Antonio Fratini

• PhD
• Reader at Aston University

Whole body vibration treatment is a non-pharmacological intervention intended to stimulate muscular response and increase bone mineral density, particularly for postmenopausal women. The literature related to this topic is controversial, heterogeneous, and unclear despite the prospect of a major clinical effect.The aim of this study was to identify...

During last decade the use of ECG recordings in biometric recognition studies has increased. ECG characteristics made it suitable for subject identification: it is unique, present in all living individuals, and hard to forge. However, in spite of the great number of approaches found in literature, no agreement exists on the most appropriate methodo...

Seismocardiography (SCG) and Gyrocardiography (GCG) use lightweight, miniaturized accelerometers and gyroscopes to record, respectively, cardiac-induced linear accelerations and angular velocities of the chest wall. These inertial sensors are also sensitive to thoracic movements with respiration, which cause baseline wanderings in SCG and GCG signa...

Human hands have over 20 degrees of freedom, enabled by a complex system of bones, muscles, and joints. Hand differences can significantly impair dexterity and independence in daily activities. Accurate assessment of hand function, particularly digit movement, is vital for effective intervention and rehabilitation. However, current clinical methods...

Purpose 3D visualization is an important part of learning anatomy with cadavers generally used to effectuate this. However, high cost, ethical considerations, and limited accessibility can often limit the suitability of cadavers as teaching tools. Anatomical 3D printed models offer an alternative tool for teaching gross anatomy due to their low cos...

Introduction There is accumulating evidence that many pathological conditions affecting human balance are consequence of postural control (PC) failure or overstimulation such as in motion sickness. Our research shows the potential of using the response to a complex postural control task to assess patients with early-stage Parkinson's Disease (PD)....

Research on human posture and balance control has grown in recent years, leading to continued advances in their understanding. The ability to maintain balance is attributed to the interplay of the visual, vestibular, and somatosensory systems, although an important role is also played by the auditory system. The lack or deficit in any of these syst...

Efficient postural control results from an effective interplay between sensory feedbacks integration and muscle modulation and can be affected by ageing and neuromuscular injuries. With this study, we investigated the effect of whole-body vibratory stimulation on postural control strategies employed to maintain an upright posture. We explored both...

Purpose This study aimed to translate the Convergence Insufficiency Symptom Survey (CISS) into the Italian language and assess psychometric properties of the translated questionnaire (CISS_I). Methods The CISS_I was arranged according to guidelines for a comprehensive multistep methodologic process for translating, adapting, and validating psychom...

For decades, postural control has been believed to be dominated by reflexive mechanisms, but more recent evidence characterizes it as an articulate system which relies on multisensory integration (vestibular, visual, proprioceptive) and cortical coordination to preserve balance in the wake of external disruptions to the quiet stance. Corrective str...

The aim of this study is to characterise the transient mechanical response and the neuromuscular activation of lower limb muscles in subjects undergoing Whole Body Vibration (WBV) at different frequencies while holding two static postures, with focus on muscles involved in shaping postural responses. Twenty-five participants underwent WBV at 15, 20...

Postural control is a complex feedback system that relies on vast array of sensory inputs in order to maintain a stable upright stance. The brain cortex plays a crucial role in the processing of this information and in the elaboration of a successful adaptive strategy to external stimulation preventing loss of balance and falls. In the present work...

Lower limb muscles actively contribute to maintain body posture but also act to attenuate soft tissues oscillations that occur during everyday life. This elicited activity can be exploited as a mean of neuromuscular training or rehabilitation. In this study, Whole Body Vibrations (WBV) at different frequencies were delivered to healthy subjects whi...

Purpose To characterise the mechanical and neuromuscular response of lower limb muscles in subjects undergoing Whole Body Vibration (WBV) at different frequencies while holding two static postures. Methods Twenty-five participants underwent WBV at 15, 20, 25 and 30 Hz while holding a static ‘hack squat’ and on ‘fore feet’ posture. Surface electrom...

