Daniele Esposito

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Verified

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• Biomedical Engineer Ph.D.
• Associate Professor of Bioengineering at University of Salerno

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...

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...

The actual grip force provided by a hand prosthesis is an important parameter to evaluate its efficiency. To this end, a split cylindrical handlebar embedding a single-axis load cell was designed, 3D printed and assembled. Various measurements were made to evaluate the performances of the “Federica” hand, a simple low-cost hand prosthesis. The hand...

Hand prostheses partially restore hand appearance and functionalities. In particular, 3D printers have provided great opportunities by simplifying the manufacturing process and reducing costs. The "Federica" hand is 3D-printed and equipped with a single servomotor, which synergically actuates its five fingers by inextensible tendons; no springs are...

As a definition, Human–Machine Interface (HMI) enables a person to interact with a de‐ vice. Starting from elementary equipment, the recent development of novel techniques and unob‐ trusive devices for biosignals monitoring paved the way for a new class of HMIs, which take such biosignals as inputs to control various applications. The current surve...

Cardiomechanical monitoring techniques record cardiac vibrations on the chest via lightweight electrodeless sensors that allow long-term patient monitoring. Heartbeat detection in cardiomechanical signals is generally achieved by leveraging a simultaneous electrocardiography (ECG) signal to provide a reliable heartbeats localization, which however...

Forcecardiography (FCG) uses force sensors to record the mechanical vibrations induced on the chest wall by cardiac and respiratory activities. FCG is usually performed via piezoelectric lead-zirconate titanate (PZT) sensors, which simultaneously record the very slow respiratory movements of the chest, the slow infrasonic vibrations due to emptying...

The muscle-like movement and speed of the electrohydraulic actuator have granted it much attention in soft robotics. Our aim is to review the advancements in electrohydraulic actuators inspired by the Hydraulically Amplified Self-healing Electrostatic (HASEL) actuator. With this paper, we focus on the performance of 21 electrohydraulic actuator des...

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...

The muscle-like movement and speed of the electrohydraulic actuator have granted it much at-tention in soft robotics. Our aim is to review the advancements in electrohydraulic actuators in-spired by the Hydraulically Amplified Self-healing Electrostatic (HASEL) actuator. With this paper we focus on the performance of 21 electrohydraulic actuator de...

HASEL (Hydraulically Amplified Self-Healing Electrostatic) actuators have gathered momentum in recent years; they are made of very-low-cost materials, making it easy for anyone to develop their own actuators, and they are “soft” and can achieve tasks that are very difficult to complete with traditional rigid actuators, e.g., grasping soft objects....

Long-term patient monitoring is required for detection of episodes of atrial fibrillation, one of the most widespread cardiac pathologies. Today, the most used non-invasive technique is Holter electrocardiographic (ECG) monitoring, which can often prove ineffective because of the short duration of recordings (e.g., one day). Other techniques such a...

Cardiac auscultation is an essential part of physical examination and plays a key role in the early diagnosis of many cardiovascular diseases. The analysis of phonocardiography (PCG) recordings is generally based on the recognition of the main heart sounds, i.e., S1 and S2, which is not a trivial task. This study proposes a method for an accurate r...

Worldwide, female breast cancer is the fifth leading cause of death. Digital Breast Tomosynthesis (DBT) is increasingly involved in the routine diagnosis of breast cancer, providing quasi-three-dimensional reconstruction of the breast. DBT image analysis is time-consuming and Computed Aided Diagnosis (CAD) systems are becoming increasingly popular...

Auscultation of heart sounds is important to perform cardiovascular assessment. External noises may limit heart sound perception. In addition, heart sound bandwidth is concentrated at very low frequencies, where the human ear has poor sensitivity. Therefore, the acoustic perception of the operator can be significantly improved by shifting the heart...

Cardio-mechanical monitoring techniques, such as Seismocardiography (SCG) and Gyrocardiography (GCG), have received an ever-growing interest in recent years as potential alternatives to Electrocardiography (ECG) for heart rate monitoring. Wearable SCG and GCG devices based on lightweight accelerometers and gyroscopes are particularly appealing for...

A heartbeat generates tiny mechanical vibrations, mainly due to the opening and closing of heart valves. These vibrations can be recorded by accelerometers and gyroscopes applied on a subject’s chest. In particular, the local 3D linear accelerations and 3D angular velocities of the chest wall are referred to as seismocardiograms (SCG) and gyrocardi...

Electromyography (EMG) is widely used in human–machine interfaces (HMIs) to measure muscle contraction by computing the EMG envelope. However, EMG is largely affected by powerline interference and motion artifacts. Boards that directly provide EMG envelope, without denoising the raw signal, are often unreliable and hinder HMIs performance. Sophisti...

Cardiac monitoring can be performed by means of an accelerometer attached to a subject’s chest, which produces the Seismocardiography (SCG) signal. Detection of SCG heartbeats is commonly carried out by taking advantage of a simultaneous electrocardiogram (ECG). SCG-based long-term monitoring would certainly be less obtrusive and easier to implemen...

The cardiac function is influenced by respiration. In particular, various parameters such as cardiac time intervals and the stroke volume are modulated by respiratory activity. It has long been recognized that cardio-respiratory interactions modify the morphology of cardio-mechanical signals, e.g., phonocardiogram, seismocardiogram (SCG), and balli...

