Bioengineering最新文献

{"title":"MRI-Based Machine Learning and Radiomics Methods for Assessing Spinal Cord Function in Patients with Mild Cervical Spondylotic Myelopathy.","authors":"He Wang, Kai Wang, Yutian Wang, Zhenlei Liu, Lei Zhang, Shanhang Jia, Kun He, Xiangyu Zhang, Hao Wu","doi":"10.3390/bioengineering12060666","DOIUrl":"10.3390/bioengineering12060666","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>(1) Background: Patients with mild cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) who delay surgery risk progression. While PET evaluates spinal cord function, its cost and radiation limit its use. (2) Methods: In this prospective study, patients with mild cervical spondylosis underwent preoperative 18F-FDG PET-MRI. Narrowed spinal levels were classified based on whether SUV_max was decreased. Follow-up assessments were conducted. Two machine learning models using MRI T2-based radiomics were developed to identify stenotic levels and decreased SUV_max. (3) Results: Patients with normal SUV_max showed greater symptom improvement. The radiomics models performed well, with AUCs of 0.981/0.962 (training/testing) for stenosis detection and 0.830/0.812 for predicting SUV_max decline. The model outperformed clinicians in predicting SUV_max decline, improving the AUC by 10%. (4) Conclusion: Patients with preserved SUV_max have better outcomes. MRI-based radiomics shows potential for identifying stenosis and predicting spinal cord function changes for preoperative assessment, though larger studies are needed to validate its clinical utility.</p>","PeriodicalId":8874,"journal":{"name":"Bioengineering","volume":"12 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12189521/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144494057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Recent Advances in Drug Delivery and Oral Health: The Impact of Technology and Digital Advances as a New Frontier.","authors":"Cristina Grippaudo, Ludovica Nucci, Marco Farronato","doi":"10.3390/bioengineering12060664","DOIUrl":"10.3390/bioengineering12060664","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Technological progress is the basis of scientific and clinical advancement in dentistry [...].</p>","PeriodicalId":8874,"journal":{"name":"Bioengineering","volume":"12 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12189754/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144494065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cell-Based Therapies: Ferromagnetic Versus Superparamagnetic Cell Targeting.","authors":"Tasneem Halhouli, Lisa Münchhalfen, Sarkawt Hamad, Larissa Schmitz-Ullrich, Frank Nitsche, Felix Gaedke, Astrid Schauss, Linlin Zhang, Quoc-Khanh Pham, Gang Bao, Kurt Paul Pfannkuche","doi":"10.3390/bioengineering12060657","DOIUrl":"10.3390/bioengineering12060657","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Stem-cell-based therapies rely on the transplantation of stem cells or stem-cell-derived organotypic cells into injured tissues in order to improve or restore tissue function that has been impaired by various diseases. The potential of induced pluripotent stem cells has created many applications in the field of cell therapy, for example. Some applications, for example, those in cardiac cell therapy, suffer from low or very low efficiencies of cell engraftment. Therefore, magnetic cell targeting can be discussed as a method for capturing superparamagnetic nanoparticle-labelled cells in the tissue. Here, we employ superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) for the intracellular magnetic loading of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). In addition, we test a novel strategy of labelling MSCs with ferromagnetic particles. The adhesion assays demonstrate a faster adhesion kinetic of SPIONs-loaded MSC spheroids when a magnetic field was applied, resulting in >50% spheroid adhesion after 30 min. Clustering of cells inside the magnetic field is a second potential mechanism of magnetic cell retention and >80% of cells were found to be aggregated in clusters when placed in a magnetic field for 10 min. SPIONs-loaded and ferromagnetic-particle-loaded cells performed equally in the cell clustering assay. In conclusion, the clustering of SPION-labelled cells explains the observation that magnetic targeting reaches maximal efficiency in vivo after only 10 min of magnetic field application. This has significant implications for magnetic-targeting-assisted stem cell and cell replacement therapies.