Background Low-dose X-ray images have become increasingly popular in the last decades, due to the need to guarantee the lowest reasonable patient’s exposure. Dose reduction causes a substantial increase of quantum noise, which needs to be suitably suppressed. In particular, real-time denoising is required to support common interventional fluoroscop...

Synthetic data augmentation is of paramount importance for machine learning classification, particularly for biological data, which tend to be high dimensional and with a scarcity of training samples. The applications of robotic control and augmentation in disabled and able-bodied subjects still rely mainly on subject-specific analyses. Those can r...

X-ray fluoroscopy is a medical imaging modality that provides continuous real-time screening of patient’s organs and various radiopaque surgical objects. Fluoroscopy usually requires long and unpredictable exposure times, thus radiation intensity must be heavily reduced to limit patient’s dose. This gives rise to the well-known Poisson noise, which...

In this study, it’s presented a new simple sensor based on a Force-Sensitive Resistor (FSR) that, applied on the skin through a rigid dome, senses the mechanical force exerted by the underlying contracting muscle and also detects the little vibrations which occur during muscle contraction, i.e. the mechanomyogram (MMG). The new sensor does not requ...

This paper presents forcecardiography (FCG), a novel technique to measure local, cardiac-induced vibrations onto the chest wall. Since the 19th century, several techniques have been proposed to detect the mechanical vibrations caused by cardiovascular activity, the great part of which was abandoned due to the cumbersome instrumentation involved. Th...

Comparison of derivative operators via quantitative performance analysis is rarely addressed in medical imaging. Indeed, the main application of such operators is the extraction of edges and, since there is no unequivocal definition of edges, the common trend is to identify the best performing operator based on a qualitative match between the extra...

The objective of the present work is to measure postural kinematics and power spectral variation from HD-EEG to assess changes in cortical activity during adaptation and habituation to postural perturbation. To evoke proprioceptive postural perturbation, vibratory stimulation at 85 Hz was applied to the calf muscles of 33 subjects over four 75-seco...

The objective of the present work is to measure postural kinematics and power spectral variation from HD-EEG to assess changes in cortical activity during adaptation and habituation to postural perturbation. To evoke proprioceptive postural perturbation, vibratory stimulation at 85 Hz was applied to the calf muscles of 33 subjects over four 75-seco...

Human machine interfaces (HMIs) are employed in a broad range of applications, spanning from assistive devices for disability to remote manipulation and gaming controllers. In this study, a new piezoresistive sensors array armband is proposed for hand gesture recognition. The armband encloses only three sensors targeting specific forearm muscles, w...

Important features of a hand prosthesis are certainly the comfort in wearing it, the ease of use, the activation speed, the low energy consumption and no less important the anthropomorphic aspect. This study focused on the activation speed and the energy consumption of an under-actuated, low-cost, active hand prosthesis named “Federica”. The prosth...

Many studies have addressed the relations between different human brain regions and their role in cognitive, motor and sensory functions in patients that have suffered a brain lesion (stroke, traumatic brain injury, tissue removal). Nowadays, it is well established that the brain works as a network and the symptoms in a person are a combination of...

Modern 3D printing technologies and wide availability of microcontroller boards allow to make active prosthetic devices in a simple way. This is the case of “Federica”, a very low-cost, under-actuated, active hand prosthesis. The five fingers of the prosthesis are moved by a single motor through inelastic tendons. The control system of the prosthes...

Objective. Maintaining upright posture is a complex task governed by the integration of afferent sensorimotor and visual information with compensatory neuromuscular reactions. The objective of the present work was to characterize the visual dependency and functional dynamics of cortical activation during postural control. Approach. Proprioceptic vi...

Maintaining upright posture is a complex task governed by the integration of afferent sensorimotor and visual information with compensatory neuromuscular reactions. The objective of this work was to characterize the visual dependency and functional dynamics of cortical activation during postural control. Proprioceptic vibratory stimulation of calf...

