International Journal of Biology and Biomedical Engineering
E-ISSN: 1998-4510
Volume 13, 2019
Notice: As of 2014 and for the forthcoming years, the publication frequency/periodicity of NAUN Journals is adapted to the 'continuously updated' model. What this means is that instead of being separated into issues, new papers will be added on a continuous basis, allowing a more regular flow and shorter publication times. The papers will appear in reverse order, therefore the most recent one will be on top.
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Volume 13, 2019
Title of the Paper: Development and Functional Characterization of Human Antibodies against Galectin-3
Authors: Ekaterina V. Pavlova, Roman V. Mikhailov, Alisa A. Vologzhannikova, Alexey S. Kazakov, Sergei E. Permyakov, Tajib A. Mirzabekov
Pages: 167-172
Abstract: Galectin-3 (Gal-3) is a 26 kDa galactoside binding protein found both inside and outside of cells. An increase of Gal-3 level in serum correlates with progression of heart failure, fibrosis, and some types of malignant tumors. The aim of this work was to obtain recombinant human monoclonal antibodies to galectin-3. Using the phage display method, we obtain six unique anti-Gal-3 antibodies with affinities ranging from 33 to 0.12 nM. All the antibodies specifically increase the ability of galectin-3 to agglutinate red blood cells. Two of the obtained antibodies reduce collagen expression in human fibroblasts in a dose-dependent manner. Thus, the obtained antibodies represent a useful tool for the future research of Gal-3 functions, and, potentially, for diagnostics and therapeutic application.
Title of the Paper: Classification Using SVM and KNN to Predict Voice Pathology
Authors: Vikas Mittal, R.K Sharma
Pages: 161-166
Abstract: The outcome of irregular vocal use is commonly voice pathology. Poor vocal practice, vocal hygiene (because of smoking, dehydration and abusive behavior), and repeated laryngeal infection can lead to worse quality of voice, vocal fatigue, and vocal strain. This research utilizes glottal signal(signal produced by vocal folds) parameters to help out in identify voice disorders linked to vocal folds pathologies. For each recorded speech, the respective glottal signal is acquired from a corpus of male and female speakers of distinct ages using an inverse filtering algorithm. The Mel Frequency Cepstrum Coefficients (MFCCs) also extracted from the voice signal. We select the most relevant as far as pathological / normal discrimination is concerned from the enormous set of parameters obtained. In this paper a new glottal signal parameter (MOQ) is calculated to find Pathological / Normal speech discrimination. Using distinct options, the outcomes are compared: The parameters obtained from the glottal signal, MFCCs and combining both parameters. Support Vector Machine (SVM) and K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) algorithms are used for classifications. Results show that the highest findings of classification, with an average efficiency rise of 3 %, are achieved using the newly studied glottal parameter Maximum Opening Quotient (MOQ), which is a novel outcome and major contribution of this research.
Title of the Paper: Promising Database for Palm Vein classification
Authors: Maha Halla Abdul Sater, Hussein Kanaan, Mohammad Ayache
Pages: 149-160
Abstract: Palm vein authentication is one of the modern biometric techniques, which employs the vein pattern in the human palm to verify the person. The merits of palm vein on classical biometric (e.g. fingerprint, iris, face) are a low risk of falsification, difficulty of duplicated and stability. With the expanding application of palm–vein pattern recognition, the corresponding databases available for public use are rare and their growth has resulted in a long response time where the algorithms used for identification are complicated. To simplify the identification process and add more public databases, this paper proposes a new algorithm for palm–vein identification using Gabor filter. Firstly, images are exchanged using Gaussian filter and histogram equalization and then the features are extracted by using bank of Gabor filters. Then, we apply L2-max norm of superposition to the output of Gabor filter to reduce the dimension of the features vectors. Finally, Nearest Neighbors and support vector machine classifiers are used for palm vein verification. Our proposed method is evaluated by using a public dataset, namely VP base and our database where images are captured from a Christie flex and vision camera. The efficiency of the identification process by the proposed methods is high compared to traditional methods, where simplified extraction features methods is used. The experimental results confirm that the proposed approach is efficient compared to the traditional methods.
