Mechanical testing is a useful tool in the field of biomechanics. Classic biomechanics employs mechanical testing for a variety of purposes. For instance, testing may be used to determine the mechanical properties of bone under a variety of loading modes and various conditions including age and disease state. In addition, testing may be used to assess fracture fixation procedures to justify clinical approaches. Mechanical testing may also be used to test implants and biomaterials to determine mechanical strength and appropriateness for clinical purposes. While the information from a mechanical test will vary, there are basics that need to be understood to properly conduct mechanical testing. This book will attempt to provide the reader not only with the basic theory of conducting mechanical testing, but will also focus on providing practical insights and examples.

Mechanical testing is a useful tool in the field of biomechanics. Classic biomechanics employs mechanical testing for a variety of purposes. For instance, testing may be used to determine the mechanical properties of bone under a variety of loading modes and various conditions including age and disease state. In addition, testing may be used to assess fracture fixation procedures to justify clinical approaches. Mechanical testing may also be used to test implants and biomaterials to determine mechanical strength and appropriateness for clinical purposes. While the information from a mechanical test will vary, there are basics that need to be understood to properly conduct mechanical testing. This book will attempt to provide the reader not only with the basic theory of conducting mechanical testing, but will also focus on providing practical insights and examples. Table of Contents: Preface / Fundamentals / Accuracy and Measurement Tools / Design / Testing Machine Design and Fabrication / Fixture Design and Applications / Additional Considerations in a Biomechanics Test / Laboratory Examples and Additional Equations / Appendices: Practical Orthopedic Biomechanics Problems / Bibliography / Author Biography

Experimental Methods in Orthopaedic Biomechanics is the first book in the field that focuses on the practicalities of performing a large variety of in-vitro laboratory experiments. Explanations are thorough, informative, and feature standard lab equipment to enable biomedical engineers to advance from a 'trial and error' approach to an efficient system recommended by experienced leaders. This is an ideal tool for biomedical engineers or biomechanics professors in their teaching, as well as for those studying and carrying out lab assignments and projects in the field. The experienced authors have established a standard that researchers can test against in order to explain the strengths and weaknesses of testing approaches. - Provides step-by-step guidance to help with in-vitro experiments in orthopaedic biomechanics - Presents a DIY manual that is fully equipped with illustrations, practical tips, quiz questions, and much more - Includes input from field experts who combine their real-world experience to provide invaluable insights for all those in the field

The identification and interpretation of the signs of breast cancer in mammographic images from screening programs can be very difficult due to the subtle and diversified appearance of breast disease. This book presents new image processing and pattern recognition techniques for computer-aided detection and diagnosis of breast cancer in its various forms. The main goals are: (1) the identification of bilateral asymmetry as an early sign of breast disease which is not detectable by other existing approaches; and (2) the detection and classification of masses and regions of architectural distortion, as benign lesions or malignant tumors, in a unified framework that does not require accurate extraction of the contours of the lesions. The innovative aspects of the work include the design and validation of landmarking algorithms, automatic Tabár masking procedures, and various feature descriptors for quantification of similarity and for contour independent classification of mammographic lesions. Characterization of breast tissue patterns is achieved by means of multidirectional Gabor filters. For the classification tasks, pattern recognition strategies, including Fisher linear discriminant analysis, Bayesian classifiers, support vector machines, and neural networks are applied using automatic selection of features and cross-validation techniques. Computer-aided detection of bilateral asymmetry resulted in accuracy up to 0.94, with sensitivity and specificity of 1 and 0.88, respectively. Computer-aided diagnosis of automatically detected lesions provided sensitivity of detection of malignant tumors in the range of [0.70, 0.81] at a range of falsely detected tumors of [0.82, 3.47] per image. The techniques presented in this work are effective in detecting and characterizing various mammographic signs of breast disease.