Continuous monitoring of pacemaker activity can provide valuable information to improve patients’ follow-up. Concise information is stored in some types of pacemakers, whereas ECG can provide more detailed information, but requires electrodes and cannot be used for continuous monitoring. This study highlights the possibility of a continuous monitor...

Measurement of muscle contraction is mainly achieved through electromyography (EMG) and is an area of interest for many biomedical applications, including prosthesis control and human machine interface. However, EMG has some drawbacks, and there are also alternative methods for measuring muscle activity, such as by monitoring the mechanical variati...

Functional connectivity (FC) analysis constitutes a fundamental neuroscientific approach that has been extensively used for the investigation of brain's connectivity and activation patterns. To that end, several software tools have been developed. This paper presents FCLAB, the only EEGLAB-based plugin, which is able to work with EEG signals in ord...

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is increasingly used in areas such as ophthalmology and contact lens metrology. However, in such cases, image distortion can occur due to the non-planar nature of the measured sample. Postprocessing algorithms can be implemented to correct this distortion. Here we present an OCT phantom designed to confirm the val...

Objective: Provide a definitive analysis of the spectrum of a motor unit action potential train elicited by mechanical vibratory stimulation via a detailed and concise mathematical formulation. Experimental studies demonstrated that motor unit action potentials are not exactly synchronized with the vibratory stimulus but show a variable latency jit...

Purpose: To characterise the anatomical parameters of the porcine eye for potentially using it as a laboratory model of dry eye. Methods: Anterior chamber depth and angle, corneal curvature, shortest and longest diameter, endothelial cell density, and pachymetry were measured in sixty freshly enucleated porcine eyeballs. Results: Corneal steep...

Many cervical spine pathologies involve degeneration of the stabilizing mechanisms of vertebrae segments and often cause pain. Abnormal intervertebral motion is an indication for surgery. Currently, spinal fusion surgery is widely adopted to fix the instable vertebral segments but recently, disk arthroplasty is more and more adopted as an alternati...

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Electrocardiography (ECG) has been recently proposed as biometric trait for identification purposes. Intra-individual variations of ECG might affect identification performance. These variations are mainly due to Heart Rate Variability (HRV). In particular, HRV causes changes in the QT intervals along the ECG waveforms. This work is aimed at analysi...

This paper presents an analysis on the suitability of a low cost motion capture system to support the development of generic applications within medical scenarios. In this study we used the Microsoft Kinect (first generation) sensor as basic technology for its wide availability and the relatively low cost, which generated great interest of the scie...

During medical emergencies, the ability to communicate the state and position of injured individuals is essential. In critical situations or crowd aggregations, this may result difficult or even impossible due to the inaccuracy of verbal communication, the lack of precise localization for the medical events, and/or the failure/congestion of infrast...

The aim of this study is to evaluate the application of ensemble averaging to the analysis of electromyography recordings under whole body vibratory stimulation. Recordings from Rectus Femoris, collected during vibratory stimulation at different frequencies, are used. Each signal is subdivided in intervals, which time duration is related to the vib...

Developers of novel or improved front-end circuits for biopotential recordings using dry electrodes face the challenge of validating their design. Dry electrodes allow more user-friendly and pervasive patient-monitoring, but proof is required that new devices can perform biopotential recording with a quality at least comparable to existing medical...

Risk management in healthcare represents a group of various complex actions, implemented to improve the quality of healthcare services and guarantee the patients safety. Risks cannot be eliminated, but it can be controlled with different risk assessment methods derived from industrial applications and among these the Failure Mode Effect and Critica...

Technological advances have driven some attempt of vital parameters monitoring in adverse environments; these improvements will make possible to monitor cardiac activity also in automotive environments. In this scenario, heart rate changes associated with alcohol consumption, become of great importance to assess the drivers state during time. This...