</p>","PeriodicalId":8874,"journal":{"name":"Bioengineering","volume":"12 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12189464/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144494008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Effects of Physiological Loading from Patient-Derived Activities of Daily Living on the Wear of Metal-on-Polymer Total Hip Replacements.","authors":"Benjamin A Clegg, Samuel Perry, Enrico De Pieri, Anthony C Redmond, Stephen J Ferguson, David E Lunn, Richard M Hall, Michael G Bryant, Nazanin Emami, Andrew R Beadling","doi":"10.3390/bioengineering12060663","DOIUrl":"10.3390/bioengineering12060663","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The current pre-clinical testing standards for total hip replacements (THRs), ISO standards, use simplified loading waveforms that do not fully replicate real-world biomechanics. These standards provide a benchmark of data that may not accurately predict in vivo wear, necessitating the evaluation of physiologically relevant loading conditions. Previous studies have incorporated activities of daily living (ADLs) such as walking, jogging and stair negotiation into wear simulations. However, these studies primarily used simplified adaptations that increased axial forces and applied accelerated sinusoidal waveforms, rather than fully replicating the complex kinematics experienced by THR patients. To address this gap, this study applied patient-derived ADL profiles-jogging and stair negotiation-using a three-station hip simulator, obtained through 3D motion analysis of total hip arthroplasty patients, processed via a musculoskeletal multibody modelling approach to derive realistic hip contact forces (HCFs). The results indicate that jogging significantly increased wear rates compared to the ISO walking gait waveform, with wear increasing from 15.24 ± 0.55 to 28.68 ± 0.87 mm³/Mc. Additionally, wear was highly sensitive to changes in lubricant protein concentration, with an increase from 17 g/L to 30 g/L reducing wear by over 60%. Contrary to predictive models, stair descent resulted in higher volumetric wear (8.62 ± 0.43 mm³/0.5 Mc) compared to stair ascent (4.15 ± 0.31 mm³/0.5 Mc), despite both profiles having similar peak torques. These findings underscore the limitations of current ISO standards in replicating physiologically relevant wear patterns. The application of patient-specific loading profiles highlights the need to integrate ADLs into pre-clinical testing protocols, ensuring a more accurate assessment of implant performance and longevity.</p>","PeriodicalId":8874,"journal":{"name":"Bioengineering","volume":"12 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12189450/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144494024","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Development and Validation of a Virtual Version of the Box and Block Test to Assess Manual Dexterity at Home for Adults with Stroke and Children with Cerebral Palsy.","authors":"Zélie Rosselli, Merlin Somville, Edouard Ducoffre, Carlyne Arnould, Geoffroy Saussez, Yannick Bleyenheuft","doi":"10.3390/bioengineering12060662","DOIUrl":"10.3390/bioengineering12060662","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The REAtouch^® Lite device was recently developed to support motor skill learning-based interventions, integrating both games/activities and assessment tools to enable home-based telerehabilitation. Given the importance of hand functions in rehabilitation of patients with brain lesions, this study aimed to validate a virtual version of the Box and Block Test (vBBT) implemented in the REAtouch^® device. A total of 205 healthy participants, 37 post-stroke adults, and 37 children with cerebral palsy (CP) performed the standard BBT, various versions of the newly designed vBBT (with/without a separation wall; with 6, 4, and free zones) and the Tower of London test assessing executive function/planning abilities. Friedman's ANOVA revealed significant differences between the BBT and all versions of the vBBT scores in healthy participants (all <i>p</i> < 0.001). However, the vBBT-4 zones showed the largest intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) with the BBT in healthy participants (0.58) and even higher correlations in participants with CP and stroke (>0.8). Only the vBBT-6 zones version showed a significant correlation with patients' planning abilities (<i>p</i> < 0.01; r = -0.28). These findings highlight the vBBT-4 zones as the most relevant version to assess hand dexterity directly with the REAtouch^® device, potentially within telerehabilitation modalities. Further normative data must be established.