Title of the Paper: Phyto-Pharmacological Appraisal of Herbal Crude Drugs
Authors: Vinay Kumar, Saurabh Pal, B. B. Tiwari
Pages: 138-148
Abstract: Plants are the very precious part of our earth. Earth is called a green planet because of the presence of plants. Many plants are used to cure many of the diseases. The medicines made by plants are also safer and don’t cause any side effects. However certain plants contain toxic compounds which cause serious side effects to man and animals. Hence a proper evaluation about the plants is necessary to identify the appropriate medicinal diseases for every disease. Consequently in our paper, we present a proper description of certain herbal plants such as Acacia Nilotica, Cinchona, Cinnamon, Ginger, Mustard and Turmeric. Moreover we exhibit detailed information about the features and use of each part of the plant along with the image, which provides a unique significance to our paper.
Title of the Paper: Noise Reduction for Wireless Brain-computer Interface Signals using Polar Codes
Authors: Hussain K. Chaiel
Pages: 132-137
Abstract: In dependent Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), the normal output pathways of the brain cell activity generate message signals with low signal to noise ratio. Recent works use polar codes to enhance the generated noisy signals and transmit multidimensional BCI commands individually with the aid of addressing words located at the noisy bits of the polar codeword. However, transmission of addressing words through the noisy bits of a long polar code reduces the error correction performance of the BCI system. This work derives the likelihood ratio of the successive cancellation decoder of the polar coded BCI system, which shows that the main reason of degradation in the system performance is the transmission of addressing word via the bits with large number of sum operations of the polar flow graph. Simulation tests used to examine the designed system show an improvement of nearly 10 dB as compared with the conventional wireless BCI system.
Title of the Paper: Design and Implementation of a Wearable Artificial Kidney Prototype for Home Treatment
Authors: Ramzi Qawasma, Abdel-Karim Daud
Pages: 127-131
Abstract: Hemodialysis is a life-preserving treatment for a number of patients with kidney failure. The standard procedure of hemodialysis is three times a week during the hemodialysis procedure, the patient usually suffering from many inconvenient, exhausting feeling and effect on the heart and cardiovascular system are the most common signs. This paper provides a solution to reduce the previous problems by designing a wearable artificial kidney (WAK) taking in consideration a minimization the size of the dialysis machine. The WAK system consists of two circuits: blood circuit and dialysate circuit. The blood from the patient is filtered in the dialyzer before returning back to the patient. Several parameters using an advanced microcontroller and array of sensors. WAK equipped with visible and audible alarm system to aware the patients if there is any problem.
Title of the Paper: Development of Safe UVB-LED Special Lighting to Support Daily Recommended Vitamin D Synthesis
Authors: Seung-Taek Oh, Jae-Hyun Lim
Pages: 121-126
Abstract: Vitamin D is an essential element for maintaining human health, most of which is met by skin exposure to UV rays in the sun. Some of the vitamin D in the body can be supplemented through diet, but the amount is known to be extremely limited. Vitamin D deficiency has become a social problem in many countries as modern people's indoor living time increases and their exposure to natural light shortens. In order to solve this problem, sun exposure is recommended. Outdoor activity guide service is provided by providing accurate UV-related information, while UV lighting technology is being developed in order to provide UV dose to indoor residents. However, these methods have limitations in directly supporting adequate UV doses for those who have difficulty in carrying out outdoor activities, whereas UV lighting does not provide accurate safety information about exposure. In this paper, a UVB-LED special lighting that supports indoor residents to meet a daily recommended UVB dose is proposed. First, the UVB-LED light source that can achieve an optimal UVB dose is selected. Its lighting characteristics are measured and analyzed and then a combination and control condition of the light source that can safely provide UVB dose are derived. After a stand type lighting equipment considering ease of use is designed, a UVB-LED special lighting that meets the photobiological safety standard of lighting (Risk Group 2) is developed. The expected amount of vitamin D synthesis by distance and use duration are calculated through a performance test for the proposed lighting. The test results show that when the proposed lighting is used at a distance of 20cm for 33-40 min, the daily recommended vitamin D synthesis can be achieved.
