Javier Garcia-Casado

• PhD Electronic Engineering
• Secretary at Polytechnic University of Valencia

Assisted reproductive technologies are increasingly common due to the rising maternal age. One potential cause of embryo implantation failure is altered uterine peristalsis patterns. Intracavitary electrohysterography (IC-EHG) is a recent technique developed to characterize the electrophysiology of uterine peristalsis throughout the menstrual cycle...

Several studies have shown interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS), a chronic condition that poses challenges in both diagnosis and treatment, is associated with painful pelvic floor muscles (PFM) and altered neural drive to these muscles. However, its pathophysiology could also involve other alterations in the electrical activity of P...

Concentric ring electrodes (CRE) allow improved spatial resolution, reduced crosstalk and interferences, and in-creased bandwidth in the sensing of bioelectrical activity. A wide variety of designs have been used, but their se-lection is rarely well-founded. The aim of this work is to assess the implications of aspects of CRE design such as the dis...

The studies carried out to date on vulvodynia treatment with botulinum neurotoxin type A (BoNT/A) have followed generic injection protocols and reported contradictory outcomes on its effects. The aim of the present study was thus to propose a protocol for injecting BoNT/A into targeted painful points, to comprehensively assess the clinical effect o...

La capacidad de búsqueda y valoración de la información y el aprendizaje autónomo de estudiantes y profesionales son de gran relevancia en una sociedad en la que el conocimiento es amplísimo y se genera de forma muy rápida. Con objeto de trabajar estos aspectos relacionados con la competencia aprender a aprender (AaA) y la gestión de la información...

La evaluación de las competencias específicas en titulaciones técnicas suele ser sumativa y articulada en pruebas escritas y memorias a entregar mayoritariamente al finalizar el periodo docente. Los alumnos concentran el estudio entorno a las evaluaciones, con poco margen para “corregir su aprendizaje” y asentar conceptos. El presente trabajo se en...

La evaluación de las competencias específicas en titulaciones técnicas suele ser sumativa y articulada en pruebas escritas y memorias a entregar mayoritariamente al finalizar el periodo docente. Los alumnos concentran el estudio entorno a las evaluaciones, con poco margen para “corregir su aprendizaje” y asentar conceptos. El presente trabajo se en...

La capacidad de búsqueda y valoración de la información y el aprendizaje autónomo de estudiantes y profesionales son de gran relevancia en una sociedad en la que el conocimiento es amplísimo y se genera de forma muy rápida. Con objeto de trabajar estos aspectos relacionados con la competencia aprender a aprender (AaA) y la gestión de la información...

The prolonged latent phase of Induction of Labour (IOL) is associated with increased risks of maternal mortality and morbidity. Electrohysterography (EHG) has outperformed traditional clinical measures monitoring labour progress. Although parity is agreed to be of particular relevance to the success of IOL, no previous EHG‐related studies have been...

Concentric ring electrodes are showing promise in noninvasive electrophysiological measurement but electrode design criteria are rarely detailed and justified. Toward that goal, the use of realistic finite dimensions model of concentric ring electrode in this study was twofold. First, it was used to optimize the surface Laplacian estimate coefficie...

Background and objective The prevalence of atrial fibrillation (AF) has tripled in the last 50 years due to population aging. High-frequency (DFdriver) activated atrial regions lead the activation of the rest of the atria, disrupting the propagation wavefront. Fourier based spectral analysis of body surface potential maps have been proposed for DFd...

Objective: The slow wave (SW) of the electrohysterogram (EHG) may contain relevant information on the electrophysiological condition of the uterus throughout pregnancy and labor. Our aim was to assess differences in the SW as regards the imminence of labor and the directionality of uterine myoelectrical activity. Approach: The SW of the EHG was...

Due to its high sensitivity, electrohysterography (EHG) has emerged as an alternative technique for predicting preterm labor. The main obstacle in designing preterm labor prediction models is the inherent preterm/term imbalance ratio, which can give rise to relatively low performance. Numerous studies obtained promising preterm labor prediction res...

Swallowing is a complex sequence of highly regulated and coordinated skeletal and smooth muscle activity. Previous studies have attempted to determine the temporal relationship between the muscles to establish the activation sequence pattern, assessing functional muscle coordination with cross-correlation or coherence, which is seriously impaired b...