</p>","PeriodicalId":8874,"journal":{"name":"Bioengineering","volume":"12 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12189916/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144494017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"XGBoost and SHAP-Based Analysis of Risk Factors for Hypertension Classification in Korean Postmenopausal Women.","authors":"Hojeong Kim, Mavlonbek Khomidov, Jong-Ha Lee","doi":"10.3390/bioengineering12060659","DOIUrl":"10.3390/bioengineering12060659","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In postmenopausal women, the prevalence of hypertension increases sharply, emphasizing the importance of its prevention. This increased risk highlights the critical need for effective prevention strategies specifically designed for this population. To address this issue, the present study aimed to identify easily measurable risk factors that contribute to hypertension in postmenopausal women using explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) and machine learning (ML) techniques. This study conducted hypertension classification by analyzing health checkup data from 3289 postmenopausal Korean women aged 55-79 years, extracted from the 2022-2023 Korea National Health Insurance Service (KNHIS) database, using XGBoost, SVM and ANN. XGBoost was the most effective model (AUC: 92.12%, MCC: 0.71) in hypertension classification. Shapley Additive exPlanations-based feature importance identified age and waist circumference (WC) as the most important risk factors for hypertension. In this study, blood pressure increased with variations in WC, a modifiable risk factor. These findings suggest that WC should be managed more strictly to prevent hypertension in postmenopausal women.</p>","PeriodicalId":8874,"journal":{"name":"Bioengineering","volume":"12 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12189996/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144494083","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Running and Jumping After Muscle Fatigue in Subjects with a History of Knee Injury: What Are the Acute Effects of Wearing a Knee Brace on Biomechanics?","authors":"Tobias Heß, Thomas L Milani, Jan Stoll, Christian Mitschke","doi":"10.3390/bioengineering12060661","DOIUrl":"10.3390/bioengineering12060661","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The knee is one of the most frequently injured joints, involving various structures. To prevent reinjury after rehabilitation, braces are commonly used. However, most studies on knee supports focus on subjects with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries and do not account for muscle fatigue, which typically occurs during prolonged intense training and can significantly increase the risk of injury. Hence, this study investigates the acute effects of wearing a knee brace on biomechanics in subjects with a history of various unilateral knee injuries or pain under muscle fatigue. In total, 50 subjects completed an intense fatigue protocol and then performed counter-movement jumps and running tests on a force plate while tracking kinematics with a marker-based 3D motion analysis system. Additionally, subjects filled out a visual analog scale (VAS) to assess knee pain and stability. Tests were conducted on the injured leg with and without a knee brace (Sports Knee Support, Bauerfeind AG, Zeulenroda-Triebes, Germany) and on the healthy leg. Results indicated that wearing the knee brace stabilized knee movement in the frontal plane, with a significant reduction in maximal medio-lateral knee acceleration and knee abduction moment during running and jumping. The brace also normalized loading on the injured leg. We observed higher maximal knee flexion moments, which were associated with increased vertical ground reaction forces, segment velocities, and knee flexion angles. Subjects reported less pain and greater stability while wearing the knee brace. Therefore, we confirm that wearing a knee brace on the injured leg improves joint biomechanics by enhancing stability and kinematics and reducing pain during running and jumping, even with muscle fatigue. Consequently, wearing a knee brace after a knee joint injury may reduce the risk of reinjury.</p>","PeriodicalId":8874,"journal":{"name":"Bioengineering","volume":"12 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12189066/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144494070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assessing the Biocompatibility of Tannic Acid-Based Biomaterials: Addressing Challenges in Standard Cytotoxic Assays.","authors":"Silvia Cometta, Dietmar Werner Hutmacher","doi":"10.3390/bioengineering12060660","DOIUrl":"10.3390/bioengineering12060660","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In this comprehensive study, we delve into the intricate binding properties of tannic acid (TA) and examine their dual role in the realm of biomaterial development. While TA's properties can enhance the functionality and performance of biomaterials, they also raise concerns regarding potential biases in in vitro biocompatibility assessments. We focus on the relevance and constraints of several widely employed cell viability assays, namely the DNA-based PicoGreen assay, the PrestoBlue assay, and the Live/Dead staining technique utilizing fluorescein diacetate (FDA) and propidium iodide (PI). We investigate how these assays perform when applied to TA-coated scaffolds and cell sheets. Through a detailed presentation of our experimental findings, we juxtapose them through a critical review of the existing literature, allowing us to identify and elucidate the limitations these assays face when assessing TA-based biomaterials. In doing so, we aim not only to enhance the understanding of these potential assay biases but also to provide actionable recommendations for accurately evaluating the biocompatibility of TA-modified substances. This dual approach, combining empirical research with literature analysis, offers vital insights for the research community, ensuring that the assessment of TA-coated biomaterials is scientifically sound and reproducible.