Emerging Electronic Technologies for Biomedical Applications

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Bioelectronics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 April 2024) | Viewed by 7606

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Systems Engineering and Automation, Miguel Hernández University of Elche, 03202 Elche, Spain
Interests: microwave sensors; glucose sensors; resonators; quality factor; dielectric characterization; non-invasive biosensors; electromagnetic fields

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Guest Editor
Institute of Bioengineering, Miguel Hernández University of Elche, 03202 Elche, Spain
Interests: biomedical engineering; electronics; monitoring devices; machine learning; robotics; automation

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Guest Editor
Department of Materials Science, Optics and Electronic Technology, Miguel Hernández University of Elche, 03202 Elche, Spain
Interests: 3D printing; biological material characterization; microwave circuits; microwave filters; microwave sensors; microwave imaging; high-frequency circuits; additive manufacturing

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Guest Editor
Institute of Bioengineering, Miguel Hernández University of Elche, 03202 Elche, Spain
Interests: biomedical engineering; electronics; medical robotics; medical images; surgical tools; computer healthcare applications

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Electronic devices and systems find a plethora of applications in many aspects of modern society. Among all of them, their use in medical, biological and biomedical contexts has been actively investigated and exploited during the last decades. The advancements in electronic engineering and the resulting devices and equipment have notably contributed to the improvement of many biomedical diagnosis, analysis and treatment processes. Likewise, the strong requirements of biomedical processes and tools have motivated the electronic technology researchers to push the limits of their expertise fields, thereby yielding interesting synergic multidisciplinary developments and advancements.

In this multi-technology topical collection, any new works investigating the application of novel technologies with an electronic basis to biomedical contexts are welcome. From DC up to THz, including ultrasound, microwaves or even IR approaches, or combined ones, considering different approaches such as microelectronics, optoelectronics, bioelectronics, semiconductors and/or artificial intelligence, this Special Issue aims at gathering different electronic technologies and proposals to be applied in biomedical contexts. Usual applications include (but are not limited to) biomarkers sensing, medical imaging, rehabilitation devices, intraoperative navigation tools, biochemical analysis, ambient data recording, etc. This Special Issue is expected to collect new ideas, devices and approaches that address current unsolved problems and challenges related to medical equipment or biomedical devices.

Dr. Carlos G. Juan
Dr. José María Vicente-Samper
Dr. Héctor García-Martínez
Prof. Dr. José María Sabater-Navarro
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • ambient data recording
  • biochemical analysis
  • bioelectronics
  • biomarkers sensing
  • biomedical applications
  • DC electronics
  • electronic technology
  • intraoperative tools
  • IR devices
  • medical devices
  • medical imaging
  • microelectronics
  • microwave devices
  • optoelectronics
  • rehabilitation devices
  • semiconductors
  • THz
  • ultrasound

