Currently available neurostimulation electrodes have cylindrical, flat, or slightly convex geometrical shapes. These designs work well with spinal cord and deep brain stimulation but their geometries do not work well to stimulate peripheral nerves. UIC researchers have proposed a non-traditional shape of the electrode contacts that changes the way electrical device interfaces with biological tissues and electrical energy of stimulation is delivered to the stimulation targets.

Our ability to follow verbal instructions is dependent on the proper functioning of the middle ear muscles. This is more difficult as the acoustical features in our modern environment becomes more complex and noisy. Currently, middle ear muscle function is monitored through clinical tympanometry and acoustic reflex (AR) testing. These clinical tools are sensitive to severe damage in the neural regulation of the muscles and growth deformations of the bone structure.

Periodically Rotated Overlapping ParallEL Lines with Enhanced Reconstruction (PROPELLER) MRI is a widely used method to correct for patient motion.  Although echo planar imaging (EPI) based PROPELLER is a more robust technique compared to fast spin echo (FSE) based PROPELLER, EPI-PROPELLER suffers from Nyquist ghosts which necessitates phase correction.

Cancer remains one of the world’s most devastating diseases, accounting for over 500,000 deaths in the United States and nearly 8 million worldwide in 2007. Although recent advances in diagnostic and therapeutic methods to treat primary tumors have resulted in a decrease in mortality from the disease, cancer metastasis still poses a great risk to those who have undergone treatment. The detection of spontaneous circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and/or tumor microemboli (CTM) would give physicians an early heads-up on the spread of the disease.

Stroke is a leading cause of death and long-term disability in the United States and Europe every year.  Statistics provided by the American Heart Association indicate that about 140,000 individuals die each year in the United States, or one every four minutes.  According to the World Health Organization, about 650,000 Europeans die each year due to stroke.  In total every year approximately 785,00 people in the United States have a stroke, with over 600,000 of these being first or new strokes.  While increased age is a risk factor for stroke incidence, near

The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) market was worth $858.2 million in 2008.  MRI is critical for medical diagnosis of in a number of disorders.  MRI uses magnetism, radio waves, and computational processing to produce images of body structures.  A magnetic field aligns the protons of hydrogen atoms, which are then exposed to a pulse of radio waves.  As radio waves spin various protons in the body, the protons emit a signal that is detected by the receiver of the MRI scanner.  Received information is processed by a computer to produce an image.  Dr.

The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) market was worth $858.2 million in 2008.  MRI is critical for medical diagnosis of in a number of disorders.  MRI uses magnetism, radio waves, and computer to produce images of body structures.  A magnetic field aligns the protons of hydrogen atoms, which are then exposed to a beam of radio waves.  As radio waves spin various protons in the body, the protons emit a signal that is detected by the receiver of the MRI scanner.  Received information is processed by a computer to produce an image.  Dr.

This portfolio focuses on the automated detection of two prevalent types of cancer: breast and prostate.  Both types of cancer are very prevalent, impacting many individuals per year.  Manually-conducted histological assessment of potentially cancerous tissue by a highly trained pathologist forms the current gold standard of diagnosis.  Several samples are usually taken and several sections from each section are examined: roughly 20 to 120 sections are examined per patient—frequently by more than one pathologist.  Such manual assessment suffers from several limi