Title of the Paper: Minoan Archaeogenetic Data Mining Reveals Danube Basin and Western Black Sea Littoral Origin
Authors: Peter Z. Revesz
Pages: 108-120
Abstract: This paper describes archaeogenetic data mining results based on a novel mitochondrial and y-chromosome haplogroup distance metric. The analysis shows that the Minoan genes are composed of two originally distinct groups. One group was the descendant of Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers, while the other group was from Neolithic farmer populations from Anatolia. These groups intermingled in the Danube Basin and the western Black Sea littoral area for thousands of years as indicated by the presence of mutations that appear first in those areas. A group from that population migrated southward to Crete to form the Minoan culture.
Title of the Paper: A Computational Study of a Prebiotic Synthesis of L-Isoleucine
Authors: Nigel Aylward
Pages: 101-107
Abstract: The magnesium ion metalloporphyrin complex is shown to bind the ligands pentdiyne nitrile and pentdiynimine in weak van der Waals complexes on the metal site. When carbon monoxide is also bound to the complex as a high energy compound whose particular structure has been dictated by the magnetic vector of the exciting radiation, photochemical excitation may enable both adducts to combine to give a substituted aziridine-3one. Further photochemical excitation allows the formation of bicyclic and tricyclic adducts. Hydrogenation of this complex allows the opening of the rings to give an aziridine-3one that may easily hydrolyse to the zwitterionic form of L-isoleucine with the correct configuration. The reactions have been shown to be feasible from the overall enthalpy changes in the ZKE approximation at the HF and MP2 /6-31G* level, and with acceptable activation energies.
Title of the Paper: A Survey on Marketing Characteristics and Production System Strategies-case Study: Cans Production
Authors: Laleh Tashakori, Abouzar Arabsorkhi
Pages: 92-100
Abstract: The companies try to obtain competitive advantages by producing customized products which meet customers’ requirements. In addition, they ought to utilize their maximum capacity and reduce storage costs. According to the demand of product, selecting the appropriate production strategy can help to achieve these goals. In this paper, we examine the market to identify competitors. Then, we examine different strategies and present a model for selecting production strategy. The idea of the algorithm "Knapsack" is used to select production strategy. Moreover, we have attempted to utilize simple numerical method for solving model. We interpret the diverse production strategies such as, MTS, MTO, ATO and ETO. Finally, the numerical experiments reveal to show the advantages of the applied mathematical programming model.
Title of the Paper: Skin Lesion Segmentation and Classification Based on an Improved Multi-scale Approach
Authors: Y. Filali, A. Ennouni, M. A. Sabri, A. Aarab
Pages: 82-91
Abstract: Skin cancer is one of the most common types of cancer; its incidences have reached epidemic proportions and causes many deaths. Skin cancer can be categorized into three main types; Actinic Keratoses, Basal Cell Carcinoma, and Melanoma. The Melanoma skin cancer is the most aggressive and the deadliest form of skin cancer compared to the others. Early Melanoma detection and diagnosis often allows for more treatment options and can decrease the number of deaths significantly. Many researchers proposed to use image processing for skin lesion detection. The process can be divided into three main stages: lesion identification based on image segmentation, features extraction, and lesion classification. Segmentation and features extraction are the key-steps and significantly influence the outcome of the classification results. In this paper, a new approach for automatic segmentation and classification for skin lesion will be proposed. The proposed approach consists of a preprocess based on a Multi-scale decomposition that is separating the input image into two components. The geometrical component will be used in the segmentation stage and the texture component in the features extraction, also the asymmetry and color of the lesion are extracted to improve the accuracy of our approach. The classification will be performed using the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. The efficiency and the performance of the proposed approach has been evaluated in comparison with recent and robust dermoscopic approaches from literature
Title of the Paper: Sonication-assisted Perfusion Decellularization of Whole Porcine Kidney
Authors: Sreypich Say, Nathaniel P. Dugos, Susan A. Roces, John Martin Mondragon
Pages: 78-81
Abstract: Bioengineering of kidneys is a potential treatment option in addressing common problems such as incompatibility and shortage of donor organs. The first step in the kidney bioengineering process involves perfusion decellularization wherein the use of chemicals is considered the most preferred preparation method to date. However, the use of chemicals alone requires long treatment time and excessive chemical usage hence, in this study perfusion decellularization was enhanced by sonication treatment at varying sonication power (150, 200 and 250 W). Scaffolds produced were evaluated for cell removal and preservation of structural integrity. Results revealed that decellularization with sonication using 150 W, 200 W and 250 W required a treatment time of 24 h, 16 h, and 12 h respectively compared to the 28 h treatment time of decellularization without sonication. Cells were almost and completely removed as indicated by histological analysis. Meanwhile, preservation of renal structures such as glomerulus, tubules, and blood vessels were observed except for the kidney scaffolds produced from decellularization with 250 W sonication where minimal disruption of the glomerular basement membranes and thinning of blood vessels were observed. Overall, decellularization with 200 W of sonication power resulted in an acellular renal ECM scaffold and preserved ECM structure. It can also be concluded that the higher sonication power used, the shorter is the decellularization time needed to prepare a kidney scaffold thus reducing the amount of chemicals used.