Through a lumped parameter modelling approach, a dynamical model, which can reproduce the motion of the muscles of a human body standing in different postures during Whole Body Vibrations (WBVs) treatment, has been developed. The key parameters, associated to the dynamics of the motion of the muscles of the lower limbs, have been identified startin...

Infantile Nystagmus Syndrome, or Congenital Nystagmus, is an ocular-motor disorder characterized by involuntary, conjugated and bilateral to and fro ocular oscillations. Good visual acuity in congenital nystagmus can be achieved during the foveation periods in which eye velocity slows down while the target image crosses the fovea. Visual acuity was...

This study aims to reproduce the effect of motor-unit synchronization on surface EMG recordings during vibratory stimulation to highlight vibration evoked muscle activity. The authors intended to evaluate, through numerical simulations, the changes in surface EMG spectrum in muscles undergoing whole body vibration stimulation. In some specific band...

Identification of humans via ECG is being increasingly studied because it can have several advantages over the traditional biometric identification techniques. However, difficulties arise because of the heartrate variability. In this study we analysed the influence of QT interval correction on the performance of an identification system based on te...

Electrosurgery units are widely employed in modern surgery. Advances in technology have enhanced the safety of these devices, nevertheless, accidental burns are still regularly reported. This study focuses on possible causes of sacral burns as complication of the use of electrosurgery. Burns are caused by local densifications of the current, but th...

The use of electrocardiogram as biometric has raised attention in the last decade and a wide variety of ECG features were explored to verify the feasibility of such a signal. In this work the authors aim to describe a simple template based approach to the electrocardiographic biometric identification using the morphology of individual's heartbeat....

Accurate measurement of intervertebral kinematics of the cervical spine can support the diagnosis of widespread diseases related to neck pain, such as chronic whiplash dysfunction, arthritis, and segmental degeneration. The natural inaccessibility of the spine, its complex anatomy, and the small range of motion only permit concise measurement in vi...

Along with other diseases that can affect binocular vision, reducing the visual quality of a subject, Congenital Nystagmus (CN) is of peculiar interest. CN is an ocular-motor disorder characterized by involuntary, conjugated ocular oscillations and, while identified more than forty years ago, its pathogenesis is still under investigation. This kind...

Fluoroscopic images exhibit severe signal-dependent quantum noise, due to the reduced X-ray dose involved in image formation, that is generally modelled as Poisson-distributed. However, image gray-level transformations, commonly applied by fluoroscopic device to enhance contrast, modify the noise statistics and the relationship between image noise...

Whole Body Vibrations consist of a vibration stimulus mechanically transferred to the body. The impact of vibration treatment on specific muscular activity, neuromuscular, and postural control has been widely studied. We investigated whole body vibration (WBV) effect on oxygen uptake and electromyographic signal of the rectus femoris muscle during...

The impact of whole body vibrations (vibration stimulus mechanically transferred to the body) on muscular activity and neuromuscular response has been widely studied but without standard protocol and by using different kinds of exercises and parameters. In this study, we investigated how whole body vibration treatments affect electromyographic sign...

Cardiotocography provides significant information on foetal oxygenation linked to characteristics of foetal heart rate signals. Among most important we can mention foetal heart rate variability, whose spectral analysis is recognised like useful in improving diagnosis of pathologic conditions. However, despite its importance, a standardisation of de...

Cardiotocographic data provide physicians information about foetal development and permit to assess conditions such as foetal distress. An incorrect evaluation of the foetal status can be of course very dangerous. To improve interpretation of cardiotocographic recordings, great interest has been dedicated to foetal heart rate variability spectral a...

Long term recording of biomedical signals such as ECG, EMG, respiration and other information (e.g. body motion) can improve diagnosis and potentially monitor the evolution of many widespread diseases. However, long term monitoring requires specific solutions, portable and wearable equipment that should be particularly comfortable for patients. The...

