In recent years, bone marrow transplantation is often carried out as one of the treatment for cancer of hematopoietic organ. The bone marrow transplantation aims to replace lesion by normal hematopoietic stem cell included in bone marrow donated from a donor. As little quantity of hematopoietic stem cell is included in bone marrow, harvesting enough hematopoietic stem cell is very important for bone marrow transplantation. But there is no efficient method for harvesting enough hematopoietic stem cells. Providing the components of bone marrow being harvested is influenced by harvesting negative pressure, an prototype aspiration device was developed in this study. Dummy liquid of born marrow can be harvested with any negative pressure by the device developed.

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A woodpecker is enumerated as for repeatedly an impact. A woodpecker strikes its beak toward a tree repeatedly. But, the damage of the brain or the living body doesn't occur by this action. Therefore, it is predicted that the brain and body of woodpecker is protected from the shock by some methods. And it turns out that the woodpecker has the original mechanism that endures impact. In this study, from the structure of woodpecker makes a model. And the model is analyzed. It thinks about the endures impact from the result.

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We have been developed automated preoperative planning system for total hip arthroplasty. One problem in preprocessing of input data is to reconstruct segmented bone models, as most part of the process depend on manual operation and take amount of time. In this paper, we describe the evaluation semi-automated segmentation method of the femur from 3D CT images using multi-level statistical shape model in this system. We evaluated this method by measuring motion of hip joint and comparing manual segmentation. We applied this method to 5 cases, and confirmed max error is 3 degree. This result showed an effectiveness of propose method.

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The present study proposes quantified clinical evaluation of crown by various statistical methods such as the mathematical quantification theory class II and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in order to make optimal dental treatment plans. It was revealed that patients and dentists have different orders of priorities on treatment items.

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The Ionic Polymer-Metal Composite (IPMC), a class of materials that can convert electrical energy into mechanical energy, is attracting attention as one of the most promising candidate materials of soft sensors, actuators, catheters and especially artificial muscles due to its safety, quick respondency and the ability of large deformation under low-voltage. Although these abilities of IPMC offer great opportunities of its application in the biomedical, biomimetical and microelectromechanical fields, for the purpose of making it fit for practical use, the IPMC structural system has to be constructed and optimized to provide higher output power and perform complicated behavior. In this work, a finite element approach based on the mixture theory is developed to simulate the coupling of mechanical-electrochemical behavior in IPMC. The deformation, stress and strain distribution are investigated by taking the effect of diffusion of ions and osmotic phenomenon into account.

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A design tool for artificial legs is developed to respond to the requests for the better quality of life. This paper reports a walking simulation using a 3D FEM model considering the structure of a SACH (Solid Ankle Cushion Heel) artificial leg, as a first step. The measurement of walking of a handicap-less person is carried out to obtain the actual movement data of the ankle. Two kinds of walking simulation are carried out changing the velocity and the results are compared to each other.

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We investigated influence of shape of clavicle reconciled plate of titanium alloy Ti-6Al-4V (Type A), which is one of materials for bone fixation device and another plate (Type B), which is changed shape with mechanical properties of them. In particular dynamic behavior of bone plate and properties of stress distribution under cyclic load or rotary force are measured with infrared radiation equipment. The results are as follows: Strain of Type B decreased in region fixed plate and elastic absorption energy increased, thus strain near fixed plate is less even under situation which rotary force angle changed dynamically for instance swinging arm.

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Femoral resurfacing implantation was developed in the 1970s, but that had a problem about long time treatment. However, long time treatment is improved by the progress of technology in recent years. In addition, it is noticed because the implantation is less amount of removed femoral bone than conventional implantation. There are few reports deal with the implant design, and it's experiment and analysis is not enough. In this study, we made three implant models by CAD software and analyzed for femoral resurfacing with the implants by FEM. We gave material property considered non-homogeneity of femoral bone. Mechanical influence of stem length of the implant was discussed from the result.