</p>","PeriodicalId":8874,"journal":{"name":"Bioengineering","volume":"12 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12189109/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144493984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"BioGAN: Enhancing Transcriptomic Data Generation with Biological Knowledge.","authors":"Francesca Pia Panaccione, Sofia Mongardi, Marco Masseroli, Pietro Pinoli","doi":"10.3390/bioengineering12060658","DOIUrl":"10.3390/bioengineering12060658","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The advancement of computational genomics has significantly enhanced the use of data-driven solutions in disease prediction and precision medicine. Yet, challenges such as data scarcity, privacy constraints, and biases persist. Synthetic data generation offers a promising solution to these issues. However, existing approaches based on generative artificial intelligence often fail to incorporate biological knowledge, limiting the realism and utility of generated samples. In this work, we present BioGAN, a novel generative framework that, for the first time, incorporates graph neural networks into a generative adversarial network architecture for transcriptomic data generation. By leveraging gene regulatory and co-expression networks, our model preserves biological properties in the generated transcriptomic profiles. We validate its effectiveness on <i>E. coli</i> and human gene expression datasets through extensive experiments using unsupervised and supervised evaluation metrics. The results demonstrate that incorporating a priori biological knowledge is an effective strategy for enhancing both the quality and utility of synthetic transcriptomic data. On human data, BioGAN achieves a 4.3% improvement in precision and an up to 2.6% higher correlation with real profiles compared to state-of-the-art models. In downstream disease and tissue classification tasks, our synthetic data improves prediction performance by an average of 5.7%. Results on <i>E. coli</i> further confirm BioGAN's robustness, showing consistently strong recall and predictive utility.</p>","PeriodicalId":8874,"journal":{"name":"Bioengineering","volume":"12 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12189748/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144493989","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Anatomical Characteristics Predict Response to Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS): Development of a Computational Pipeline for Optimizing tDCS Protocols.","authors":"Giulia Caiani, Emma Chiaramello, Marta Parazzini, Eleonora Arrigoni, Leonor J Romero Lauro, Alberto Pisoni, Serena Fiocchi","doi":"10.3390/bioengineering12060656","DOIUrl":"10.3390/bioengineering12060656","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique promisingly used to treat neurological and psychological disorders. Nevertheless, the inter-subject heterogeneity in its after-effects frequently limits its efficacy. This can be attributed to fixed-dose methods, which do not consider inter-subject anatomical variations. This work attempts to overcome this constraint by examining the effects of age and anatomical features, including the volume of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), the thickness of the skull, and the composition of brain tissue, on electric field distribution and cortical excitability. A computational approach was used to map the electric field distribution over the brain tissues of realistic head models reconstructed from MRI images of twenty-three subjects, including adults and children of both genders. Significant negative correlations (<i>p</i> < 0.05) were found in the data between the maximum electric field strength and anatomical variable parameters. Furthermore, this study showed that the percentage of brain tissue exposed to an electric field amplitude above a pre-defined threshold (i.e., 0.227 V/m) was the main factor influencing the responsiveness to tDCS. In the end, the research suggests multiple regression models as useful tool to predict subjects' responsiveness and to support a personalized approach that tailors the injected current to the morphology of the patient.</p>","PeriodicalId":8874,"journal":{"name":"Bioengineering","volume":"12 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12189637/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144494002","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}