Biomedical mobile devices for ubiquitous healthcare consist of biomedical sensors and communication terminal. They have two types of configuration. One is the sensor-network type device using wired or wireless communication with intelligent sensors to acquire biomedical data. The other is the sensor embedded type device, where the data can be acquired directly by itself. There are many examples of sensor network type, such as, fall detection sensor, blood glucose sensor, and ECG sensors networked with commercial PDA phone and commercial phone terminal for ubiquitous healthcare. On the other hand, sensor embedded type mounts blood glucose sensor, accelerometer, and etc. on commercial phone. However, to enable true ubiquitous healthcare, motion sensing is essential, because users go around anywhere and their signals should be measured and monitored, when they are affected by the motion. Therefore, in this paper, two biomedical mobile devices with motion monitoring function were addressed. One is sensor-network type with motion monitoring function, which uses Zigbee communication to measure the ECG, PPG and acceleration. The other is sensor-embedded type with motion monitoring function, which also can measure the data and uses the built-in cellular phone network modem for remote connection. These devices are expected to be useful for ubiquitous healthcare in coming aged society in Korea.

Phlegm smear testing for acid-fast bacilli (AFB) requires careful examination of tubercle bacilli under a microscope to distinguish between positive and negative findings. The biggest weakness of this method is the visual limitations of the examiners. It is also time-consuming, and mistakes may easily occur. This paper proposes a method of identifying tubercle bacilli that uses a computer instead of a human. To address the challenges of AFB testing, this study designs and investigates image systems that can be used to identify tubercle bacilli. The proposed system uses an electronic microscope to capture digital images that are then processed through feature extraction, image segmentation, image recognition, and neural networks to analyze tubercle bacilli. The proposed system can detect the amount of tubercle bacilli and find their locations. This paper analyzes 184 tubercle bacilli images. Fifty images are used to train the artificial neural network, and the rest are used for testing. The proposed system has a 95.6% successful identification rate, and only takes 0.8 seconds to identify an image.

Iridium oxide films (IROFs) have been extensively studied as a material for electrical stimulation of neurons, as iridium oxide has higher charge storage capacity than other metal films. More recently, sputtered iridium oxide film (SIROF) has been studied, because it can be made more conveniently than activated iridium oxide film (AIROF). Typically, the SIROFs are grown at temperatures from 400 to 600 $^{\circ}C$. However, such high temperatures cannot be used when the iridium oxide (IrOx) film is to be deposited on a flexible polymer material, such as polyimide. In this paper, we show that we can still obtain excellent characteristics in SIROFs grown without heating (cold SIROF), by optimizing the growth conditions. We show that the oxygen flow rate is a critical parameter for controlling the surface properties of a cold SIROF. At an oxygen flow rate of 12 seem, the cold SIROF exhibited a charge storage capacity (CSC) of 60 mC/cm$^2$, which is comparable to or better than other published values for iridium oxide films including heated SIROFs. The film produced under these conditions also had the minimum impedance value of all cold SIROFs deposited for this study. A stability test and biocompatibility test also demonstrated the superiority of the optimized cold SIROF.

This paper proposes a biomimetic hand prosthesis with tendon-driven five fingers. Each finger is composed of a distal-middle phalange, a proximal phalange and a metacarpal bone, which are connected to a link mechanism. The finger flexion is a resultant motion by pulling a wire to serve as a tendon, but the finger extension is performed by an elastic mechanism composed of a restoration spring. The designed hand prosthesis with tendon-driven five fingers has totally six degrees of freedom. But its weight is merely 400.73g. The hand can perform various hand functions such as the grasping and the hand postures. From experimental results, we show that the proposed hand prosthesis is useful to amputees as a prosthetic hand.

In this study, we have developed a novel step detection algorithm for gait evaluation of patients with hemiplegia based on trunk accelerometry device. For this, we have used a bandpass filter and a least square acceleration (LSA) filter which is characterized by emphasizing the peak or valley point of the acceleration signals for each 3-axis accelerometer signals. To evaluate the algorithm, the detected steps by developed algorithm and real steps by the motion analysis system were compared. As a result, we could obtain the sensitivity of 96.44%, the specificity of 99.94% and the accuracy of 99.90% for the patients' data sets and the sensitivity of 100%, the specificity of 99.93% and the accuracy of 99.93% for the normal data sets. In conclusion, the developed algorithm is useful for the step detection for patients with hemiplegia as well as normal subjects.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the biomechanical effects of an application of whole body vibration during strengthening exercise. Every participant performed four weeks exercise program using general leg-press versus vibrating leg-press. Participants did legpress exercise three sets of 25 repetitions with the load of 25 percent of 1RM during first week, three sets of 20 repetitions with 40 percent of 1RM during second week, three sets of 15 repetitions with 60 percents of 1RM during third week, and three sets of 15 repetitions with 80 percent of 1RM during last fourth week. The vibration(25Hz, 5mm) was applied only to the vibration exercise group. A three dimensional virtual lower extremity model for one of subject and virtual leg-press model were generated. The knee extensor muscle forces were analyzed using the virtual model and the knee joint torque(maximum extension torque) was measured using an isokinetic device. Calculated muscle forces were smaller in vibrating leg-press exercise than in general leg-press exercise. An increase of the maximum knee extension joint torque was 2.14 times larger approximately after the four week vibration leg-press exercise program was performed.

