BACKGROUND The diagnosis and validation of thoracic outlet syndrome/brachial plexopathy (TOS) remains a difficult challenge for surgeons, neurologists, and radiologists. This is due to the fact that the responses of standard elevated arm stress tests can be considered somewhat subjective and can vary. Therefore, non-vascular TOS cases are presently diagnosed clinically, and any objective diagno...

This paper reports a monolithic, force-feedback MEMS (microelectomechanical systems) microgripper and its application to micro-scale compression testing of swollen hydrogel microcapsules at wet state during manipulation. The single-chip microgripper integrates an electrothermal microactuator and two capacitive force sensors, one for contact detection (force resolution: 38.5 nN) and the other fo...

BACKGROUND Compression ultrasonography performed serially over a 7-day period is recommended for the diagnosis of deep vein thrombosis in symptomatic pregnant women, but whether this approach is safe is unknown. We evaluated the safety of withholding anticoagulation from pregnant women with suspected deep vein thrombosis following negative serial compression ultrasonography and iliac vein imagi...

A biphasic mixture model is developed that can account for the observed tension-compression nonlinearity of cartilage by employing the continuum-based Conewise Linear Elasticity (CLE) model of Curnier et al. (J. Elasticity, 37, 1-38, 1995) to describe the solid phase of the mixture. In this first investigation, the orthotropic octantwise linear elasticity model was reduced to the more specializ...

BACKGROUND Cystic fibrosis patients require daily airway clearance therapies. The primary objective of this study was to compare the short-term efficacy of high-frequency chest compression and positive expiratory pressure mask on expectorated sputum, pulmonary function, and oxygen saturation in patients with CF hospitalized for an acute pulmonary exacerbation. METHODS A controlled randomized ...

The paper presents evaluation of correlations for calculation of concrete compression strength using nondestructive testing parameters for both impact and ultrasonic pulse methods, as listed in EN 13791:2007. This standard indicates procedures relating to compression strength determination in construction and building elements. These procedures relate to compression strength evaluation based ei...

The following comparative quality analysis uses visual inspection, difference images, and PSNR (peak signal-tonoise ratio) as measures of image quality for comparing CineForm's 10-bit Visually PerfectTM codec to DVCPRO HD. PSNR analysis uses a standard mathematical model to measure an objective difference between two images. It is commonly used in the development and analysis of compression alg...

OBJECTIVE To compare the biomechanical properties of a 10-hole 3.5 mm locking compression plate (LCP) with 2 proximal and 2 distal bicortical locked screws reinforced with either a Steinmann pin of 30-40% the medullary diameter or a poly-ether-ether-ketone (PEEK) rod of ∼75% the medullary diameter in a cadaveric tibia gap model. STUDY DESIGN Ex vivo study. SAMPLE POPULATION Cadaveric canine...

The understanding of the mechanical properties of bone is important to the understanding of bone repair. Previous studies have focused on macroscopic failure of bone material but have failed to provide evidence of strain evolution during mechanical testing. In this present study, we performed compression tests on lamb femurs to understand the failure mechanisms and the real time strain evolutio...

The goal of this study was to develop a nondestructive radial compression technique and to investigate the viscoelastic behavior of the rat tail disc under repeated radial compression. Rat tail intervertebral disc underwent radial compression relaxation testing and creep testing using a custom-made gravitational creep machine. The axisymmetric viscoelasticity and time-dependent recovery were de...