Title of the Paper: A Mathematical Model on the Effect of Non-Adherence to Drugs on Diabetes Control
Authors: Gilbert Makanda
Pages: 70-77
Abstract: A compartmental mathematical model for diabetes is developed. The model describes the dynamics of the spread of Type- 2 diabetes. A theoretical investigation in the non-adherence to drugs is investigated. A system of differential equations is analysed by stability analysis, the non-trivial critical point obtained is locally asymptotically stable under the given conditions. In-host mathematical model for glucose tolerance test (GTT) is considered, actual glucose data values are fitted using Matlab least squares curve fitting technique. Two methods are used to numerically compute the distributions of steady states of diabetic sub-populations. The Gauss- Seidel method is more accurate than the Jacobi method. The results show that more than 50% of clinical diagnosis effort need to be applied to have more diagnosed population than undiagnosed. Nonadherence to drugs make the control of diabetes difficult. Other nonclinical activities such as campaigns against unhealthy lifestyles can help control diabetes. The GTT model show that if strict diet and medication is followed diabetes can be controlled.
Title of the Paper: Computer Simulation of Complexation of Lysine Dendrigraft of Second Generation with DS Dipeptide Molecules
Authors: M. Yu. Ilyash, V. V. Bezrodnyi, E. I. Fatullaev, S. E. Mikhtaniuk, I. I. Tarasenko, I. M. Neelov
Pages: 63-69
Abstract: Dendrimers and dendrigrafts are frequently used for drug and other molecules delivery to different target cells or organs. In our previous papers we used computer simulation to study the complex formation between dendrimers and dendrigrafts with different short regulatory peptides. The goal of present paper is to study the possibility of complex formation between lysine dendrigraft and molecules of therapeutic DS dipeptide. The system consisting of one lysine dendrigraft of the second generation and 16 therapeutic DS dipeptide molecules in water with explicit counterions was studied by computer simulation. The method of molecular dynamics and full atomic model were used for this goal. It was obtained that DS dipeptide molecules become adsorbed by lysine dendrigraft and form stable complex with it. Structure and conformational properties of this complex were studied. It was demonstrated that formation of complex occurs mainly due to electrostatic interaction between oppositely charged dendrigraft and dipeptide molecules. Such complexes could be used in future for delivery of these or similar peptide molecules to the targeted tissues and organs.
Title of the Paper: Evidence based Intervention to Prevent Anemia Among Women of Reproductive Age Group in Developing Countries; Review
Authors: Mubashir Zafar, Eltigani Osman Musa Omer, Osama Ahmed Labib Ibrahim, Arafat Mohammed Goja
Pages: 58-62
Abstract: Anemia in developing countries is biggest public health problem. The most vulnerable group of population is women and children. Problem Statement: The woman in developing countries has high prevalence of anemia due to high rate to fertility. There are various interventions are working in different countries but don’t know which intervention are most cost effective. Objective: The objective of this study is to determine the cost-effective intervention for reduction of anemia among women of reproductive age group. Methodology: A review of the literature was done for identifying various preventive strategies regarding anemia among women of reproductive age group and its implementation barriers in low- and middle-income countries. Google scholar, PubMed, web of science and Scopus were used as search engines. Results: The result of the review shows that most cost-effective method for prevention of anemia among women are iron fortification of food, iron supplementation, community-based health promotion of healthy nutrition. Women empowerment is the best tool for implementation of all above method for prevention of anemia. The most effective way to reducing the maternal anemia is community-based intervention for health promotion and women empowerment. Conclusion: Community based intervention in which all stakeholders on board are the best strategy to reduce the anemia among women of reproductive age group. There is need to develop the policies to improve the health promotion activities and involvement of women in the society.