A valuable alternative to traditional diagnostic tool to record fetal heart rate, to monitor the general fetal well-being, is fetal phonocardiography, a passive and low cost acoustic recording of fetal heart sounds. In this paper, it is presented a simulating software of fetal phonocardiographic signals relative to different fetal physiological sta...

Congenital Nystagmus (CN) is an ocular-motor disorder characterised by involuntary, conjugated ocular oscillations, and its pathogenesis is still unknown. The pathology is defined as “congenital” from the onset time of its arise which could be at birth or in the first months of life. Visual acuity in CN subjects is often diminished due to nystagmus...

The long-term foetal surveillance is often to be recommended. Hence, the fully non-invasive acoustic recording, through maternal abdomen, represents a valuable alternative to the ultrasonic cardiotocography. Unfortunately, the recorded heart sound signal is heavily loaded by noise, thus the determination of the foetal heart rate raises serious sign...

Congenital nystagmus is an ocular-motor disorder characterised by involuntary, conjugated and bilateral to and fro ocular oscillations. In this study a method to recognise automatically jerk waveform inside a congenital nystagmus recording and to compute foveation time and foveation position variability is presented. The recordings were performed w...

This study extends a previous research concerning intervertebral motion registration by means of 2D dynamic fluoroscopy to obtain a more comprehensive 3D description of vertebral kinematics. The problem of estimating the 3D rigid pose of a CT volume of a vertebra from its 2D X-ray fluoroscopy projection is addressed. 2D-3D registration is obtained...

Congenital nystagmus (CN) is an ocular-motor disorder characterised by involuntary, conjugated ocular oscillations and its pathogenesis is still under investigation. This kind of nystagmus is termed congenital (or infantile) since it could be present at birth or it can arise in the first months of life. Most of CN patients show a considerable decre...

A valuable alternative to US cardiotocography, for fetal surveillance, can be offered by phonocardiography, a passive and low cost acoustic recording of fetal heart sounds. A crucial point is the exact recognizing of the fetal heart sounds, associated to each fetal heart beat, and then the estimation of FHR signal. In this work, software for FHR as...

Many studies have accounted for whole body vibration effects in the fields of exercise physiology, sport and rehabilitation medicine. Generally, surface EMG is utilized to assess muscular activity during the treatment; however, large motion artifacts appear superimposed to the raw signal, making sEMG recording not suitable before any artifact filte...

The aim of the study is to characterize the local muscles motion in individuals undergoing whole body mechanical stimulation. In this study we aim also to evaluate how subject positioning modifies vibration dumping, altering local mechanical stimulus. Vibrations were delivered to subjects by the use of a vibrating platform, while stimulation freque...

Cardiotocographic data provide physicians information about foetal development and, through assessment of specific parameters (like accelerations, uterine contractions, ...), permit to assess conditions such as foetal distress. An incorrect evaluation of foetal status can be of course very dangerous. In the last decades, to improve interpretation o...

The aim of this work is to contribute to the analysis and characterization of training with whole body vibration (WBV) and the resultant neuromuscular response. WBV aims to mechanically activate muscle by eliciting stretch reflexes. Generally, surface electromyography is utilized to assess muscular response elicited by vibrations. However, EMG anal...

Discussion: Each sensor on the pressure mat is 0.7 cm 2 in area. Since the error for the COP coordinates are less than the size of the sensor, the discrepancies between the two software packages can be considered negligible. Regarding the COP accuracy, the resulting errors are less than 4% of the subject’s applied pressure and can therefore be cons...

The aim of this study is to highlight the relationship between muscle motion, generated by whole body vibration, and the correspondent electromyographic (EMG) activity and to suggest a new method to customize the stimulation frequency. Simultaneous recordings of EMG and tri-axial accelerations of quadriceps rectus femoris from fifteen subjects unde...

Congenital nystagmus is an ocular–motor disorder that develops in the first few months of life; its pathogenesis is still unknown. Patients affected by congenital nystagmus show continuous, involuntary, rhythmical oscillations of the eyes. Monitoring eye movements, nystagmus main features such as shape, amplitude and frequency, can be extracted and...