Concentric ring electrodes are noninvasive and wearable sensors for electrophysiological measurement capable of estimating the surface Laplacian (second spatial derivative of surface potential) at each electrode. Significant progress has been made toward optimization of inter-ring distances (distances between the recording surfaces of the electrode...

One of the remaining challenges for the scientific-technical community is predicting preterm births, for which electrohysterography (EHG) has emerged as a highly sensitive prediction technique. Sample and fuzzy entropy have been used to characterize EHG signals, although they require optimizing many internal parameters. Both bubble entropy, which o...

The optimization performed in this study is based on the finite dimensions model of the concentric ring electrode as opposed to the negligible dimensions model used in the past. This makes the optimization problem comprehensive, as all of the electrode parameters including, for the first time, the radius of the central disc and individual widths of...

The treatment of chronic pelvic pain (CPP) with botulinum neurotoxin type A (BoNT/A) has increased lately, but more studies assessing its effect are needed. This study aimed to evaluate the evolution of patients after BoNT/A infiltration and identify potential responders to treatment. Twenty-four women with CPP associated with dyspareunia were trea...

La capacidad de búsqueda y valoración de la información y el aprendizaje autónomo, son aspectos clave relacionados con la competencia aprender a aprender (AaA) y cada vez son de mayor relevancia para estudiantes y profesionales. Para el diseño de actividades formativas es de suma importancia identificar los aspectos concretos que requiren de mayor...

Chronic pelvic pain (CPP) is a complex condition with a high economic and social burden. Although it is usually treated with botulinum neurotoxin type A (BoNT/A) injected into the pelvic floor muscles (PFM), its effect on their electrophysiological condition is unknown. In this study, 24 CPP patients were treated with BoNT/A. Surface electromyograp...

Preterm birth is the leading cause of death in newborns and the survivors are prone to health complications. Threatened preterm labor (TPL) is the most common cause of hospitalization in the second half of pregnancy. The current methods used in clinical practice to diagnose preterm labor, the Bishop score or cervical length, have high negative pred...

Chronic pelvic pain (CPP) is a highly disabling disorder in women usually associated with hypertonic dysfunction of the pelvic floor musculature (PFM). The literature on the subject is not conclusive about the diagnostic potential of surface electromyography (sEMG), which could be due to poor signal characterization. In this study, we characterized...

Surface electromyography (sEMG) can be helpful for evaluating swallowing related muscle activity. Conventional recordings with disc electrodes suffer from significant crosstalk from adjacent muscles and electrode-to-muscle fiber orientation problems, while concentric ring electrodes (CREs) offer enhanced spatial selectivity and axial isotropy. The...

Surface electromyography (sEMG) can be used for the evaluation of respiratory muscle activity. Recording sEMG involves the use of surface electrodes in a bipolar configuration. However, electrocardiographic (ECG) interference and electrode orientation represent considerable drawbacks to bipolar acquisition. As an alternative, concentric ring electr...

Electrohysterography (EHG) has been shown to provide relevant information on uterine activity and could be used for predicting preterm labor and identifying other maternal fetal risks. The extraction of high-quality robust features is a key factor in achieving satisfactory prediction systems from EHG. Temporal, spectral, and non-linear EHG paramete...

Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) is one of the major causes of maternal mortality and morbidity worldwide, with uterine atony being the most common origin. Currently there are no obstetrical techniques available for monitoring postpartum uterine dynamics, as tocodynamometry is not able to detect weak uterine contractions. In this study, we explored the...

Threatened preterm labor (TPL) is the most common cause of hospitalization in the second half of pregnancy and entails high costs for health systems. Currently, no reliable labor proximity prediction techniques are available for clinical use. Regular checks by uterine electrohysterogram (EHG) for predicting preterm labor have been widely studied. T...

Preterm labor is one of the major causes of neonatal deaths and also the cause of significant health and development impairments in those who survive. However, there are still no reliable and accurate tools for preterm labor prediction in clinical settings. Electrohysterography (EHG) has been proven to provide relevant information on the labor time...

Pharmacological agents are often used to induce labor. Failed inductions are associated with unnecessarily long waits and greater maternal-fetal risks, as well as higher costs. No reliable models are currently able to predict the induction outcome from common obstetric data (area under the ROC curve (AUC) between 0.6 and 0.7). The aim of this study...