Piezoresistive or piezoelectric force sensors are widely available today. These sensors are preferred to loadcells because of their extremely reduced size, slimness, and low cost, which allow their easy inclusion in a large variety of devices including wearables. In particular, many applications are devoted to monitoring human body movements, such...

Forcecardiography (FCG) is a novel technique that records the weak forces induced on the chest wall by cardio-respiratory activity, by using specific force sensors. FCG sensors feature a wide frequency band, which allows us to capture respiration, heart wall motion, heart valves opening and closing (similar to the Seismocardiogram, SCG) and heart s...

During surgical procedures, real-time estimation of the current position of a metal lead within the patient’s body is obtained by radiographic imaging. The inherent opacity of metal objects allows their visualization using X-ray fluoroscopic devices. Although fluoroscopy uses reduced radiation intensities, the overall X-ray dose delivered during pr...

Seismocardiography (SCG) is largely regarded as the state-of-the-art technique for continuous, long-term monitoring of cardiac mechanical activity in wearable applications. SCG signals are acquired via small, lightweight accelerometers fixed on the chest. They provide timings of important cardiac events, such as heart valves openings and closures,...

Forcecardiography (FCG) is a novel technique that measures the local forces induced on the chest wall by the mechanical activity of the heart. Specific piezoresistive or piezoelectric force sensors are placed on subjects’ thorax to measure these very small forces. The FCG signal can be divided into three components: low-frequency FCG, high-frequenc...

Voluntary hand movements are usually impaired after a cerebral stroke, affecting millions of people per year worldwide. Recently, the use of hand exoskeletons for assistance and motor rehabilitation has become increasingly widespread. This study presents a novel hand exoskeleton, designed to be low cost, wearable, easily adaptable and suitable for...

The precordial mechanical vibrations generated by cardiac contractions have a rich frequency spectrum. While the lowest frequencies can be palpated, the higher infrasonic frequencies are usually captured by the seismocardiogram (SCG) signal and the audible ones correspond to heart sounds. Forcecardiography (FCG) is a non-invasive technique that mea...

Triage is the first interaction between a patient and a nurse/paramedic. This assessment, usually performed at Emergency departments, is a highly dynamic process and there are international grading systems that according to the patient condition initiate the patient journey. Triage requires an initial rapid assessment followed by routine checks of...

In the last few decades, a number of wearable systems for respiration monitoring that help to significantly reduce patients’ discomfort and improve the reliability of measurements have been presented. A recent research trend in biosignal acquisition is focusing on the development of monolithic sensors for monitoring multiple vital signs, which coul...

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...

Purpose People with drug-refractory epilepsy are potential candidates for surgery. In many cases, epileptogenic zone localization requires intracranial investigations, e.g., via ElectroCorticoGraphy (ECoG), which uses subdural electrodes to map eloquent areas of large cortical regions. Precise electrodes localization on cortical surface is mandator...

The study focuses on performance tests carried out on a low-cost and 3D printed prosthetic hand, named “Federica”. The prosthesis can perform an adaptive grasp function using a single servomotor, which actuates all the five fingers by inextensible tendons. A cylindrical handlebar with a built-in load cell was used to measure the prosthesis grip for...

Computer vision for control is a growing domain of research and it is widespread in industry and the autonomous vehicle field. A further step is the employment of low-cost cameras to perform these applications. To apply such an approach, the development of proper algorithms to interpret vision data is mandatory. Here, we firstly propose the develop...

This study presents a simple Human Machine Interface (HMI) for gesture recognition purpose, based on a wireless piezoresistive armband. The armband embeds three sensors based on Force Sensitive Resistors (FSRs) applied on specific forearm muscles, which provide signals comparable to the electromyography linear envelope. The system aims to recognize...

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...

Active hand prostheses are usually controlled by electromyography (EMG) signals acquired from few muscles available in the residual limb. In general, it is necessary to estimate the envelope of the EMG in real-time to implement the control of the prosthesis. Recently, sensors based on Force Sensitive Resistor (FSR) proved to be a valid alternative...

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...

X-ray fluoroscopy provides various diagnosis and is widely used in interventional radiology. However, the low-dose involved in fluoroscopy generates an intense Poisson-distributed quantum noise. Object recognition and tracking help in many fluoroscopic applications. Edge-detection is essential, but common derivative operators require noise suppress...

Traditional stethoscopes have remained virtually unchanged for nearly 200 years and remain the primary examination tool for all medical practitioners. While their use is prominent, their single user design and susceptibility to noise distortions can result in loss of critical diagnostic information. With the rise of cardiovascular disease worldwide...

From the evaluation of electrical activity of muscles to the development of myoelectric prosthetic control/manmachine interfaces, the electromyography (EMG) signal has always been the first choice for both clinicians and engineers. However, due to the many drawbacks of EMG (e.g. skin preparation, electromagnetic interferences, high sample rate, etc...

Upper limb amputation is a condition that significantly restricts the amputees from performing their daily activities. The myoelectric prosthesis, using signals from residual stump muscles, is aimed at restoring the function of such lost limbs seamlessly. Unfortunately, the acquisition and use of such myosignals are cumbersome and complicated. Furt...

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...

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...

Recently, many type of prosthetic hands have been proposed. Nonetheless, any active prosthesis needs patient's physiological signals to be controlled. Electromyography is one of the most used signals to control prostheses. However, EMG needs electrodes in contact with patient's skin. This study aims to test an alternative, easy to wear sensor able...

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...