Title of the Paper: Automated Color Balance and Contrast Enhancement of Retinal Images for Visual Diagnosis
Authors: P. Vonghirandecha, M. Karnjanadecha, S. Intajag
Pages: 46-57
Abstract: Color retinal image enhancement plays an important role in creating an image suitable for medical diagnosis for the early detection of eye disease. For this problem domain, we propose histogram-based color balance and contrast enhancement (CBCE) which automatically adjusts the intensity values under psychometric constraints by employing generalized extreme value functions. The results show that our algorithm performs color retinal image enhancement well, while retaining a pleasing natural appearance for visually diagnosing the image. The performance of our method has been evaluated against data from the Structured Analysis of the Retina and the Diabetic Retinopathy image databases.
Title of the Paper: Variable Complexity Neural Networks Comparison for Pollen Classification
Authors: Aysha Kadaikar, Yan Pan, Qiaoxi Zhang, Patricia Conde-Cespedes, Maria Trocan, Frederic Amiel, Benjamin Guinot
Pages: 38-45
Abstract: This paper deals with the problem of classifying the pollen grains observed in a microscope view acquired by a collector of ambient air particles. This classification is usually performed by a highly skilled human operator observing the microscope slide to detect the presence of pollen grains, count them and sort them according to their taxa. However these tasks become particularly heavy in the mid-season because of the huge quantity of pollen produced. This paper compares the use of three neural networks (NN) to classify the pollen grains observed which are a modified version of LeNet5, ResNet50 and AlexNet. The first two have been conceived more for non-natural images and the last one for natural images. Simulation shows that ResNet50 and AlexNet particularly lead to good performance in terms of accuracy for this kind of images. AlexNet is finally a good compromise for pollen classification when adding a constraint on the computational complexity.
Title of the Paper: SOA based Multi-Agent Approach for Biological Data Searching and Integration
Authors: Veska Gancheva
Pages: 32-37
Abstract: Major challenge in the analysis of biological data is to propose an integrated and modern access to the progressively increasing amounts of data in multiple formats, and efficient approaches for their processing. Models for extraction and integration of large amount of genomics data, as well as problems related to heterogeneity, distribution and compatibility of data are presented in this paper. SOA based multi-agent approach for biological data searching and integration is proposed. A conceptual architecture for integrating of distributed biological data based on SOA is designed. The architecture is aimed to automate the data integration and allows the rapid management of large volumes of diverse data sets represented in different formats - relational, NoSQL, flat files. The integration of different databases is solved by using multi-agent architecture. The integration system consists of services for transforming the common request into a specific language request for each local database, depending on its type. The conceptual database integration is solved by applying translating query approach. Each integrated database is represented by a separate conceptual scheme called a virtual scheme. This scheme is generated in the collating process, which compares structural elements from the database to the conceptual model. Service oriented multi-agent system for searching of biological data from different sources that sends queries to multiple databases and then compiles the results into a list, depending on the type of source is developed. The system allows the user to set search criteria and access multiple databases simultaneously. The services allow the system to be accessed over the Internet by multiple clients (mobile phones, web browsers, desktop applications) and serving a wide range of users simultaneously.
Title of the Paper: Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Interaction of Lysine Dendrigraft of 2nd Generation with Stack of Amyloid Peptides
Authors: I. Neelov, D. Khamidova, V. Bezrodnyi, S. Mikhtaniuk
Pages: 26-31
Abstract: In present paper, molecular dynamics simulation is used to study destruction of stack of short amyloid peptide molecules by oppositely charged dendrigraft of 2nd generation. Dendrimers and dendrigraftss are often used in biomedicine for delivery of drugs and other biological molecules. They also could be used as antibacterial, antiviral and antiamyloid agents. Since lysine dendrimers and dendrigrafts are less toxic than many other conventional synthetic dendrimers they were chosen for present study and two systems consisting of 2nd generation dendrigraft and stack of 8 or 16 short amyloid peptide molecules were simulated by the method of molecular dynamics in water. It was demonstrated that lysine dendrigraft destroys both studied amyloid stacks and forms stable complexes with their peptide molecules. The final structures of the complexes in equilibrium state were studied also. It was shown that peptides in complexes stay mainly on the surface of dendrigrafts and do not penetrate into them. The results obtained in present paper could be useful for elaboration in future the anti-amyloid agents for treatment of Alzheimer's disease, since it is believed that one of the sources of this disease is the formation of toxic amyloid oligomers and fibrils.