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Diverse satisfactory design ideas of form and structure must be obtained under the constraint of unclear design conditions in conceptual and preliminary design. Designers depend on either their experience or their knowledge for obtaining diverse ideas. In the past study, we proposed an emergent design method that was able to obtain the diverse solution candidates was proposed. In the present study, this system was applied to development of the artificial hip aiming at the construction of the emergent design system that generates diverse three dimension form based on the proposal method. The possibility of utilizing this system for the artifact design is shown by comparing with the solutions derived from this system and past optimization method.

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In this study, alignments, that is, settings of neutral angle and neutral position, of hip joint of hip disarticulation prosthesis (HDP) are examined by using numerical simulation. A numerical simulator based on neuro-musculo-skeletal human with HDP walking model is used as numerical evaluation tool of HDP. Walking was generated by the simulator in the cases of that the position of the rotation center of the hip joint was changed back and forth. Results show that, in the case that the position was set forward position, stability is higher, but the gait is asymmetry. In the case that the position was set backward position (set nearer from anatomical hip joint), stability is lower, but the gait is more symmetry than the former.

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In this study, an automatic blood vessel searching system (BVSS) is newly developed, which is built in the health monitoring system (HMS) and the drug delivery system (DDS) to evaluate the blood sugar level and inject the insulin for the diabetic patients. Main subjects of this BVSS development are 1) a transmittance photo imaging of the finger by using the LED light as a near-infrared light source with peak wavelength of 870nm, and 2) an image processing to detect the location of the center of blood vessel. To estimate the depth of blood vessel, the lens focal method was applied to the BVSS. To confirm the availability of the system, we used blood vessel phantoms that consist of a cylindrical blood vessel (metal rod) and skin tissue (silicone rubber), and confirmed the artificial blood vessel was 1.5mm in diameter. The phantoms were embedded in the skin under 1.7mm in depth. Estimated depths using our image processing show good agreements with the given depths.

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Human skin, which mainly consists of epidermis, dermis and hypodermis, is the largest organ of a human body. It has a lot of roles, for example, protection function, moisture maintenance function, sensory function, and etc. Moreover, it becomes a parameter that shows the health condition and beauty, because the skin is the outermost layer of a human body. Therefore, the development of the sensor that can measure the skin conditions in various parts of the body is demanded. However, sensors that had been developed before can measure limited parts of body or can measure only in limited condition. In this paper, the sensor that can measure various parts of human body in various conditions is developed and evaluated scanning on the grinding papers that have various smoothness.

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The purpose of this research project is to develop a compact and wearable Health Monitoring System(HMS) device which acts automatically 1) puncturing a blood vessel, 2) extracting human blood and 3) measuring blood glucose. In this study a permanent magnet driven blood extraction pump is newly developed which has a painless microneedle with inner diameter less than 100μm. The pump consists of a) puncture part, and b) syringe part which is inserted a permanent magnet with magnetic fluid for sealing action and lubrication. The result of suctioning experiment using the pump, it succeeded in extracting 7.9μl of water within 6 seconds.

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Stent is a medical devise for the treatment of vascular occlusion. The stent is inserted into the artery and expanded. However, at the time of stent expansion, an artery inner wall is damaged by excessive pressure between stent and artery, and restenosis becomes a problem. So for, some investigations about contact pressure between artery and stent under specific conditions have been made by using finite element analysis but experimental investigation based on the measurement has not been done because of the difficulty of the measurement. In this research, measurement system of contact pressure distribution between artery and stent was developed using pressure-sensitive conductive film sensor and experimentally examined the usefulness of the system.

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In this study, the elastic prediction system of the soft materials were developed using the 'force-feed-backed' haptic device. Two kind of the test pieces were prepared as the substitute of the human soft tissue and were performed to three-point bending test. The elastic modulus of the specimen was predicted using the indentation force by operator in real environment and the finite element analysis by the CAD model which were reproduced in the virtual space. The prediction result has good validity with the actual modules. It was considearte that this technique is able to applicate to the identification the human soft tissue like as the human articular cartilage and the ligament.