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 3335 KiB  
Article
FPGA-Based Implementation of a Digital Insulin-Glucose Regulator for Type 2 Diabetic Patients
by Guido Di Patrizio Stanchieri, Andrea De Marcellis, Marco Faccio, Elia Palange, Mario Di Ferdinando, Stefano Di Gennaro and Pierdomenico Pepe
Electronics 2024, 13(9), 1607; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13091607 - 23 Apr 2024
Viewed by 270
Abstract
This paper reports on the hardware implementation of a digital insulin-glucose regulator for type 2 diabetic patients by using a Field Programmable Gate Array board. For a real time-control of the patient insulin concentration, the insulin-regulator needs to measure only his blood glucose [...] Read more.
This paper reports on the hardware implementation of a digital insulin-glucose regulator for type 2 diabetic patients by using a Field Programmable Gate Array board. For a real time-control of the patient insulin concentration, the insulin-regulator needs to measure only his blood glucose concentration. With respect to other reported solutions using general-purpose programmable hardware’s, the proposed insulin-glucose regulator allows to design a software-free, fully-hardware architecture of the system here described in detail. A prototype has been developed so to validate its functionality in the following two operating modes: (i) in the open loop condition for which only the insulin-glucose regulator is operating; (ii) in the closed loop condition for which the insulin-glucose regulator acting as an artificial pancreas is connected to a population of one hundred virtual patients individuated by employing a comprehensive theoretical model recognized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the pre-clinical validation of glucose control strategies. These virtual patients present the same trend of the variation of the glucose concentration achieving different maximum and minimum values of glucose concentrations when eating a meal. The paper presents and discusses the experimental results by comparing them with those ones obtained by implementing the theoretical model through numerical simulations performed in SIMULINK. Relative errors lower than ±1% have been achieved by performing this comparison so demonstrating a very high accuracy of the proposed insulin-glucose regulator digital system. The implemented hardware solution of the digital controller can process the input data related to the glucose concentration of each virtual patient in about 1.1 μs with an estimated power consumption of about 36 mW. These achievements open the way for further investigations on digital architectures for glucose regulators to be integrated in VLSI as System-on-Chips and/or Lab-on-Chips for portable, wearable, and implantable solutions in real biomedical applications. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Electronic Technologies for Biomedical Applications)
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12 pages, 2762 KiB  
Article
Tissue Ablation Using Irreversible Electrolytic Electroporation with Reduced Voltage
by Ki-Han Kim, Jinsu An, Young-Jin Park, Jung-Hoon Park, Hong Bae Kim, Jeong-Han Yi and Hyung-Sik Kim
Electronics 2023, 12(13), 2916; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12132916 - 03 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1024
Abstract
Thermal tissue ablation may damage surrounding healthy tissue and cause pain. In this study, tissue ablation with the sequential application of electrical energy-inducing irreversible electroporation (IRE) and electrolysis (EL) (IRE + EL = IREEL) was investigated. An IREEL device was designed to control [...] Read more.
Thermal tissue ablation may damage surrounding healthy tissue and cause pain. In this study, tissue ablation with the sequential application of electrical energy-inducing irreversible electroporation (IRE) and electrolysis (EL) (IRE + EL = IREEL) was investigated. An IREEL device was designed to control five output pulse parameters: voltage level (VL), pulse width (PW), pulse interval (PI), pulse number (PN), and pulse tail time (PTT). IREEL experiments were conducted on vegetable tissue. The results indicated that by increasing the VL and PTT, the ablation area increased, whereas the impedance was reduced significantly. Almost no ablation area was observed when only EL or IRE at 500 V and 1000 V, respectively, were applied. The ablation area observed with IRE alone at 1500 V was defined as 100%. In the case of IREEL at 500 V and 1000 V, ablation was induced even with the use of micro-second level PTT, and ablation areas of 91% and 186% were achieved, respectively. For IREEL at a voltage of 1500 V, the ablation area expanded to 209% and the maximum temperature was 48.7 °C, whereas the temperature did not exceed 30 °C under other conditions. A change in pH was also observed in an agar-gel phantom experiment which was conducted to examine and confirm whether IREEL induced electrolysis. IREEL was able induce ablation at low voltages owing to the synergistic effect of applying IRE and EL sequentially. Moreover, the ablation areas at high voltages could be increased compared to the areas observed when IRE and EL were applied independently. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Electronic Technologies for Biomedical Applications)
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14 pages, 7370 KiB  
Article
Microwave Humidity Sensor for Early Detection of Sweat and Urine Leakage
by Lijuan Su, Paris Vélez, Pau Casacuberta, Jonathan Muñoz-Enano and Ferran Martín
Electronics 2023, 12(10), 2276; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12102276 - 18 May 2023
Viewed by 1182
Abstract