La sociedad requiere de los egresados la formación en las competencias transversales que incluso son mejor valoradas por los empleadores que las competencias específicas del grado. Las metodologías activas para desarrollar las competencias se han implantado con éxito en grupos reducidos. En cambio, trabajar y evaluar objetivamente las competencias...

While progress has been made in design optimization of concentric ring electrodes maximizing the accuracy of the surface Laplacian estimation, it was based exclusively on the negligible dimensions model of the electrode. Recent proof of concept of the new finite dimensions model that adds the radius of the central disc and the widths of concentric...

Monitoring uterine contractions is essential during pregnancy and labor to obtain information on time-to-delivery and maternal and fetal wellbeing Intrauterine pressure (IUP) is considered the “gold standard” to monitor uterine activity, though it requires membrane rupture and is highly invasive. Considering that uterine mechanical activity is a di...

Surface Laplacian estimates via concentric ring electrodes (CREs) have proven to enhance spatial resolution compared to conventional disc electrodes, which is of great importance for P-wave analysis. In this study, Laplacian estimates for traditional bipolar configuration (BC), two tripolar configurations with linearly decreasing and increasing int...

Background: Uterine activity monitoring is an essential part of managing the progress of pregnancy and labor. Although intrauterine pressure (IUP) is the only reliable method of estimating uterine mechanical activity, it is highly invasive. Since there is a direct relationship between the electrical and mechanical activity of uterine cells, surfac...

Although research studies using electrohysterography on women without tocolytic therapy have shown its potential for preterm birth diagnosis, tocolytics are usually administered in emergency rooms at the first sign of threatened preterm labor (TPL). Information on the uterine response during tocolytic treatment could prove useful for the developmen...

The purpose of this study was to develop a tool able to distinguish between subjects who have haemophilic arthropathy in lower limbs and those who do not by analyzing the centre of pressure displacement. The second objective was to assess the possible different responses of haemophiliacs and healthy subjects by creating a classifier that could dist...

Labor prediction is one of the most challenging goals in obstetrics, mainly due to the poor understanding of the factors responsible for the onset of labor. The electrohysterogram (EHG) is the recording of the myoelectrical activity of myometrial cells and has been shown to provide relevant information on the electrophysiological state of the uteru...

As one of the main aims of obstetrics is to be able to detect imminent delivery in patients with threatened preterm labor, the techniques currently used in clinical practice have serious limitations in this respect. The electrohysterogram (EHG) has now emerged as an alternative technique, providing relevant information about labor onset when record...

The assessment of respiratory muscle activity by surface electromyography (sEMG) is a promising noninvasive technique for the diagnosis and monitoring of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The diaphragm is the most important muscle in breathing, although in forced inspiration other muscles, such as sternocleidomastoid, are activated and contrib...

El trabajo en equipo es una de las metodologías docentes más comunes para conseguir los objetivos de aprendizaje en grupos numerosos. La evaluación orientada al resultado final grupal no siempre se ajusta a los conocimientos realmente adquiridos por cada miembro del equipo. Los distintos instrumentos (diarios, portafolios) que se utilizan para valo...

Continuous ECG monitoring can play an important role in the rapid detection of pathological signatures and arrhythmias. Current systems use electrodes with limitations in wearable long-term applications and spatial selectivity. In this work, two sizes of textile concentric ring electrodes (TCRE42 and TCRE50) were developed and tested for monitoring...

Labor induction is a common practice to promote uterine contractions and labor onset. Uterine electrohysterogram (EHG) has proved its suitability for characterizing the uterus electrophysiological condition in women with spontaneous labor. The aim of this study was to characterize and compare uterine myoelectrical activity during the first 4 h in r...

Approach: This review presents and discusses the results according to the different types of parameter (temporal and spectral, non-linear and bivariate) used for EHG characterization. Main results: Electrohysterogram analysis reveals that the uterine electrophysiological changes that precede spontaneous preterm labor are associated with contract...

Developing new types of optimized electrodes for specific biomedical applications can substantially improve the quality of the sensed signals. Concentric ring electrodes have been shown to provide enhanced spatial resolution to that of conventional disc electrodes. A sensor with different electrode sizes and configurations (monopolar, bipolar, etc....

