Biomedical Engineering Research | UCF MAE

LAB DIRECTORY

Biodesign Program in Rehabilitation Engineering

Sudesha Pal

Associate Lecturer spal@ucf.edu

mae.ucf.edu/BPRE

Biomedical Acoustics Research Lab

Hansen Mansy

Associate Professor

hansen.mansy@ucf.edu

mae.ucf.edu/BARL

Biomedical and Process Modeling Lab

Olusegun Ilegbusi Professor

olusegun.ilegbusi@ucf.edu

mae.ucf.edu/Ilegbusi

BRaIN Lab

Helen Huang

Associate Professor hjhuang@ucf.edu

mae.ucf.edu/BRAIN

Cellular Biomechanics Lab

Robert Steward

Assistant Professor rstewardjr@ucf.edu

Computational Biomechanics Lab

Luigi Perotti

Assistant Professor luigi.perotti@ucf.edu

mae.ucf.edu/luigiperotti

Computational Mechanics Lab

Alain Kassab

Professor, Biomedical Engineering Program Director

alain.kassab@ucf.edu

mae.ucf.edu/

ComputationalMechanicsLab

NeuroMechanical Systems Lab

Qiushi Fu

Assistant Professor qiushi.fu@ucf.edu

REAL Lab

Hwan Choi

Assistant Professor hwan.choi@ucf.edu

mae.ucf.edu/REAL

BPRE Program

Biodesign Program in Rehabilitation Engineering

Led by: Sudeshna Pal, Ph.D.

For Lecturer Sudeshna Pal, engineering education is just as important as engineering research. Through her Biodesign Program in Rehabilitation Engineering, undergraduate students receive a real-world education via a six-week paid internship at various rehabilitation centers, physical therapy clinics and prosthetic clinics across Central Florida.

By the end of the program, students have a better understanding of user needs in rehabilitative devices, can more effectively comunicate with clinicians and clinical staff, and have the ability to identify unmet patient needs that could potentially be addressed in future engineering courses.

The program is a collaboration between Pal and other UCF researchers, and is sponsored by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

Through a second NIH grant, Pal provides an educational training program for students interested in human motion design projects. Using a Vicon motion capture analysis system, which includes multiple cameras, sensors and arm markers, Pal and her students can perform a variety of studies related to biomechanics, including a comparison of the gait in individuals with prosthetics versus those without them.

BARL Lab

Biomedical Acoustics Research Lab

Led by: Hansen Mansy, Ph.D.

What if we could detect and monitor serious medical problems such as heart failure, vascular stenosis, elevated intracranial pressure, and small bowel obstructions just by listening to their vibro-acoustic emissions?

In the BARL Lab, Professor Hansen Mansy has spent the past 25 years investigating vibroacoustic phenomena in the human body and defining their time and frequency signatures. He combines knowledge in novel sensor design, computerized measurements, digital signal processing and machine learning, medical imaging and medical sciences to find the acoustic correlates of certain pathologies. This research has catalyzed the development of low-cost, noninvasive, portable technologies that are suitable for clinical use, home monitoring and telemedicine.

Mansy is developing several revolutionary devices, including one that can detect elevated intracranial pressure using high-sensitivity sensors that can measure the tiny pulsation of the tympanic membrane. Another device under development will be able to detect hip dysplasia in infants using vibro-acoustic stimulation and a cell phone. Through a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, he is also creating a device that captures low-frequency chest wall vibrations, which contain signs of cardiac deterioration in heart failure patients. While this heart monitor would initially be used by healthcare providers, the long-term goal is to create a second-generation monitor that could be used for home monitoring. This aims to improve patients’ quality of life and reduce mortality and healthcare costs.

BPML Lab

Biomedical and Process Modeling Lab

Led by: Olusegun Ilegbusi, Ph.D.

Lung cancer treatment is difficult — not only for the patient, but for the doctor as well. The lungs are constantly in motion, so targeting tumors without killing healthy tissue is next to impossible.

But in the BPM Lab, Professor Olusegun Ilegbusi has found the solution to this problem. In collaboration with aerospace engineering Professor Jihua Gou and a UCF alumnus, Ilegbusi created a 3D lung simulator that can mimic patients’ breathing patterns. With this information, doctors can more precisely treat lung cancer patients, leading to fewer side effects and fewer rounds of treatment.

The trio of researchers also founded SegAna, a startup that develops the patented software for the simulator. SegAna has already been awarded a $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and has raised $4 million dollars from investors. The simulator has been tested at six different hospitals across the U.S. and recently received approval from the FDA.

Ilegbusi collaborates with UCF researchers to determine how tongue cancer affects patients’ ability to swallow and how the coughing mechanism is affected in individuals with throat cancer or Parkinson’s disease. He has also unlocked the key to stem cell generation by calculating the precise conditions needed for them to grow.

BRaIN Lab

Biomechanics, Rehabilitation and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Lab

Led by: Helen Huang, Ph.D.

When we walk, we don’t think about what it takes to make us move – we just do it. But as we age, walking and maintaining a steady gait can become difficult.