In this study, treadmill walking and overground walking were compared at the same condition based on kinematics and energy expenditures(EE). In addition, we compared the actual energy expenditure and calculated EE by treadmill. The kinematics of treadmill and overground walking were very similar. The values at each joint were significantly different(P<0.05), but magnitude of the difference was generally less than 4$^{\circ}$. In the EE using cardiopulmonary exercise, EE of treadmill walking was significantly greater when measured on the overground. It seemed to be the increased stress during the gait by the continuous movement of the belt. As the velocity increased, there was significant difference between actual EE and calculated EE by treadmill due to EE curve increasing exponentially. Therefore the further study would be required to find the correlation of the two methods and calibrate the values from them.

Using a spatial compound imaging technique in a medical ultrasound imaging system, the average speed of sound in a medium of interest is measured, and imaging of its distribution is implemented. When the brightness reaches the highest level in an ultrasonic image obtained as the speed of sound used in focusing is varied, it turns out that the focusing has been accomplished satisfactorily and that the speed of sound which has been adopted becomes the sought-after average speed of sound. Because spatial compound imaging provides many different views of the same object, the adverse effect of erroneous speed-of-sound estimation tends to be more severe in compound imaging than in plain B-mode imaging. Thus, in compound imaging, the average speed of sound even in the case of speckled images can be accurately estimated by observing the brightness change due to different speeds of sound employed. Using this new method that offers spatial diversity, we can construct an image of the speed of sound distribution in a phantom embedded with a 10-mm diameter plastic cylinder whose speed of sound is different from that of the background. The speed of sound in the cylinder is found to be different from that of the surrounding medium.

Since inappropriate muscle forces mean that people cannot perform some activities related to roles of the muscle, muscle forces have been considered as an important parameter in clinic. Therefore, many methods have been introduced to estimate muscle forces indirectly. One of the methods is muscle tissue dynamics and it is widely used in commercial softwares including musculoskeletal model, such as SIMM. They, however, need motion data captured from 3-dimensional motion analysis system. In this study, we introduced an algorithm to estimate muscle forces in real-time by using joint angles. The heel-rise movements were performed for a normal with 3-dimensional motion analysis system, EMG measurement system, and electrogoniometers. Joint angles obtained from electrogoniometers and EMG signals were used to estimate muscle forces. Simulation was performed to find muscle forces using motion data which was imported into musculoskeletal software. As the results, muscle lengths and forces from the developed algorithm were similar to those from commercial software in pattern. Results of this study would be helpful to implement a tool to calculate reasonable muscle forces in real-time.

We studied the postural response induced by plantar sole vibration with various frequencies(20, 60, 100Hz) and vibration zone(the anterior and posterior foot zone) of both soles during standing. Eight healthy young adults were exposed to 15s periods of plantar sole vibration while blindfolded. Body sway(COM, center of mass), the angle of neck, trunk, hip, knee, ankle and EMG of four lower limb muscles(tibialis anterior, lateral and medial gastrocnemial, soleus muscle) were recorded during 15s plantar sole vibration using 3D motion analysis system. Simulating each zone separately resulted in spatially oriented body tilts; oppositely directed backward and forward, respectively, the amplitude of which was proportional to the vibration frequency. EMG activity of lower limb muscles also varied according to the direction of the vibration zone and linearly according to the frequency. These findings led us to consider the plantar sole vibration as useful method of postural balance control and adjustment.

The present study analyzed the association between postural control and electrical stimulation by measuring body sway when use the electrical stimulations were applied to different stimulation zones in lower limbs. The subjects were 14 young adults and were, tested for two different visual condition: eyes open and eyes closed. The experiments were also performed in two different stance case: one legged stance and two legged stance while electrical stimulations were applied concurrently or individually to tibialis anterior and triceps surae. Postural responses were assessed by analyzing COP sway path, sum of COP sway measured by a forceplate. The results showed that the direction of the COP shift changed in accordance with the direction of stimulation and showed sensory adaptation as the experiment progressed for two legged stance case. For one legged stance case, concurrent electrical stimulation both sides of muscles was found to be effective for enhancement of postural balance control.

An object's color and intensity are determined by its spectral reflectance and illumination. Therefore, the illumination plays a key role in forming the appearance of the object in a scene. In this paper, we focus on color distinction of objects and derive the optimal illumination conditions to maximize the distance between objects in the RGB color space. As a practical approach the optimal illumination is composed by deriving the optimal linear combinations given a set of LED light sources. The effectiveness of our approach is shown through experimental results using an endoscope system.