A planar microwave sensor devoted to the detection of humidity in underwear and clothes in general is proposed. The ultimate goal of the sensor is to detect the presence of liquids in fabrics, which is of interest to aid patients who suffer from [...] Read more.
A planar microwave sensor devoted to the detection of humidity in underwear and clothes in general is proposed. The ultimate goal of the sensor is to detect the presence of liquids in fabrics, which is of interest to aid patients who suffer from certain pathologies, such as hyperhidrosis and enuresis. The main target in the design of the sensor, considering the envisaged application, is simplicity. Thus, the sensor operates at a single frequency, and the working principle is the variation in the magnitude of the transmission coefficient of a matched line loaded with an open-ended quarter-wavelength sensing stub resonator. The stub, which must be in contact with the so-called fabric under test (FUT), generates a notch in the transmission coefficient with a resonance frequency that depends on the humidity level of the fabric. By designing the stub with a moderately high-quality factor, the variation in the resonance frequency causes a significant change in the magnitude level at the operating frequency, which is the resonance frequency when the sensing stub is loaded with the dry fabric, and the presence of liquid can be detected by means of an amplitude detector. A prototype device is proposed and experimentally validated. The measured change in the magnitude level by simply depositing one 50 μL drop of water in the FUT is roughly 25 dB. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Electronic Technologies for Biomedical Applications)
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19 pages, 3126 KiB  
Article
On the Selectivity of Planar Microwave Glucose Sensors with Multicomponent Solutions
by Carlos G. Juan, Enrique Bronchalo, Benjamin Potelon, Cédric Quendo, Víctor F. Muñoz, José M. Ferrández-Vicente and José M. Sabater-Navarro
Electronics 2023, 12(1), 191; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12010191 - 30 Dec 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1630
Abstract
The development of glucose concentration sensors by means of microwave planar resonant technology is an active field attracting considerable attention from the scientific community. Although showing promising results, the current experimental sensors are facing some fundamental challenges. Among them, the most critical one [...] Read more.
The development of glucose concentration sensors by means of microwave planar resonant technology is an active field attracting considerable attention from the scientific community. Although showing promising results, the current experimental sensors are facing some fundamental challenges. Among them, the most critical one seems to be the selectivity of glucose concentration against the variations of the concentrations of other components or parameters. In this article, we investigate the selectivity of microwave planar resonant sensors when measuring multicomponent solutions. Three sensors are involved, two of them having been designed looking for a more simplified system with a reduced size, and the third one has been specially developed to improve the sensitivity. The performance of these sensors is thoroughly assessed with a large set of measurements involving multicomponent solutions composed of pure water, NaCl, albumin at different concentrations and glucose at different concentrations. The impact of the simultaneous variations of the concentrations of glucose and albumin on the final measurements is analyzed, and the effective selectivity of the sensors is discussed. The results show a clear influence of the albumin concentration on the measurements of the glucose concentration, thereby pointing to a lack of selectivity for all sensors. This influence has been modeled, and strategies to manage this selectivity challenge are inferred. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Electronic Technologies for Biomedical Applications)
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18 pages, 3363 KiB  
Article
Emergency Mechanical Ventilator Design: Low-Cost and Accessible Components
by Omar Flor, Mauricio Fuentes, Henry Carvajal, Josué Quiroga, Verónica Luzuriaga, Jeysson Tapia and Patricia Acosta-Vargas
Electronics 2022, 11(23), 3910; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11233910 - 26 Nov 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2398
Abstract
This paper presents the fundamentals; criteria; and mechanical, electrical, and electronic aspects required to properly operate and control emerging mechanical ventilators. We present the basis for their design and manufacture as a contribution to implementing this type of equipment at low cost for [...] Read more.
This paper presents the fundamentals; criteria; and mechanical, electrical, and electronic aspects required to properly operate and control emerging mechanical ventilators. We present the basis for their design and manufacture as a contribution to implementing this type of equipment at low cost for intensive care units. In particular, we describe the materials and the mechanical, electrical, and electronic aspects used to implement the SURKAN mechanical ventilator, which was developed in Ecuador during the COVID-19 pandemic for some health centers in the country. The proposed mechanical ventilator provides a functional and reliable design that can be considered a reference for future developments and new implementations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Electronic Technologies for Biomedical Applications)
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