Among many of the electrode designs used in electrocardiography (ECG), concentric ring electrodes (CREs) are one of the most promising due to their enhanced spatial resolution. Their development has undergone a great push due to their use in recent years; however, they are not yet widely used in clinical practice. CRE implementation in textiles wil...

Objective: The objective of this study is to compare the uterine activity response between women administered dinoprostone (prostaglandin E2) and misoprostol (prostaglandin E1) for induction of labour (IOL) by analysing not only the traditional obstetric data but also the parameters extracted from uterine electrohysterogram (EHG). Methods: Two coho...

Resumen Experiencias previas han demostrado la viabilidad de implantar metodologías activas en grupos reducidos para trabajar y evaluar las competencias transversales. No obstante la evaluación de estas competencias en grupos numerosos puede suponer una carga de trabajo excesiva para el profesorado, cuestionando su sostenibilidad. En el presente tr...

Background and objective: Induction of labor (IOL) is a medical procedure used to initiate uterine contractions to achieve delivery. IOL entails medical risks and has a significant impact on both the mother's and newborn's well-being. The assistance provided by an automatic system to help distinguish patients that will achieve labor spontaneously...

Concentric ring electrodes (CRE) have been proposed for sensing bioelectrical activity with high spatial resolution. Computational studies have revealed that the CRE dimensions are closely related to the electric dipole depth they can sense, but further experimental confirmation is needed. We aimed to develop and test a wireless multichannel ECG re...

The use of non-invasive methods for the study of respiratory muscle signals can provide clinical information for the evaluation of the respiratory muscle function. The aim of this study was to evaluate time-frequency characteristics of the electrical activity of the sternocleidomastoid muscle recorded superficially by means of concentric ring elect...

To overcome the limited spatial resolution of standard 12-lead ECG recordings, concentric ring electrodes (CRE) have been proposed to provide valuable data for the diagnosis of a wide range of cardiac abnormalities, including infarction and arrhythmia. Although theoretical studies indicate that the dimensions of the CRE regulate the depth of the el...

The use of non-invasive methods for the study of respiratory muscle signals can provide clinical information for the evaluation of the respiratory muscle function. The aim of this study was to evaluate the electrical activity of the sternocleidomastoid muscle recorded superficially by means of a concentric ring electrode (CRE) in bipolar configurat...

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) remain the biggest cause of deaths worldwide. ECG monitoring is a key tool for early diagnosis of CVDs. Conventional monitors use monopolar electrodes resulting in poor spatial resolution surface recordings and requiring extensive wiring. High-spatial resolution surface electrocardiographic recordings provide valuable...

This was a cross-sectional study. The main objective of this study was to develop and test classification algorithms based on machine learning using accelerometers to identify the activity type performed by manual wheelchair users with spinal cord injury (SCI). The study was conducted in the Physical Therapy department and the Physical Education an...

Purpose – This paper aims to present a comparison between three types of manufacturing techniques, namely, screen-printed, inkjet and gravure, using different types of inks, for the implementation of concentric ring electrodes which permit estimation of Laplacian potential on the body surface. Design/methodology/approach – Flexible concentric ring...

The estimation of Laplacian potential on the body surface obtained by means of concentric ring electrodes can provide bioelectrical signals with better spatial resolution and less affected by bioelectrical interferences than monopolar and bipolar recordings with conventional disc electrodes. In this paper an array of flexible concentric opened-ring...

The conduction velocity and propagation patterns of the electrohysterogram (EHG) provide fundamental information on the electrophysiological condition of the uterus. However, the accuracy of these measurements can be impaired by both the poor spatial selectivity and sensitivity to the relative direction of the contraction propagation associated wit...

The analysis of the electromyographic signal of the diaphragm muscle (EMGdi) can provide important information for evaluating the respiratory muscular function. The EMGdi can be recorded using surface Ag/AgCl disc electrodes in monopolar or bipolar configuration. However, these non-invasive EMGdi recordings are usually contaminated by the electroca...

Non-invasive electrohysterogram (EHG) recording could provide valuable information about uterine dynamics. Bipolar EHG has usually been performed using monopolar disposable electrodes. Recently concentric ring electrodes have been used for EHG recordings so as to acquire more localized electrical activity which may be helpful for deducing uterine c...