Congenital nystagmus (CN) is an ocular-motor disorder characterised by involuntary, conjugated ocular oscillations, that can arise since the first months of life. Pathogenesis of congenital nystagmus is still under investigation. In general, CN patients show a considerable decrease of their visual acuity: image fixation on the retina is disturbed b...

The aim of this study is to highlight the relation between muscle motion and electromyographyc activity during whole body vibration. This treatment is accounted for eliciting a reflex muscle activity in response to vibratory stimulation. Simultaneous recordings from quadriceps Rectus Femoris EMG and 3D muscle accelerations on fifteen subjects under...

Monitoring foetal health is a very important task in clinical practice to appropriately plan pregnancy management and delivery. In the third trimester of pregnancy, cardiotocography (CTG) is the most employed diagnostic technique. In CTG monitoring, foetal heart rate (FHR) and uterine contractions (UC) signals are simultaneously recorded and analys...

Whole body vibration (WBV) aims to mechanically activate muscles by eliciting stretch reflexes. Mechanical vibrations are usually transmitted to the patient body standing on a oscillating plate. WBV is now more and more utilized not only for fitness but also in physical therapy, rehabilitation and in sport medicine. Effects depend on intensity, dir...

Electromyography readings (EMGs) from quadriceps of fifteen subjects were recorded during whole body vibration treatment at different frequencies (10-50 Hz). Additional electrodes were placed on the patella to monitor the occurrence of motion artifact, triaxial accelerometers were placed onto quadriceps to monitor motion. Signal spectra revealed sh...

Congenital nystagmus (CN) is an ocular-motor disorder that appears at birth or during the first few months of life; it is Congenital nystagmus (CN) is an ocular-motor disorder that appears at birth or during the first few months of life; it is characterised by involuntary, conjugated, bilateral to and fro ocular oscillations. Pathogenesis of congen...

Vibration treatment by oscillating platforms is more and more employed in the fields of exercise physiology and bone research. The rationale of this treatment is based on the neuromuscular system response elicited by vibration loads. surface Electromyography (EMG) is largely utilized to assess muscular response elicited by vibrations and Root Mean...

Congenital nystagmus (CN) is a disturbance of the oculomotor centers which develops at birth or in the first months of life. Nystagmus consists essentially in involuntary, conjugated, horizontal rhythmic movements of the eye. Its pathogenesis is still unknown. Current therapies for CN aim to increase the patient’s visual acuity by means of refracti...

Whole Body Vibration training is more and more utilized in sport medicine to enhance athletic performance and training; recently, vibration treatment is being also used for therapy and rehabilitation for patients affected by different pathologies. It is also worth mention that excessive vibrations can be hazardous. The treatment is based on the hyp...

Continuous patient monitoring during daily life can provide valuable information to different medical specialties. Indeed, long recording of related cardiac signals such as ECG, respiration and also other information such as body motion can improve diagnosis and monitor the evolution of many widespread diseases. Key-issues for portable or even wear...

Beside other Clinical Engineering activities to reduce risks in hospitals, functional assessment of medical devices is becoming more and more extended. Once evaluated the common risk such those electric and mechanical, specific risk are connected to the device performance: functional assessment aims to verify the specific proper operations of a med...

Cardiotocography is the most commonly used noninvasive diagnostic technique that provides physicians information about fetal development (in particular about development of autonomous nervous system - ANS) and wellbeing. It allows the simultaneous recording of Fetal Heart Rate (FHR), by means of a Doppler probe, and Uterine Contractions (UC), by me...

Human reactions to vibration have been extensively investigated in the past. Vibration, as well as whole-body vibration (WBV), has been commonly considered as an occupational hazard for its detrimental effects on human condition and comfort. Although long term exposure to vibrations may produce undesirable side-effects, a great part of the literatu...