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The purpose of this study is biomechanically to analyze whole-body motions such as manual handling using a musculoskeletal model. The subjects handled and lifted a load with various trajectories, and the motion and external forces during tasks were measured by a motion capture system with force plates and force transducers. A musculoskeletal model consisting of 15 rigid links and 56 muscle models was employed/constructed to estimate internal loads, such as joint moments and muscular tensions. Using the collected data and the musculoskeletal model, manual handling tasks were quantitatively evaluated from a biomechanical point of view.

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In a sitting position, many people have troubled for lumbago. As premise, lumbago was defined as rotation of a pelvis and change of a lumbar vertebra curve being the causes. So, in order to reproduce posture change on a computer and evaluate lumbago, human equivalent model was created in analyzing anatomy. The simulation result of the evaluation model was able to express mathematically changes in expansion of springs as evaluation of an ache. As a result, it was verified that the built model is appropriate to evaluate lumbago.

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In the past various methods to restore motor functions in persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) have been developed. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) methods and wearable power assist suits with actuators have been proposed in the areas of medical sciences and engineering respectively. However, complete restoration of motor functions in persons with SCI has still not been successful. In this paper we made the musculo-skeltal model, which is the bipedal walking model with a new hybrid power assist orthosis with FES and actuators. And we examined safety and control method of orthosis by simulating gait of persons with SCI with the developed model.

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A new training system for standing up using lift mechanism is proposed considering safety of patients and effectiveness of training. From the view point of the effectiveness of training, patients have to use full standing up ability. Trajectory of the standing up process to decrease knee joint moment is considered. Joint moment in standing up process is estimated by using wearable motion sensors and simple force plate and optimum lifting force is calculated from the estimated joint moment to minimize the support force. Experiment is carried out and results show the effectiveness of the proposed training system.

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The purpose of this study is to develop a motor evaluation system for the lower limb using a sensor ergometer and a musculoskeletal model with the prospect that the system is used in rehabilitation and in general exercise institutions. To estimate joint angles from the pedal position, an inverse kinematics model was constructed, and the validity was investigated by comparing these values with those from a motion capture system. The muscle forces calculated from the musculoskeletal model were also compared with the filtered EMG patterns. The results of this study indicated that the developed system could fully evaluate motion in the lower limb.

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"The Barrier Free Law" was promulgated in November 1999. Many Wheelchair user would be able to use a ship as one of the public transport. But the effect of a shaking ship on wheelchair is not clear still now. The first step of this study is to make clear that the needed torque to stop the manual wheelchair while a ship is shaking. We make the simulation model and the influence of a shaking ship was cleared by using the real shaking ship's data.

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Wheelchairs improve mobility for people for whom walking is difficult or impossible, due to illness or disabilities. However, the road condition influence the driving ability of the wheelchairs. In the snowy region during winter, slipping often occurs because the grip between the wheel and the road cannot be secured enough when driving on the frozen road or the slope. In this study, the control mechanism that detects slipping and reflects it in driving power was developed so that the slipping actively decreased. This control mechanism was developed for existing electric wheelchairs. To develop the system that controls slipping, a miniature model was produced, and the design and confirming the operation of the control mechanism were done. the experiment machine that equipped the electric wheelchair was produced based on the mechanism of the miniature model. From the experiment in the room and outdoor it was confirmed that slipping is decreased by the developed control mechanism.

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Wheelchair users have been increasing in Japan recently due to the advance of the aging society. To reduce load on the attendant, power-assisted wheelchairs can be used. For safe and comfortable design of such wheelchairs, the attendant's work load needs to be predicted and estimated. We investigated the force needed to propel the wheelchair load based on the road resistance using a newly developed treadmill to analyze and obtain the suitable propelling motion. We tried to model the main movement in an attendant and wheelchair system. A power-assist system using the model reference adaptive control was based on the self-directive propelling force against the load in this model. We verified the driving performance and effect. The exercising heart ratio was used to show the movement strength for the walking velocity and pushing force and to evaluate the power-assist mechanism that we propose.

