Dual-Gate Organic Thin-Film Transistor and Multiplexer Chips for the Next Generation of Flexible EG-ISFET Sensor Chips.

Ion-sensitive field-effect transistors (ISFETs) are used as elementary devices to build many types of chemical sensors and biosensors. Organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) ISFETs use either small molecules or polymers as semiconductors together with an additive manufacturing process of much lower cost than standard silicon sensors and have the additional advantage of being environmentally friendly. OTFT ISFETs' drawbacks include limited sensitivity and higher variability. In this paper, we propose a novel design technique for integrating extended-gate OTFT ISFETs (OTFT EG-ISFETs) together with dual-gate OTFT multiplexers (MUXs) made in the same process. The achieved results show that our OTFT ISFET sensors are of the state of the art of the literature. Our microsystem architecture enables switching between the different ISFETs implemented in the chip. In the case of sensors with the same gain, we have a fault-tolerant architecture since we are able to replace the faulty sensor with a fault-free one on the chip. For a chip including sensors with different gains, an external processor can select the sensor with the required sensitivity.

An HTML Tool for Production of Interactive Stereoscopic Compositions.

The benefits of stereoscopic vision in medical applications were appreciated and have been thoroughly studied for more than a century. The usage of the stereoscopic displays has a proven positive impact on performance in various medical tasks. At the same time the market of 3D-enabled technologies is blooming. New high resolution stereo cameras, TVs, projectors, monitors, and head mounted displays become available. This equipment, completed with a corresponding application program interface (API), could be relatively easy implemented in a system. Such complexes could open new possibilities for medical applications exploiting the stereoscopic depth. This work proposes a tool for production of interactive stereoscopic graphical user interfaces, which could represent a software layer for web-based medical systems facilitating the stereoscopic effect. Further the tool's operation mode and the results of the conducted subjective and objective performance tests will be exposed.

Inkjet patterning of multiline intersections for wirings in printed electronics.

Inkjet printed electronics using thermo-curable liquid inks exhibit particular geometrical characteristics in terms of regularity. This article presents a morphological analysis for inkjet printed multi line intersections that are critical structures for building circuits. We studied thin-film structures of silver conductive ink and printed by inkjet technology. Instability of the ink during printing causes the thickness irregularity of vertex, normally with peaks at these areas. We propose the usage of specific patterns for intersections as thickness regularity compensations. The results show that some patterns help to reduce this instability and improve the thickness regularity of intersections morphology.

BronchoPose: an analysis of data and model configuration for vision-based bronchoscopy pose estimation.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Recent advances in neural networks and temporal image processing have provided new results and opportunities for vision-based bronchoscopy tracking. However, such progress has been hindered by the lack of comparative experimental data conditions. We address the issue by sharing a novel synthetic dataset, which allows for a fair comparison of methods. Moreover, as incorporating deep learning advances in temporal structures is not yet explored in bronchoscopy navigation, we investigate several neural network architectures for learning temporal information at different levels of subject personalization, providing new insights and results. METHODS: Using our own shared synthetic dataset for bronchoscopy navigation and tracking, we explore deep learning temporal information architectures (Recurrent Neural Networks and 3D convolutions), which have not been fully explored on bronchoscopy tracking, putting a special focus on network efficiency by using a modern backbone (EfficientNet-B0) and ShuffleNet blocks. Finally, we provide a study of different losses for rotation tracking and population modeling schemes (personalized vs. population) for bronchoscopy tracking. RESULTS: Temporal information architectures provide performance improvements, both in position and angle estimation. Additionally, population scheme analysis illustrates the benefits of offering a personalized model, while loss analysis indicates the benefits of using an adequate metric, improving results. We finally compare with a state-of-the-art model obtaining better results both in performance, with  12.2% and  18.7% improvement for position and rotation respectively, and around  67.6% reduction in memory consumption. CONCLUSIONS: Proposed advances in temporal information architectures, loss configuration, and population scheme definition allow for improving the current state of the art in bronchoscopy analysis. Moreover, the publication of the first synthetic dataset allows for further improving bronchoscopy research by enabling proper comparison grounds among methods.

Subtitle synchronization across multiple screens and devices.