This book has a two-fold purpose: (1) An introduction to the computer-based modeling of influenza, a continuing major worldwide communicable disease. (2) The use of (1) as an illustration of a methodology for the computer-based modeling of communicable diseases. For the purposes of (1) and (2), a basic influenza model is formulated as a system of partial differential equations (PDEs) that define the spatiotemporal evolution of four populations: susceptibles, untreated and treated infecteds, and recovereds. The requirements of a well-posed PDE model are considered, including the initial and boundary conditions. The terms of the PDEs are explained. The computer implementation of the model is illustrated with a detailed line-by-line explanation of a system of routines in R (a quality, open-source scientific computing system that is readily available from the Internet). The R routines demonstrate the straightforward numerical solution of a system of nonlinear PDEs by the method of lines (MOL), an established general algorithm for PDEs. The presentation of the PDE modeling methodology is introductory with a minumum of formal mathematics (no theorems and proofs), and with emphasis on example applications. The intent of the book is to assist in the initial understanding and use of PDE mathematical modeling of communicable diseases, and the explanation and interpretation of the computed model solutions, as illustrated with the influenza model.

There are five different types of eye movements: saccades, smooth pursuit, vestibular ocular eye movements, optokinetic eye movements, and vergence eye movements. The purpose of this book series is focused primarily on mathematical models of the horizontal saccadic eye movement system and the smooth pursuit system, rather than on how visual information is processed. In Part 1, early models of saccades and smooth pursuit are presented. A number of oculomotor plant models are described here beginning with the Westheimer model published in 1954, and up through our 1995 model involving a 4th order oculomotor plant model. In Part 2, a 2009 version of a state-of-the-art model is presented for horizontal saccades that is 3rd-order and linear, and controlled by a physiologically based time-optimal neural network. Part 3 describes a model of the saccade system, focusing on the neural network. It presents a neural network model of biophysical neurons in the midbrain for controlling oculomotor muscles during horizontal human saccades. In this book, a multiscale model of the saccade system is presented, focusing on a multiscale neural network and muscle fiber model. Chapter 1 presents a comprehensive model for the control of horizontal saccades using a muscle fiber model for the lateral and medial rectus muscles. The importance of this model is that each muscle fiber has a separate neural input. This model is robust and accounts for the neural activity for both large and small saccades. The muscle fiber model consists of serial sequences of muscle fibers in parallel with other serial sequences of muscle fibers. Each muscle fiber is described by a parallel combination of a linear length tension element, viscous element, and active-state tension generator. Chapter 2 presents a biophysically realistic neural network model in the midbrain to drive a muscle fiber oculomotor plant during horizontal monkey saccades. Neural circuitry, including omnipause neuron, premotor excitatory and inhibitory burst neurons, long lead burst neuron, tonic neuron, interneuron, abducens nucleus, and oculomotor nucleus, is developed to examine saccade dynamics. The time-optimal control mechanism demonstrates how the neural commands are encoded in the downstream saccadic pathway by realization of agonist and antagonist controller models. Consequently, each agonist muscle fiber is stimulated by an agonist neuron, while an antagonist muscle fiber is unstimulated by a pause and step from the antagonist neuron. It is concluded that the neural network is constrained by a minimum duration of the agonist pulse, and that the most dominant factor in determining the saccade magnitude is the number of active neurons for the small saccades. For the large saccades, however, the duration of agonist burst firing significantly affects the control of saccades. The proposed saccadic circuitry establishes a complete model of saccade generation since it not only includes the neural circuits at both the premotor and motor stages of the saccade generator, but it also uses a time-optimal controller to yield the desired saccade magnitude. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments / A New Linear Muscle Fiber Model for Neural Control of Saccades\footnotemark / A Physiological Neural Controller of a Muscle Fiber Oculomotor Plant in Horizontal Monkey Saccades\footnotemark / References / Authors' Biographies

This volume brings together papers from geotechnical and civil engineers, biologists, ecologists and foresters. They discuss current problems in slope stability research and how to address them using ground bio- and eco-engineering techniques. Coverage presents studies by scientists and practitioners on slope instability, erosion, soil hydrology, mountain ecology, land use and restoration and how to mitigate these problems using vegetation.