Radiation therapy (RT) is widely used for cancer treatment, alone or in combination with other therapies. Recent RT advances have revived interest in delivering higher dose in fewer fractions, which may invoke both cellular and microvascular damage mechanisms. Microvasculature may thus be a potentially sensitive functional biomarker of RT early response, especially for such emerging RT treatments. However it is difficult to measure directly and non-invasively, and its time course, dose dependencies, and overall importance in tumor control are unclear. We use functional optical coherence tomography for quantitative longitudinal in vivo imaging in preclinical models of human tumor xenografts subjected to 10, 20 and 30 Gy doses, furnishing a detailed assessment of vascular remodeling following RT. Immediate (minutes to tens of minutes) and early (days to weeks) RT responses of microvascular supply, as well as tumor volume and fluorescence intensity, were quantified and demonstrated robust and complex temporal dose-dependent behaviors. The findings were compared to theoretical models proposed in the literature.

In this study, a contactless vital signs monitoring system was proposed, which can measure body temperature (BT), heart rate (HR) and respiration rate (RR) for people with and without face masks using a thermal and an RGB camera. The convolution neural network (CNN) based face detector was applied and three regions of interest (ROIs) were located based on facial landmarks for vital sign estimation. Ten healthy subjects from a variety of ethnic backgrounds with skin colors from pale white to darker brown participated in several different experiments. The absolute error (AE) between the estimated HR using the proposed method and the reference HR from all experiments is 2.70±2.28 beats/min (mean ± std), and the AE between the estimated RR and the reference RR from all experiments is 1.47±1.33 breaths/min (mean ± std) at a distance of 0.6–1.2 m.

Silicone rubber’s silicone-oxygen backbones give unique material properties which are applicable in various biomedical devices. Due to the diversity of potential silicone rubber compositions, the material properties can vary widely. This paper characterizes the dielectric and mechanical properties of two different silicone rubbers, each with a different cure system, and in combination with silicone additives. A tactile mutator (Slacker™) and/or silicone thickener (Thi-vex™) were mixed with platinum-cured and condensation-cured silicone rubber in various concentrations. The dielectric constants, conductivities, and compressive and shear moduli were measured for each sample. Our study contributes novel information about the dielectric and mechanical properties of these two types of silicone rubber and how they change with the addition of two common silicone additives.

Homeostasis of dopamine, a classical neurotransmitter, is a key indicator of neuronal health. Dysfunction in the regulation of dopamine is implicated in a long list of neurological disorders, including addiction, depression, and neurodegeneration. The existing methods used to evaluate dopamine homeostasis in vitro are inconvenient and do not allow for continuous non-destructive measurement. In response to this challenge, we introduce an integrated microfluidic system that combines dopaminergic cell culture and differentiation with electroanalytical measurements of extracellular dopamine in real - time at any point during an assay. We used the system to examine the behavior of differentiated SH-SY5Y cells upon exposure to four dopamine transporter ant/agonists (cocaine, ketamine, epigallocatechin gallate, and amphetamine) and study their pharmacokinetics. The IC 50 values of cocaine, ketamine, and epigallocatechin gallate were determined to be (average ± standard deviation) 3.7 ± 1.1 µM, 51.4 ± 17.9 µM, and 2.6 ± 0.8 µM, respectively. Furthermore, we used the new system to study amphetamine-mediated dopamine release to probe the related phenomena of dopamine transporter-mediated reverse-transport and dopamine release from vesicles. We propose that this platform, which is the first platform to simultaneously evaluate uptake and release, could be useful to screen for drugs and other agents that target dopaminergic neurons and the function of the dopamine transporter. More broadly, this platform should be adaptable for any application that could benefit from high-temporal resolution electroanalysis combined with multi-day cell culture using small numbers of cells.

Purpose To measure the chemical shift of hyperpolarized 129Xe dissolved in the red blood cells(δRBC) of a cohort of rats exposed to hyperoxia and intermittent hypoxia (IH) to mimic human bronchopulmonary dysplasia, and to investigate the effect of xenon‐blood distribution time on δRBC. Methods δRBC was measured from spectra acquired using a chemical shift saturation recovery sequence from 15 Sprague‐Dawley rats exposed to hyperoxia‐IH and 10 age‐matched control rats. Sensitization to the xenon‐blood distribution time was achieved by varying the time between saturation pulses, τ. δRBC was compared with blood fraction measured by histology of the cohort and blood oxygenation measured directly using pulse oximetry following a hypoxic challenge in an identically exposed cohort. Results The mean δRBC in the hyperoxia‐IH exposed rats was 0.55 ± 0.04 ppm lower than that of the healthy cohort (P = .0038), and this difference did not depend on τ (P = .996). The blood fraction of the exposed cohort was lower than that of the healthy cohort (P = .0397). Oximetry measurements showed that the baseline arterial oxygen saturation (SaO2) of each cohort was not different (P = .72), but after a hypoxic challenge, the SaO2 of the exposed cohort was lower than that of the healthy cohort (P = .003). Conclusion δRBC is reduced in rats exposed to hyperoxia‐IH compared with control rats. The change in δRBC is consistent with enhanced blood oxygen desaturation of the exposed cohort measured by pulse oximetry during a hypoxic challenge. This suggests that the observed change in δRBC reflects enhanced desaturation in the hyperoxia‐IH exposed cohort compared with the healthy cohort.

Rats with bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD)-like lung injury (secondary to hyperoxia followed by intermittent hypoxia) have demonstrated a decreased chemical shift of 129 Xe dissolved in red blood cells (δ RBC ) compared to control rats 1 .

Premature infants often require mechanical ventilation and oxygen therapy which can result in bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), characterized by developmental arrest and impaired lung function. Conventional clinical methods for assessing the prenatal lung are not adequate for the detection and assessment of long-term health risks in infants with BPD, highlighting the need for a non-invasive tool for the characterization of lung microstructure and function. Theoretical diffusion models, like the Model of Xenon Exchange (MOXE), interrogate alveolar gas exchange by predicting the uptake of inert Hyperpolarized (HP) 129Xe gas measured with HP 129Xe magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). To investigate HP 129Xe MRS as a tool for non-invasive characterization of pulmonary microstructural and functional changes in vivo, HP 129Xe gas exchange data were acquired in an oxygen exposure rat model of BPD that recapitulates the fewer and larger distal airways and pulmonary vascular stunting characteristics of BPD. Gas exchange parameters from MOXE, including airspace mean chord length (L­m), apparent hematocrit in the pulmonary capillaries (HCT), and pulmonary capillary transit time (tx), were compared with airspace mean axis length and area density (MAL and ρ­A) and percentage area of tissue and air (PTA and PAA) from histology. L­m was significantly larger in the exposed rats (p=0.003) and correlated with MAL, ρ­A, PTA, and PAA (0.59<|ρ|<0.66 and p<0.05). Observed increase in HCT (p=0.012) and changes in tx are also discussed. These findings support the use of HP 129Xe MRS for detecting fewer, enlarged distal airways in this rat model of BPD, and potentially in humans.

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