Ambient Intelligence is a new paradigm in which environments are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people. This is having an increasing importance in multimedia applications, which frequently rely on sensors to provide useful information to the user. In this context, multimedia applications must adapt and personalize both content and interfaces in order to reach acceptable levels of context-specific quality of service for the user, and enable the content to be available anywhere and at any time. The next step is to make content available to everybody in order to overcome the existing access barriers to content for users with specific needs, or else to adapt to different platforms, hence making content fully usable and accessible. Appropriate access to video content, for instance, is not always possible due to the technical limitations of traditional video packaging, transmission and presentation. This restricts the flexibility of subtitles and audio-descriptions to be adapted to different devices, contexts and users. New Web standards built around HTML5 enable more featured applications with better adaptation and personalization facilities, and thus would seem more suitable for accessible AmI environments. This work presents a video subtitling system that enables the customization, adaptation and synchronization of subtitles across different devices and multiple screens. The benefits of HTML5 applications for building the solution are analyzed along with their current platform support. Moreover, examples of the use of the application in three different cases are presented. Finally, the user experience of the solution is evaluated.

Gait Analysis Platform for Measuring Surgery Recovery.

Gait analysis has evolved significantly during last years due to the great development of the Medical Internet of Things (MIoT) platforms that allow an easy integration of sensors (inertial, magnetic and pressure in our case) to the complex analytics required to compute, not only relevant parameters, but also meaningful indexes. In this paper, we extend a previous development based on a fully wireless pair of insoles by implementing an updated version with more reliable and user-friendly devices, smartphone app and web front-end and back-end. We also extend previous work focused on fall analysis (with the corresponding fall risk index or FRI) with the proposal of a new surgery recovery index (SRI) to account for the individual speed recovery speed that can be measured either at clinical facilities or at home in a telemedicine environment or while doing daily life activities. This new index can be personalized for different types of surgeries that affect gait such as hip, knee, etc. This paper presents the case of hip recovery and is built on top of the clinical standard SPPB test and allows obtaining quantitative parameters directly from the sensors.

Real-Time Constant Monitoring of Fall Risk Index by Means of Fully-Wireless Insoles.

Constant monitoring of gait in real life conditions is considered the best way to assess Fall Risk Index (FRI) since most falls happen out of the ideal conditions in which clinicians are currently analyzing the patient's behavior. This paper presents the WIISEL platform and results obtained through the use of the first full-wireless insole devices that can measure almost all gait related data directly on the feet (not in the upper part of the body as most existing wearable solutions). The platform consists of a complete tool-chain: insoles, smartphone & app, server & analysis tool, FRI estimation and user access. Results are obtained by combining parameters in a personalized way to build individual fall risk index assessed by experts with the help of data analytics. New FRI has been compared with standards that validate the quality of its prediction in a statistically significant way. That qualitatively relevant information is being provided to the platform users, being either end-users/patients, relatives or caregivers and the related clinicians to ideally assess about their long term evolution.

A Multi-Stage Human Factors and Comfort Assessment of Instrumented Insoles Designed for Use in a Connected Health Infrastructure.

Wearable electronics are gaining widespread use as enabling technologies, monitoring human physical activity and behavior as part of connected health infrastructures. Attention to human factors and comfort of these devices can greatly positively influence user experience, with a subsequently higher likelihood of user acceptance and lower levels of device rejection. Here, we employ a human factors and comfort assessment methodology grounded in the principles of human-centered design to influence and enhance the design of an instrumented insole. A use case was developed and interrogated by stakeholders, experts, and end users, capturing the context of use and user characteristics for the instrumented insole. This use case informed all stages of the design process through two full design cycles, leading to the development of an initial version 1 and a later version 2 prototype. Each version of the prototype was subjected to an expert human factors inspection and controlled comfort assessment using human volunteers. Structured feedback from the first cycle of testing was the driver of design changes implemented in the version 2 prototype. This prototype was found to have significantly improved human factors and comfort characteristics over the first version of the prototype. Expert inspection found that many of the original problems in the first prototype had been resolved in the second prototype. Furthermore, a comfort assessment of this prototype with a group of young healthy adults showed it to be indistinguishable from their normal footwear. This study demonstrates the power and effectiveness of human factors and comfort assessment methodologies in influencing and improving the design of wearable devices.

A wireless sensor insole for collecting gait data.

This paper presents the status of the EU project WIISEL - Wireless Insole for Independent and Safe Elderly Living, with the focus on sensors and wireless communications. Pressure and inertial sensors are embedded into insoles and a smartphone collects data utilizing Bluetooth Low Energy.