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We investigated autonomous propelling performance regarding seat positions of manual wheelchairs for children's usage. Tested four seat positions were front, back, up and down against an original position and its distances were the same 100mm. Estimation of propelling performance was to use pulse forces consist of average torques and holding ratios. According to our results, We found that the best position was down, because of large holding angles, almost same average torques and holding ratios. Contrary, the worst position was up, because of small holding angles and average torques. Sensitivity between propelling performance and shifting vertical direction was high compared with horizontal one.

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The development of the walking assist device system is worked on not only the solution of engineering technology, but also the several view point areas. It is important to study the system on the integration with the medical science approach, the community-based barrier-free environment, the social communication network system and so on. We have made up the walking assist device prototype for the field monitoring test. So, it is discussed about the estimation method of it on the mobility concept of welfare.

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Electric carts are well knows as the motion-support machines for the aged and handicapped people. The operation of electric cart is easy, and the stability and rigidity are higher than them of wheel chair. However, due to secure high rigidity, the size of body of electric cart should be lager than wheelchair, and lager space is needed for turning motion. This disadvantage is caused by the driving mechanism of electric cart which has two rear driving wheels connected by a differential gears. In order to improve the turning performance with reducing the turning diameter, we proposed new type of steering system with braking force control. This system is also efficient to secure the safety during cart's turning.

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The use of prosthesis is important in the restoration of mobility and in the prevention of accidents, discomfort, and disease. In the design of prosthesis, the fitting process to the cut section commonly important. During whole day, the volume of the stump varies as mush as 7%. Therefore, it is necessary to match the limb to the socket towards maximizing comfort as well as mobility. The stress on the surface of body corresponds to various indexes used in the production of new socket designs, which are taken into account in the design and fitting stages. Prosthetic design should be dynamic to cope with daily variation. In addition, the relationship between shearing and vertical stress as they affect the edge of the limb and the socket are focal points for adjustment and improvement in both present and future prosthetic limbs.

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In highly developed welfare society, people would use various systems and machines to aid everyday activities. On the other hand, some results of studies in rehabilitation field indicate that it is important to keep usage of life supporting machines minimum. Less usage of them would result that persons of advantaged age should be able to lead self reliant and active lives. In order to reduce the usage of life supporting machine, it is necessary to analyze objects' motion dynamically. Therefore, we developed new type of position and posture measurement system composed of some ultra sonic transducers and receivers controlled by micro chip computers. The proposed system is much simple than the system employing multi cameras, and it has advantage to secure the privacy of objects. The validity of this system was evaluated by comparing with the result obtained by visual system. From some experimental results, it was conformed that this proposed system would be useful to measure and analyze the motion and posture of objects.

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To solve an aging problem in the society, it is important that the aged people are encouraged to be independent and spend healthy life. We have proposed the concept of the Hyper Hospital, which is the information support system for patients. In the Hyper Hospital, some units analyze their vital data, and patient's family who lives in the distance, the neighborhood and their doctor share the analyzed data through computer network to know their health condition. In this paper, we present a wearable platform for monitoring health condition. This platform sends the analyzed biomedical signal of a patient to a database server in his/her house. We developed a sensor module to acquire EMG that informs weakening of muscular strength by an underexercise or disease such as a hemiplegia. We confirmed that the sensor module works well with storage module and analysis module through some experiment. We also developed a database server for collecting data from any other sensor module and processing the data from each module separately. The proposed system will be expected monitoring health condition of the elderly.

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The rapid aging of society requires a new system to support independent living of elderly people. In this background, we have proposed "the Hyper Hospital network system", in which an elderly person's family, hospital, and local supporters watch over her/his health condition and emergency situation through a computer network. To access her/his health condition, a vital data of an elderly person is collected and analyzed in a functional unit of a wearable computer. In this paper, we present a respiration measurement unit, where a conductive rubber was attached around abdomen as a sensor. This unit could analyze the number of respiration and the change of breathing cycle. In this system, the average error of the number of respiration is within 9% between the measurement and the reference. We show the usefulness of the present system for practical use at home.