The non-invasive monitoring of the frequency of intestinal pacemaker activity (slow wave, SW) has an important diagnostic value. However the presence of noise, physiological interferences and spurious peaks of the spectral estimators can yield to misidentification of SW frequency when using conventional dominant frequency detection method. In this...

Electrohysterography (EHG) is a noninvasive technique for monitoring uterine electrical activity. However, the presence of artifacts in the EHG signal may give rise to erroneous interpretations and make it difficult to extract useful information from these recordings. The aim of this work was to develop an automatic system of segmenting EHG recordi...

Laplacian potential on the body surface can be estimated by means of concentric ring electrodes. It has been proved that bioelectrical surface recordings performed with such concentric ring electrodes improve spatial resolution compared to unipolar or bipolar disc electrodes. However, concentric ring electrodes have commonly been implemented in rig...

Monitoring intestinal myoelectrical activity by electroenterogram (EEnG) would be of great clinical interest for diagnosing gastrointestinal pathologies and disorders. However, surface EEnG recordings are of very low amplitude and can be severely affected by baseline drifts and respiratory and electrocardiographic (ECG) interference. In this work,...

Diaphragm electromyography (EMGdi) provides important information on diaphragm activity, to detect neuromuscular disorders of the most important muscle in the breathing inspiratory phase. EMGdi is habitually recorded using needles or esophageal catheters, with the implication of being invasive for patients. Surface electrodes offer an alternative f...

Non-invasive recording of uterine myoelectric activity (electrohysterogram, EHG) could provide an alternative to monitoring uterine dynamics by systems based on tocodynamometers (TOCO). Laplacian recording of bioelectric signals has been shown to give better spatial resolution and less interference than mono- and bipolar surface recordings. The aim...

Surface electromyography (sEMG) is a noninvasive technique for monitoring the electrical activity produced by the muscles. Usually, sEMG is performed by carrying out monopolar or bipolar recordings by means of conventional Ag/AgCl electrodes. In contrast, Laplacian recordings of sEMG could also be obtained by using coaxial ring electrodes. Laplacia...

Non-invasive electrohysterogram (EHG) recordings could be used as an alternative technique for monitoring uterine dynamics. Bipolar recordings of EHG have proven to provide valuable information to predict labor. Recently it has been stated that uterine EHG bursts could also be identified in Laplacian recordings on abdominal surface. Taking into acc...

The estimation of laplacian potential on the body surface obtained by means of concentric ring electrodes can provide bioelectrical signals with better spatial resolution and less affected by bioelectrical interferences than monopolar and bipolar recordings with conventional disc electrodes. These ringed electrodes are usually implemented on rigid...

Bioelectrical surface recordings are usually performed by unipolar or bipolar disc electrodes even though they entail the serious disadvantage of having poor spatial resolution. Concentric ring electrodes give improved spatial resolution, although this type of electrode has so far only been implemented in rigid substrates and as they are not adapte...

Abdominal electrocardiogram (AECG) recording is a non-invasive method to assess fetal well-being during both pregnancy and delivery. However, AECG recording is contaminated by a series of physiological interferences which make difficult the extraction of morphological and temporal parameters of fetal ECG from the raw signals. In this work, it is pr...

Preterm birth is the main cause of the neonatal morbidity. Noninvasive recording of uterine myoelectrical activity (electrohysterogram, EHG) could be an alternative to the monitoring of uterine dynamics which are currently based on tocodynamometers (TOCO). The analysis of uterine electromyogram characteristics could help the early diagnosis of pret...

Although the surface electroenterogram (EEnG) is a weak signal contaminated by strong physiological interference, such as ECG and respiration, abdominal surface recordings of the EEnG could provide a non-invasive method of studying intestinal activity. The goal of this work was to develop a modular, active, low-cost and easy-to-use sensor to obtain...

Non-invasive recordings of intestinal myoelectrical activity (Electroenterogram, EEnG) are affected by very-low-frequency (VLF) interferences, respiration, ECG and movement artifacts. In order to identify the intestinal pacemaker activity (slow wave), VLF interferences and respiration should be removed from abdominal surface recordings. In this pap...

The study of the intestinal interdigestive motor migratory complex (IMMC) is relevant in gastroenterology because most of the gastrointestinal pathologies are reflected in anomalies of the IMMC. The aim of this work is to develop an automatic classifier to discriminate among the different intestinal contractile activity degrees (quiescence, irregul...