Michela Borghetti
University of Brescia
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Featured researches published by Michela Borghetti.
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement | 2013
Michela Borghetti; Emilio Sardini; Mauro Serpelloni
Over the last 30 years, scientific and technological progress has boosted the development of medical devices that can assist patients and support medical staff. With regard to the rehabilitation of patients who have suffered from traumas, robotic systems can be an aid for rapid patient recovery. This paper focuses on studying and implementing a system for measuring the finger position of one hand with the aim of giving feedback to the rehabilitation system. It consists of a glove where sensors are mounted suitably configured and connected to an electronic conditioning and acquisition unit. The information regarding the position is then sent to a remote system. The objective of this paper is to provide a sensorized glove for monitoring the rehabilitation activities of the hand. The glove can have several other applications such as: 1) the recognition of sign language; 2) the diagnostic measurement of the finger movement at a distance; and 3) the interaction with virtual reality.
international multi-conference on systems, signals and devices | 2014
Michela Borghetti; Emilio Sardini; Mauro Serpelloni
The research aims to the development of sensors for strain measurements using inkjet technology for biomedical applications. The process of inkjet printing is based on the emission of a fixed quantity of material in liquid phase, usually called ink, in the form of small drops, contained in a chamber through a nozzle. The emitted drop falls on a substrate, forming a pattern. The solidification of the liquid can occur through the evaporation of the solvent, chemical modifications (eg by cross-linking of polymers) or crystallization. Often post-processing treatments are required, such as thermal annealing or sintering. For the realization of the sensors, the nanocrystalline silver ink, which is a biocompatible ink, was chosen. The substrate is Kapton and several studies demonstrate its biocompatibility. A preliminary analysis of the material and its compatibility with the chosen printer, the description of the developed devices and finally the experimental results with the calculation of the relative Gauge Factor are reported. The research allowed to study, in a preliminary way, light, thin, flexible, inexpensive, and biocompatible sensors for applications inside the human body.
ieee international symposium on medical measurements and applications | 2014
Michela Borghetti; Emilio Sardini; Mauro Serpelloni
Bend sensors are composed of a flexible substrate and a conductive layer, which changes its electrical resistance with the bending or the angular displacement. They are flexible, light and low-cost devices, usually adopted to measure the human joint motion. For example, bend sensors can be mounted over the elbow, the knee or the finger measuring their angular position. Commercially, different types of bend sensors are available. In this paper, four types of sensor made of a carbon ink-based layer were studied. These sensors differ for the protective layer over the conductive ink. Their electrical resistance also decays over time and depends on how the sensor is fixed on the joint. A preliminary evaluation is reported on this paper. In particular, the behavior of the electrical resistance of the sensors varying the bending angle and the decay of the resistance over time are reported. The goal of this study is to give information about these sensors to the designers in order to increase knowledge for a metrological characterization and to choose the best strategies to design a biomedical device for limb motion monitoring.
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement | 2016
Michela Borghetti; Matteo Ghittorelli; Emilio Sardini; Mauro Serpelloni; Fabrizio Torricelli
Inkjet printing is a viable method for rapid and low-cost manufacturing of flexible sensors. In this paper, we study a technique for inkjet printing of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythio-phene):poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) strips. A low-cost inkjet desktop printer is used for the fabrication of PEDOT:PSS resistive strips on polyimide substrates. Accounting for several geometries of printed PEDOT:PSS strips, we assess the variability of the fabrication process. Owing to the printing process, we can easily choose the width, length, and thickness. We found that printed strips on polyimide foils show a conductivity equal to 115 S/cm, which linearly increases with the strip thickness. The maximum variability is lower than 13%. The frequency analysis shows a purely resistive impedance in the frequency range investigated (100 Hz-100 kHz). Moreover, the strips folded up to 1000 times shows a resistance variation lower than 6%. The study demonstrates that inkjet printing is a viable method for the simple, fast, reliable, and low-cost fabrication of PEDOT:PSS-based sensors on plastic substrates and circuit interconnections.
ieee international symposium on medical measurements and applications | 2017
Feriel Mekki; Michela Borghetti; Emilio Sardini; Mauro Serpelloni
Instrumentation of conventional aids (walking stick, ortho-cane, crutch, walker, etc.) can generate numerous benefits for both the clinician and the patient, aiming at the improvement of walking activity. In this paper, a designed, fabricated and tested instrumented cane is presented. Its versatile characteristics permit an adoption for different applications. In this paper, the instrumented cane is personalized and tested in order to monitor the ambulation of Parkinson patients. The cane permits to monitor axial forces by means of a strain-bridge and movements by means of an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). It is also composed of a conditioning and transmission circuit, and a power management circuit. All the circuits are integrated on a circuit board. The designed device has been made in order to miniaturize the circuit board and improve the output signal during gait. A Bluetooth module transmits the data wirelessly to a remote computer. The acquisition data can be saved and viewed by a developed user interface realized with LabVIEW. The tilt and force sensing of the cane have been tested, and characterized in the laboratory. The mean experimental standard deviation was about 20 N for axial forces. Hysteresis, linearity, and drift were calculated, and the obtained accuracy was about 0.8°. The instrumented cane prototype is under trials to be adopted for the Parkinsonian community, in order to monitor their ambulation during rehabilitation sessions and as a proposal to detect the “mysterious clinical phenomenon” that is the Freezing of Gait (FoG).