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Recently, fire detection systems are widely used to protect life and goods. However, conventional fire detecting systems cannot prevent fire actually. In this paper we propose a new method to predict fire occurrence time at early stage in order to prevent failing to get out and losing aged person's life in a fire. We used odor, air and CO sensors to develop fire detection system, in order to generate alarms as early as possible. Based on the derivative value of sensors output, we used linear approximation method to predict the time that the sensor outputs reach smoldering fire situation and fire situation. Therefore we can generate pre-alarm before these situations. In the future, we also want to use them to monitor the room environment.

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This paper is a study on the development of a haptic sensor system for robot surgery. The haptic sensor was manufactured by way of trial, which was consisted of rubber sensor and terete device. The terete device was allocated as hound's tooth check, for the purpose of estimation of normal load and traction load. Integral part of the tactile sensor system is the sensor itself i.e. the part of the system that transform the applied pressure/force in a change of resistance. The sensor output well describes the 3-dimensional distribution of force and will represent the subjective evaluations of surgeon.

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A bed called a multi-plane press bed was studied for the prevention of bedsore. Some air-cells are located lengthwise and sideways on the bed and a lot of pins are located on the points of intersection of the air-cells. When the pressures of the air-cells increase, the pins are moved up and the planes attached on the pins push up the back of a human body. It is able to change the pressure distribution for the back of a human body by controlling the pressure of the air-cells.

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This Paper describes research on pet robot of biped locomotion with short legs. Today, pet robots are increasing to be used in welfare field. Pet robots used in welfare field are requested to give elderly people to familiarity and enjoyment. comfort. One of objects that people feel familiarity and enjoyment, comfort is deformed animal of biped locomotion with short legs. In this study we searched for of elderly people liking which of the three pictures of deformed animal Faith the different length of legs, and liking either one of the two workings. This paper reports availability of pet robot of biped locomotion with short legs and consideration of working of this pet robot for prevention of dementia in elderly people.

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There exist handicapped, who can not transfer oneself, for example, from bed to chair, or in the rest room. Many of past transfer assist tools are not equipment which helps the self transfer of handicapped, but the equipment for the reduction of helper's load. We develop a self transfer assist robot that enables self transfer of handicapped without helper. Movements of this robot consist of three basic actions, namely, "stand up", "turn" and "sit down". In this study, the time, which is needed to complete a transfer, is shortened by composing basic actions and the comfortableness of user is improved. In addition, we discuss the operation method, in which a push button is used for manipulation of the robot.

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It is said that excretion care is one of the heaviest load for care givers. Especially, holding an elderly person in their arms to let him/her transfer from a wheelchair to a toilet seat inflicts a serious burden on a care giver's body. In this paper, we introduce R & D of a toilet seat capable of lifting which is expected to decrease care givers' physical load. In the study, we conducted experiments testing the operation methods for easy-to-use lifting functionality. Moreover, we also evaluated by use of bio-instrumentation the reduction degree of the muscle load of both care givers and the elderly, replacing them with mimicking subjects.

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In this paper, a simple simulation is discussed for verifying the adjustment techniques of the Bowden cable system on a transhumeral prosthesis. The prosthetic arm is modeled as a 2-D two-joint link model with a cable to relate the shoulder and elbow joint movements. By solving the equation and applying the numeric values of Japanese male adult's arm dimensions, the simulation results were computed. The results of the sequential procedure in the problem solving strategies, which are provided in the prosthetics text books, were reasonable and showed that moving the lift bar (Elbow Flexion Attachment) and base plate in the stated direction are effective to gain better performance of the cable system. However, the simulation showed more successful solutions to instantly gaining better performance. Further study will be needed to confirm the simulation result and correspond to force problem in the adjustment of the cable control system.

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We suggested a floor heating system using pumpless water-heater. The system consists of Water-heater and radiation part. The heated water circulates by natural convection occurs heating operation of electric heater in the water-heater. Therefore it is not necessary circulation pump for the heated water to circulate and the structure is simple. The purpose of this study investigate basic characteristic of the pumpless water heater to obtain evaluation and design guide of this heating-floor system.