At the BRaIN Lab, Associate Professor Helen Huang combines her engineering skills with human subject experiments to gain a better understanding of how the brain, muscles, and body work together to make humans move. The motivation behind her research is the belief that studying brain processes as we move is crucial for understanding how and why we move the way we do and for developing smarter devices to help people balance and walk.

Using electroencephalography (EEG) to record brain waves, a suite of sensors to record muscle signals and body motion, a treadmill, and computer programs to analyze large sets of data, Huang and her team can map the areas of the brain that become active during walking and losses of balance, and also measure when and how much they activate.

Huang’s research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Most recently, she was part of a research team that received a $1.8 million grant from the NIH to create an educational program to give underrepresented students opportunities to learn about and conduct aging research with a holistic approach.

CB Lab

Cellular Biomechanics Lab

Led by: Robert Steward, Ph.D.

Research happens at the microscopic level in the Cellular Biomechanics Lab. Robert Steward and his research team cross the bridge between mechanical engineering and medicine by studying the mechanical forces that play a role in human health.

Through a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Steward studies the role that endothelial cells — and the mechanical forces they respond to — play in the early stages of cardiovascular disease. He and his team also investigate diabetes and how cells behave in a high glucose environment.

CB Lab

Computational Biomechanics Lab

Led

by: Luigi Perotti, Ph.D.

Millions of patients in the U.S. are affected by cardiac diseases. However, common strategies to evaluate cardiac health often rely on inadequate measures. In addition, the motion of the heart across scales is still poorly described. These issues limit our understanding of heart function and our ability to diagnose and monitor cardiac diseases.

In the Computational Biomechanics Lab, Assistant Professor Luigi Perotti and his research team strive to better understand cardiac function and dysfunction. They combine MRI anatomical, microstructural and motion data with computational mechanics to build models that allow them to study cardiac kinematics, mechanics and electrophysiology.

Perotti’s goal is to identify measures of the heart’s motion and microstructure, which may serve as biomarkers to detect the onset and progression of cardiac diseases. He and his team focus on computing measures of cardiac deformation that can be estimated from imaging data routinely acquired in the clinic and using fast and robust algorithms. They also develop multiscale and multiphysics models to better understand cardiac mechanics in health and disease and better interpret motion imaging data. These research efforts are currently supported by two awards from the National Science Foundation.

Through the use of the same theoretical and modeling tools of continuum and computational mechanics, Perotti also studies the assembly and maturation of viral capsids and the packing of colloidal particles on 3D surfaces. The end goal is to eventually design bio-inspired deployable, self-morphing, thin-shell structures.

CML Lab

Computational Mechanics Lab

Led by: Alain Kassab, Ph.D.

Alain Kassab currently leads a three-year study under the support of American Heart Association Transformative Grant that is utilizing multi-scale computational fluid dynamics modeling to investigate a novel surgical manoeuver aimed at reducing stroke risk in left ventricular assist devices by tailoring the outflow graft implantation. Over the past 10 years, his research group has been engaged in a general program bridging engineering and medicine by utilizing computational modeling to aid in treatment planning of congenital heart disease. These studies include the investigation of the hemodynamics of a novel hybrid approach to the comprehensive stage II operation for single ventricle, the design of a self-powered Fontan circulation, and the detailed hemodynamics resulting from a range of placement of shunts and varying diameters in the hybrid Norwood palliation of single ventricle congenital heart disease.

NMS Lab

NeuroMechanical Systems Lab

Led by: Qiushi Fu, Ph.D.

When you pick up a pen or grab a water bottle, it may seem like a simple task. But the dexterity of the human hand is more complex than you think.

In the NeuroMechanical Systems Lab, Qiushi Fu and his research team study the chain of command between the brain and the hand, with a specific focus on rehabilitation and prosthetics for those with impaired manual functions.

Through experiments that combine virtual reality, motion capture and robotics techniques, Fu measures neural signals through electromyography and electroencephalography, generated when the hands grasp and manipulate objects.

This data can be used to uncover neural mechanisms underlying sensorimotor dexterity, which provides the scientific basis for fine-tuning prosthetics and creating rehabilitative robotic devices that allow patients to bolster their manual skills.

REAL Lab

Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Device Lab

Led by: Hwan Choi, Ph.D.

When it comes to assistive devices, such as prosthetics and orthotic devices, Assistant Professor Hwan Choi has a different philosophy than most researchers. He believes that they not only improve walking function, but they can provide muscle rehabilitation through daily living as well.

This philosophy drives Choi’s work in the REAL Lab, where he develops devices that can serve both functions. His real-time variable stiffness module give prosthetics a greater range of flexibility and comfort by accounting for factors such as weight, muscle strength and walking patterns.

A second device, the real-time variable timing module, captures and releases stored energy at the appropriate time to allow amputees to propel themselves forward more easily. Both devices are designed to be affordable and to fit on any existing ankle prosthesis, eliminating the need to buy a larger, more expensive device.

Choi is a member of the Biionix Faculty Initiative Cluster, which brings together faculty with engineering, science and medical backgrounds to develop novel technologies that can be used to manufacture prosthetics. In collaboration with Melanie Coathrup, the director of the Biionix cluster, he conducts research on osseointegration, a surgical procedure that integrates the prosthetic with the bone. His long-term research goal is to figure out how to minimize the negative effects of this new type of surgery.