Title of the Paper: On the Use of Anatomage Table as Diagnostic Tool
Authors: Alexandre Taoum, Rihab Sadqi, Mustapha Zidi, Alexandra d’Anglemont de Tassigny, Kawtar Megdiche, Nabil Ngote
Pages: 20-25
Abstract: Anatomy is one of the most important course in medical curriculum. To be effective, medical student must do several hours of practice on human cadavers. However, today, less and less corpses are available to be dissected. Therefore, Anatomage has developed a virtual dissection table known as Anatomage Table. In addition to filling the lack of corpses and being a very useful tool in anatomy classes, this table can open pathological images. The main purpose of this article is to show the investigation carried out to be able to use the table as a diagnostic tool. Before opening DICOM image into the table, Matlab was used to make the files readable by the Table. This paper deals with the opening of patients pathological images from differents type of medical imaging modalities. Indeed, the opening of pathological images turns the Anatomage Table into a very relevant tool in the diagnosis of several pathologies. Experimental 3D reconstruction of pathological patients are presented in order to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. After opening pathological patient files, some hard tissue and soft tissue pathologies were diagnosed thanks to the use of Anatomage Table. That’s why the obtained results are largely satisfactory, indicating a promising use in the healing process.
Title of the Paper: Light Harvesting Complex LH2 - Simulation of Spectral Profiles
Authors: Pavel Heřman, David Zapletal
Pages: 10-19
Abstract: Absorption and steady state fluorescence spectra are simulated for relatively simple circular molecular system. It can be treated as a model of peripheral light harvesting complex LH2 from purple bacterium Rhodopseudomonas acidophila. Both rings (B850 ring and B800 one) are included in our model. The spectra are calculated within full Hamiltonian model and compared for two types of slow fluctuations. Gaussian fluctuations in local excitations energies and Gaussian fluctuations in positions of bacteriochlorophylls are considered. Fast fluctuations, interaction with phonon bath, is also taking into account for low and room temperature. The resulting spectra show strong dependence on temperature. Splitting of both spectra are visible at low temperature. The differences caused by static disorder type are also remarkable. Localization of exciton states contributing to the steady state fluorescence spectra is investigated by thermally averaged by participation ratio.
Title of the Paper: An Iterative Map Analysis of Heart Rate Variability in the Neighborhood of Stress Induced Chaos
Authors: Theophilus A. Fashanu, Olagoke K. Ale, Ayo Oyediran, Viyon Dansu
Pages: 1-9
Abstract: This work examine the viability of one-dimensional Poincare section as an iterative tool for the inversion of electrocardiogram obtained from stressed cardiovascular system. The response of Heart Rate Variability to induced stress in a healthy subject on a Modified Bruce Treadmill Protocol was processed to derive R-peaks in six batches of 5.06 minutes per batch. For each stage, a corresponding iterative map was constructed with the sequenced R-peaks using the Kubios software. With increasing intensity of induced stress, the maps outline the nonlinear dynamic response of the subject’s autonomous nervous system. At the combined warm up stages one and two of the protocol, 1.6% offshoot in ANS activities is indicated with higher rate of parasympathetic activities. Response to low intensity stress condition showed symmetric ANS activities. However, with high intensity stress at the fifth stage, the map indicated an exponential increase in the number of heart beat orbits. However, the increment is characterized by skewed ANS activities with 15% acceleration of sympathetic ANS and 5% deceleration of parasympathetic activities. This profile is preserved at the final stage. In effect, the topology of the iterative maps of stages five and six of the protocol shows an inner ANS dynamical structure that is characterized by positive Lyapunov exponent. This limiting dynamical response determines the cardio-pulmonary reserve of the subject. Thus, Poincare iterative maps provide high resolution computational tool for identifying the onset of chaotic motion in stressed cardiovascular systems.