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Patients who have operation for artificial valve substitution frequently suffer from brain embolism. Because micro air bubbles together with emboli are generated with opening and closing of an artificial valve in such a patient's blood, it is difficult to discriminate air bubbles from emboli by existing methods using ultrasonic wave. Hence, we tried to develop a new method for discriminating embolus from air bubble in pulsatile blood flow using ultrasound. We utilized the difference in motion of embolus and an air bubble when irradiated by ultrasound beam. It is considered that the difference in motion is caused from the difference in their acoustic impedances and masses of them. As a result, we succeeded to discriminate emboli from micro air bubbles in pulsatile flows as well as in steady flow in the model experiments in vitro.

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In human body, erythrocytes deform highly and can smoothly pass through capillaries of which diameters are narrower than the cells'. Since capillaries connect all organs in a body, decrease of erythrocytes deformability causes several diseases. Therefore it is very important to evaluate the dynamic deformability of the erythrocyte at the microcirculation level. In this research, we fabricated a micro channel array with a 5μm×5μm square cross section of 100μm in length on a silicone chip to simulate capillaries. After whole blood was centrifuged and erythrocytes were separated from plasma, the erythrocytes were diluted with the autologous plasma by a hematocrit of 10%. This suspension was made to flow through the micro channels. The motion of the erythrocyte was photographed using a high-speed video camera. A shape recovery process of the erythrocytes after getting out of the channel was modeled by Kelvin viscoelastic model. As a result, The Kelvin model explained well its process.

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Microcirculation plays an important role in mass transport in human cardiovascular system, it is important to understand blood flow in microvessels. In such small channels, red blood cell behavior strongly affects the flow field. In this study, we investigate in vitro a blood flow through a microchannel with stenosis by confocal-micro PIV and PTV. The flow channel is made by PDMS (Polydimethylsiloxane) channel and the constriction rate of the stenosis is 50%. We measure the blood flow velocity, red blood cell trajectories and plasma layer. The results show that the blood flow has small flactuations and is different from water.

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Neutrophils can be retained in pulmonary capillaries causing higher concentration than in systemic circulation, and it is thought to be due to the cells' low deformability in passing through narrow capillaries. The authors numerically simulated flow of neutrophils through a simple capillary network model taking into consideration the cells deformability. However, in the simulation, the concentration ratio of the cells between those in the network and those injected into the network was less than a half of the experimentally obtained value. Other possible factors for the long retention time are friction or plasma leak between the cells and the endothelium of the capillaries. In this paper, these effects were simply modeled to introduce into the simulation and their contribution to the increase in the concentration was numerically investigated. Consequently, it was found that the concentration ratio has an upper limit, and it increases only in the case large amount of plasma leak.

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A simulation method to analyze mesoscopic rheology of blood by multi-scale modeling of blood flow was proposed. Blood flow at a microscopic scale was modeled as flowing red blood cells, while blood flow at a macroscopic scale was treated as a continuum where a local variation of viscosity which is a function of a local concentration of red blood cells was taken into account. The simulation results were in good agreement with in vivo results. The paper also discusses the influence of hematocrit on the velocity profile of a macroscale flow.

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Malaria is one of the most serious diseases for all around the world. It is thought that severe symptoms are caused by microvasucular occlusions of parasitized red blood cells (PRBC) that have adhesive property and low deformability. However, the detailed mechanisms of the vascular occlusion caused by red blood cells are still not clear. In this study, the malaria-infected blood is modeled by particles. The adhesive property of PRBC is expressed by local spring. The result shows that the PRBC interacts with some healthy RBCs and move downstream keeping attachment to the vessel wall. This phenomenon induces the high resistance to the flow, which is likely to lead to microvascular obstruction in lower shear flow.

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This paper focuses on inflow into an aneurysm from its parent artery. Understandings of the inflow are required in designing endovascular devices such as coils and stents. A parametric computational fluid dynamics study of the inflow is performed for saccular cerebral aneurysms at a variety of arterial bends. Numerical results show that the inflow rate is strongly influenced by parent arterial geometry because secondary flow momentum in the parent artery determines the inflow. We also present that the shape of an aneurysm little affects the inflow rate.

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