Treatment Evaluation of Parkinson Disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system, which significantly deteriorates the quality of life especially in the elderly. Today, in the United States alone almost a million individuals have been diagnosed with the disease, making PD an increasingly medical concern. Sadly, as of today, there is no cure for PD. Furthermore, commonly practiced methods are mainly qualitative (not quantitative) and thus fail to evaluate the progress of the disease and it attributes. 
Our goal in this project is to begin a proof-of-concept implementation of highly specialized platform that performs data management, analytics and visualization. The overall aim of this project is better understanding PD.

Status: Expected to be completed by May 2017 (ongoing)
Funded by: Seeking Funding!
More Information: Later

Smart Cane

The purpose of this project is to monitor gait movement, balance, and activity in various patients, in particular, the elderly. 

Status: Expected to be completed by May 2015
Funded by: Grant from CSUPERB
More Information: Later

Moveable Mechanical Platform for Testing

A major challenge radiation therapy is to determine the amount of radiation that will be taken up by the liver, kidneys and tumor, etc. The name of such testing is called “dosimetry”.  Dosimetry becomes particularly challenging when different body organs move in different directions, e.g., lungs moving up and down. The purpose of this project is to design a configurable mechanical platform that can simulate the impact of moving organs during radiation therapy.

Status: December 2012
Sponsor:

Electroencephalography (EEG)

"Electroencephalography (EEG) is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp produced by the firing of neurons within the brain.” In medical applications EEG is used to detect conditions such as epilepsy by recording and observing electrical activity from the brain that travels along the scalp. EEG recordings have traditionally been carried out using a mas- sive recording device, connected to the patients by several leads and tying them down to the bed or seat. The focus of this project is  to design a compact wireless EEG/ECG monitoring device using commercially available electronic components. A number of solutions have been proposed: TI ADS2098; More information about ECG; An MCU-Based System for Processing EEG Data this project uses PIC processor. Learn more about patient monitoring systems. 

Status:
Sponsor:

Low-Cost Remote Weight Watching System

Click to see the presentation slides!

In this project we demonstrate a low-cost Remote Weight Monitoring system, designed and developed by the Health Care Technologies Laboratory at Sonoma State University. The primary purpose of this system is to remotely monitor weight changes in diabetic patients. The system is intuitive and easy for patients to operate. In this system the scale readings are sent automatically by the Internet to a central data repository. Thus, nurses and caregivers can easily monitor any abnormal changes in their patients in real-time. The system allows users to set their own alert criteria for providing immediate attention.  For more information Read the Presentation Slides. This project was presented to the SSU Faculty Expo of Scholarship and Sponsored Research. 


 Status: Complete & Demo is available
Sponsered: HCTL

Low Dose-Rate (LDR) Brachytherapy

Low Dose-Rate (LDR) Brachytherapy  is an increasingly popular alternative to radical surgery and radiotherapy for many patients with early, localised prostate cancer. It involves the transperineal placement of radioactive seeds directly into the prostate under ultrasound guidance, and aims to deliver a high dose of radiation to the prostate. However, in many cases the patient is required to return for multiple treatments. In such cases, the radiation treatment must be precisely aligned with previous cases. Thus, an accurate positioning system is required. The reference point can be some place in the therapy room. The designed device must detect the six degree of freedom position and orientation information for any location as the device is inserted.This is considered to be intra-fraction positioning as the position inside the body is being determined.The accuracy of the device is preferred to be within several mm. A number of technologies may be used for this project including fast object tracking using Linux-based Vision System.

Status: Not started
Sponsor: ACC, Texas