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Introduction
Publications
Publications (256)
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...
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...
Objective:
The auscultatory technique is still considered the most accurate method for non-invasive blood pressure (NIBP) measurement, although its reliability depends on operator's skills. Various methods for automated Korotkoff sounds analysis have been proposed for reliable estimation of systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) blood pressures. To th...
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...
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...
Pulse waves (PWs) are mechanical waves that propagate from the ventricles through
the whole vascular system as brisk enlargements of the blood vessels’ lumens, caused by sudden
increases in local blood pressure. Photoplethysmography (PPG) is one of the most widespread
techniques employed for PW sensing due to its ability to measure blood oxygen sat...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological disorder characterized by recurrent seizures that negatively affect the life of patients. ElectroEncephaloGram (EEG) signal is the gold standard for seizure detection. The process of identification of seizures on EEG is extremely time-consuming and is manually done by epileptologists by means of visua...
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...
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...
The Kubic FLOTAC Microscope (KFM) is a compact, low-cost, versatile and portable digital microscope designed to analyse faecal specimens prepared with Mini-FLOTAC or FLOTAC, in both field and laboratory settings. In this paper, we present the characteristics of the KFM along with its first validation for faecal egg count (FEC) of gastrointestinal n...
Bone remodelling after total hip arthroplasty has been largely observed and investigated. Most studies rely on projective images and only few obtain 3D information with limited spatial resolution. This study proposes a method to provide quantitative, 3D high-resolution data about femur bone density variations, by means of CT volume processing. This...
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...
During the first months of life, babies can be affected by congenital nystagmus, an ocular-motor disease making visual acuity decrease. Electrooculography (EOG) and Infrared-oculography are utilized in order to perform eye-tracking of patients, giving the possibility to extract from the signals several useful features. In the past years, different...
With this paper we communicated the existence of a surface electrocardiography (ECG) recordings dataset, named WCTECGdb, that aside from the standard 12-lead signals includes the raw electrode biopotential for each of the nine exploring electrodes refereed directly to the right leg. This dataset, comprises of 540 ten second segments recorded from 9...
Background
The aim of the study was to compare the bone mineral density changes between unmatched patients undergoing total hip arthroplasty receiving uncemented and cemented type of implants. Previous studies have used DEXA or a two dimensional analysis to estimate the bone quality following total joint replacement, whereas this study presents the...
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...
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...
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...
There are two surgical approaches to performing total hip arthroplasty (THA): a cemented or uncemented type of prosthesis. The choice is usually based on the experience of the orthopaedic surgeon and on parameters such as the age and gender of the patient. Using machine learning (ML) techniques on quantitative biomechanical and bone quality data ex...
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...
Over the last few decades, the developed countries have witnessed a strong increase in healthcare spending, essentially due to the emergence of new diseases, the aging of the population, and the development of new and costly technologies. The Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is a powerful tool for connecting the technical-scientific and decision-...
The surface electrocardiography (ECG) uses a virtual reference point to measure the potential of chest electrodes. This reference potential is known as Wilson central terminal (WCT) and is assumed negligible (near zero) in amplitude. Consequently, the precordial leads have been named as the unipolar leads. Although this assumption was found incorre...
Home ventilation involves the use of medical devices at patient's home by personnel who are not healthcare practitioners. This implies new potential risks not fully addressed by current standards and guidelines. A methodological approach to investigate potential failures and define improvement actions to address the dangerous potential situations i...
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...
Quantum noise intrinsically limits the quality of fluoroscopic images. The lower is the X-ray dose the higher is the noise. Fluoroscopy video processing can enhance image quality and allows further patient’s dose lowering. This study aims to assess the performances achieved by a Noise Variance Conditioned Average (NVCA) spatio-temporal filter for r...
Congenital nystagmus is an ocular-motor disease affecting people’s visual acuity since their first years of life. Electrooculography is used to perform eye tracking in these patients, giving the possibility to extract a wide variety of parameters. The relationships among all these variables were analysed in the past and the aim of this paper is to...
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...
Although a very large number of students in the world use uncomfortable and heavy backpacks, their negative musculoskeletal effects on gait and posture are still not well investigated. Aim of the paper has been the study of differences affecting the kinematic gait parameters during free walk and walk with backpack to evaluate their potential influe...
In this paper we propose a new algorithm for real-time filtering of video sequences corrupted by Poisson noise. The algorithm provides effective denoising (in some cases overcoming the filtering performances of state-of-the-art techniques), is ideally suited for hardware implementation, and can be implemented on a small field-programmable gate arra...
The Open-electroencephalography (EEG) framework is a popular platform to enable EEG measurements and general purposes Brain Computer Interface experimentations. However, the current platform is limited by the number of available channels and electrode compatibility. In this paper we present a fully configurable platform with up to 32 EEG channels a...
Objective
The Wilson Central Terminal (WCT) is an artificially constructed reference for surface electrocardiography, which is assumed to be near zero and steady during the cardiac cycle; namely it is the simple average of the three recorded limbs (right arm, left arm and left leg) composing the Einthoven triangle and considered to be electrically...
Total Hip Arthroplasty requires pre-surgical evaluation between un-cemented and cemented prostheses. A Patient with intra-operative periprosthetic fracture and another with a successful outcome were recruited, and their finite element models were constructed by processing CT data, assuming elastic-plastic behavior of the bone as function of the loc...
In developing countries, due to the high cost involved, amputees have limited access to prosthetic limbs. This constitutes a barrier for this people to live a normal life. To break this barrier, we are developing ultra-low-cost closed-loop myoactivated prostheses that are easy to maintain manufacture and that do not require electrodes in contact wi...
Total hip arthroplasty is a ubiquitously successful orthopedic surgical procedure, whose prevalence is rising worldwide. While many investigations focus on characterizing periprosthetic pathophysiology, the objective of our research is to develop and describe multi-metric assemblies as a first step toward creating a patient-specific mobility index...
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...