BIOSYSTEMS & BIOROBOTICS | 2015
Michela Borghetti; Alessandro Dionisi; Emilio Sardini; Mauro Serpelloni
The research on wearable sensors for human movement monitoring is motivated by the diffusion of the reduction of the motor skills in a large part of European and World population. With the ageing of the population, this figure is expected to rise dramatically in the next 10 years. Wearable sensor systems aid and assist the patients during their rehabilitation programs, also at home, and support the doctor during both rehabilitation therapy and monitoring operations, giving him/her quantitative values of human movements. Therefore, wearable sensors can be the answer to the need for patient care, reducing the costs of the health facilities and promoting at the same time the health and wellbeing. In this paper, an analysis of different case studies regarding wearable sensors for human movement monitoring is proposed. The aim is to identify the common characteristics and give at the same time different common design strategies that can be adopted and considered in the design of these wearable sensors.
instrumentation and measurement technology conference | 2017
Michele Bona; Michela Borghetti; Emilio Sardini; Mauro Serpelloni
Telemetric systems are a valid alternative to measurement devices exploiting batteries or cabled connections, which may be not suitable in some cases, such as in harsh or hermetic measurement environments. They permit either to supply a passive sensor or to carry out monitoring tasks without contact. In this paper, we propose a novel measurement technique for telemetric systems working with a resistive sensing element. Such technique is based on a reading of system impedance phase angle always at sensing inductors resonant frequency, while relative distance between system inductors is kept fixed. Analytical expressions have been derived to calculate sensor resistive output from phase angle value. They have been obtained from a proper circuit model of the telemetric device. The proposed method has been applied to the wireless measurement of temperature inside an oven. Experimental tests have been carried out, by putting a resistive sensor inside the oven and increasing its internal temperature from about 28 °C to about 134 °C. Preliminary results show that calculated temperature values present an average deviation from reference equal to 1.7 °C. Furthermore, uncertainty related to such values is 1.2 °C. Therefore, they prove the feasibility of implementing the proposed technique in all the applications that require the use of telemetric devices with passive resistive sensors.
Archive | 2017
Mariagrazia Marziano; Sarah Tonello; Marialaura Serzanti; Michela Borghetti; N. Lopomo; Mauro Serpelloni; Stefano Pandini; Andrea Merlettini; Chiara Gualandi; Maria Letizia Focarete; Massimo Messori; Maurizio Toselli; Daniela Uberti; Maurizio Memo; Patrizia Dell’Era; Emilio Sardini
Nowadays techniques for sensitive non-invasive, real-time monitoring of cell differentiation and maturation are highly demanded. In light of this, the development of electrochemical printed sensors impedance-based could represent a promising tool. In the present work, we developed 2D ink-jet printed sensors for myoblasts adhesion monitoring, using carbon-based ink on a substrate consisting in non-woven electrospun mats made in crosslinked poly(e-caprolactone) (PCL). First of all, sensors printability was optimized and the biocompatibility tested. In order to determine the possibility to employ the prepared systems as scaffolds for dynamic cellular cultures, the mechanical response of the PCL scaffold was evaluated through the application of cyclic deformation tests. After that, electrical characterization of ink and substrate was performed, followed by electrochemical impedance-based measurements to evaluate myoblasts adhesion. Biocompatibility assessment showed good results for both carbon and PCL. Mechanical tests findings suggested that a training of 50 cycles and a proper value of strain should be applied before the cell seeding, in order to ensure a subsequent controlled strain amplitude. The sensorized scaffold allowed us to correlate cell adhesion with an increase of impedance module, in agreement with biocompatibility testing. Thus, this first preliminary testing suggested that this non-invasive impedance spectroscopy-based measurement system can be used for sensitive monitoring of cells adhesion, in static and moreover, as suggested from mechanical characterization, in dynamic conditions.
International Conference on Robotics in Alpe-Adria Danube Region | 2017
Alberto Borboni; Mauro Serpelloni; Michela Borghetti; Cinzia Amici; Francesco Aggogeri; Davide Fausti; Massimo Antonini; Maurizio Mor; Emilio Sardini; Rodolfo Faglia
Stroke patients are often affected by hemiparesis. In the rehabilitation of these patients the function of the hand is often neglected. Thus in this work we propose a robotic approach to the rehabilitation of the hand of a stroke patient in hospital and also at home. Some experimental results can be presented here especially for inpatients. Further experimental results on home-patients must be acquired through a telemedicine platform, designed for this application.
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement | 2017
Sarah Tonello; Giulia Abate; Michela Borghetti; Mariagrazia Marziano; Mauro Serpelloni; Daniela Uberti; N. Lopomo; Maurizio Memo; Emilio Sardini
Measurement systems for early and reliable detection of degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), are extremely important in clinical diagnosis. Among these, biochemical assays represent a commonly used method to distinguish patients from healthy population thanks to the sensitive recognition of specific biomarkers in biological fluids. In order to overcome actual limitations of these techniques in term of cost, standardization, and sensitivity, this study aimed to realize a low-cost highly sensitive portable point-of-care (PoC) testing system based on screen-printed electrochemical sensors. The development of the platform specifically included both the design of the sensing probe and the electronic circuit devoted to condition and acquires the transduced electric signal. The designed circuit was implemented in a printed circuit board and interfaced to a wireless system based on bluetooth data transmission in order to improve the portability of the proposed solution. Preliminary results were obtained by using controlled concentrations of electrolytic solutions and calibrating the sensors for antibodies and for a well-known protein (i.e., interleukin 8) quantified by anodic stripping voltammetry (ASV). Findings from ASV measurements showed a sensitivity of