 vertebra in two different homogeneous material properties; (1) healthy L1, (2) osteoporotic L1. The distribution of von Mises stresses and minimum principal strains in mid-transverse sections of L1 vertebra was determined. The results revealed that PA load caused higher values of stresses and strains at pedicles and laminae in transverse section of L1 vertebra. Moreover, changing the elastic modulus influenced stresses and strains distributions in transverse sections of L1 vertebra. In conclusion, applying PA force through spinous process tends to cause a crack initiation at pedicles and laminae in L1 elderly vertebra.

The optimal feature is necessary for the reach of electromyography (EMG) control or human-machine interface. This study aimed to find the optimal feature of time-domain features. Five oral muscles movements were performed in five volunteers. The oral activities were open mouth, protrude mouth, broad smile, straight tongue, and up tongue which were the parts of non-speech oral motor treatments. Sixteen time-domain features were selected to separate five oral muscles movements. The features were chosen using the RES index and evaluated using multilayer perception to confirm the results. The optimal features were different in each channel followed as: slope sign change feature for channel 2, myopulse percentage rate feature for channel 3 and channel 5. In addition, the average percentage of classification was 91.33%.

Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model is used to evaluate cardiovascular hemodynamics and the model is useful to predict the blood flow pattern and the wall shear stress (WSS) in various conditions. This study used the CFD model to assessment the influence of varied blood conditions and geometries on changing of velocity ratio at the internal carotid artery (ICA) and the external carotid artery (ECA). The realistic model of two-dimensional carotid artery was acquired from four normal male subjects with a magnetic resonance angiography. Then, the geometries were reconstructed and blood was assumed to be incompressible and Newtonian fluid. The artery was assumed to be a rigid wall. Four conditions simulated in this study were normal, 50% stenosis, hyperglycemia and hyperglycemia with 50% stenosis. The ICA velocity ratio was calculated from ICA velocity to inlet velocity and the ECA velocity ratio was calculated from ECA velocity to inlet velocity. The WSS was determined at inner and outer walls of ICA. The results showed that the trends of the velocity ratio increased in stenosis condition. The results also indicated that the velocity in ICA and ECA can be influenced by the geometries of carotid artery such as curvature and vascular stenosis. Moreover, the increase of velocity correlated with the WSS value.

Valvular heart disease is considered as an important problem of heart. The mechanical heart valve replacement is one of the methods used to treat valvular heart disease. There are many designs of mechanical heart valves including bileaflet and trileaflet valves. As the heart valve operates under the blood pressure conditions, it might be damaged or impaired. We aimed to design a trileaflet mechanical heart valve and compare with a bileaflet mechanical heart valve using mechanical analysis. Stress and strain on mechanical aortic heart valve, during opening and closing, were determined with a finite element analysis including deformation. Our simulation results showed that the maximum stress and strain, when valve opened, occurred at the hinge joint of leaflet in both trileaflet and bileaflet valves. But the stress concentration on the hinge joint in our designed trileaflet valve was less than that in the bileaflet valve. The leaflet deformation in trileaflet valve was lower compared to bileaflet valve. Our study suggested that geometry of leaflets and hinge joint play an important role in the stress and strain distributions occurred on heart valve including leaflets.

This study focused on the step of preprocessing in the part of edge detection techniques to detect red blood cells (RBCs) boundaries. The objectives of the study were to make a comparison between gradient based edge detection and zero-crossing based edge detection and to find out the appropriate operator to use for edge detection of RBCs in capillary. Sobel, Robert, Prewitt and Canny were used as gradient based edge detectors whereas Laplacian of Gaussian was used as zero-crossing based egde detector. Our study used two criteria to consider the quality of edge detector by eye judgment: the probability of a false positive and the probability of a false negative. It was found that Canny and LOG are suitable to use as edge detectors for RBCs in microvasculature.

Nitric oxide (NO) is known as an important mediator in vasorelaxation and blood pressure regulation. NO is produced from nitric oxide synthase (NOS) by converting amino acid L-arginine to amino acid L-citruine and NO. The reduction of NO synthesis by inhibiting NOS activities causes vasoconstriction and hypertension and affects on microvascular blood perfusion. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of NOS activity on organ blood flow distribution by an acute blocking in a hamster dorsal skin fold window chamber model. The inhibition of NOS activities was performed by an intravenous infusion of N(G)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME). The organ blood flow distribution was assessed with different color fluorescent microspheres over three hours of study. The preliminary results showed that L-NAME significantly increased systemic mean arterial pressure but it decreased heart rate. Venular diameters significantly increased over observation time when treated with L-NAME. Blood flow relative to mean flow increased in vital organs such as heart and brain after L-NAME infusion but not kidneys. In conclusion, the impairment of nitric oxide production on cardiovascular system in this model evidently demonstrated that NO is an important mediator and potentially affects on organ blood flow distribution by reducing blood flow.

Death cells and living cells counting after cancer drug treatment is a mandatory process for in vitro study to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment in cancer research. The conventional process using trypan blue dye staining requires expertise and it is time-consumed and tedious work. The aim of this study was to develop a computer-assisted program that counts a number of cells by using image analysis. There were five steps to complete in this study; i) input image acquiring, ii) cell extraction from a background, iii) noise reduction, iv) cell counting and v) output with expert comparison. K-mean algorithm was selected to use to extract features and cluster objects in the images. Hough transform was also performed after completion of k-mean algorithm and noise removal. The counting results using our code had a greater number of both death cells and living cells compared with the counting results from the expert. The accuracy of death cells counting and living cells counting were in range of 33% to 97% and 74% to 100%, respectively. However, the process time was short, only 2-3 second per image. This computer-assisted program needs to further develop as a graphic user interface (GUI) to make it easier for users as well as making higher accuracy.