Introduction Cerebral autoregulation (CA) refers to the physiological mechanisms in the brain to maintain constant blood flow despite changes in cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP). It plays an important protective role against the danger of ischaemia or oedema of the brain. Over the years, various methods for CA assessment have been proposed, while most commonly used parameters include the autoregulation index (ARI), which grades CA into ten levels; transfer function (TF) analysis, describing CA as a high pass filter; the mean flow index (Mx), that estimates CA through the correlation coefficient between slow waves of mean cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV) and CPP; and pressure reactivity index (PRx), calculated as a moving correlation coefficient between mean arterial blood pressure (ABP) and intracranial pressure (ICP). However, until now, how these parameters are related with each other is still not clear. A comprehensive investigation of the relationship between all these parameters is therefore needed. In addition, the methods mentioned above mostly assume the system being analysed is linear and the signals are stationary, with the announcement of non-stationary characteristic of CA, a more robust method, in particular suitable for non-stationary signal analysis, needs to be explored. Objectives and Methods This thesis addresses three primary questions: 1. What are the relationships between currently widely used CA parameters, i.e. Mx, ARI, TF parameters, from theoretical and practical point of view? 2. It there an effective method that can be introduced to assess CA, which is suitable for analyses of non-stationary signals? 3. How can bedside monitoring of cerebral autoregulation be improved in traumatic brain injury patients? These general aims have been translated into a series of experiments, retrospective analyses and background studies that are presented in different chapters of this thesis. Results and Conclusions This PhD project carefully scrutinised currently used CA assessment methodologies in TBI patients, demonstrating significant relationships between ARI, Mx and TF phase. A new introduced wavelet-transform-based method, wPRx was validated and showed more stable result for CA assessment than the well-established parameter, PRx. A multi-window approach with weighting system for optimal CPP estimation was described. The result showed a significant improvement in the continuity and stability of CPPopt estimation, which made it possible to be applied in the future clinical management of TBI patients.

<p> This thesis contributes significantly towards the development of a robust algorithm for design sensitivity analysis and the optimization of microwave structures. Based on the frequency-domain finite-element method, the approach provides accurate sensitivity information using both 2-D and 3-D formulations. It also significantly accelerates the optimization process.</p> <p> The design sensitivity analysis method greatly influences the efficiency and accuracy of gradient-based optimization by providing the response gradient (response Jacobians) for the whole range of parameter values. However, common commercial electromagnetic simulators provide only specific engineering responses, such as Z- or S-parameters. No sensitivity information is made available for further exploration of the design-parameter space. It is common to compute the design sensitivities from the response themselves using finite-difference or higher-order approximations at the response level. Consequently, for each design parameter of interest, at least one additional full-wave analysis is performed. However, when the number of design parameters becomes large, the simulation time becomes prohibitive for electromagnetic design procedures.</p> <p> The self-adjoint sensitivity analysis (SASA) is so far the most efficient way to extract the sensitivity information for the network parameters with the finite-element method. As an improvement of the adjoint-variable method (AVM), it eliminates the additional (adjoint) system analyses. With one single full-wave analysis, the sensitivities with respect to all design parameters are computed. This significantly improves the efficiency of the sensitivity computations. Through our proposed method, the finite-difference frequency-domain self-adjoint sensitivity analysis (FDFD-SASA), the process is further improved by eliminating the need for exporting the system matrix, thus improving both compatibility and computation time. The only requirement for integrating the sensitivity solver with the commercial EM simulators is the ability to access the field solution at the user-defined grid points. The sensitivity information is obtained by simple manipulation of the field solution as a post-process and hence, it adds little or no overhead to the simulation time.</p> <p> We explore the feasibility of implementing our newly proposed method using field solutions from a frequency-domain commercial solver HFSS v 11. We confirm the accuracy of the FDFD-SASA for shape parameters of metallic structures. Both 2-D and 3-D examples are presented, where the reference results are provided through the traditional finite-difference approximations. Also, the efficiency of the FDFD-SASA is validated by a filter design example, exploiting gradient-based optimization algorithm.</p> / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

La thèse est portée essentiellement sur la stabilisation et la contrôlabilité de deux équations des ondes moyennant un seul contrôle agissant sur le bord du domaine. Dans le cas du contrôle dynamique, le contrôle est introduit dans le système par une équation différentielle agissant sur le bord. C'est en effet un système hybride. Le contrôle peut être aussi applique directement sur le bord d'une équation, c'est le cas du contrôle indirecte mais non borne. La nature du système ainsi coupledépend du couplage des équations, et ceci donne divers résultats par la stabilisation (exponentielle et polynomiale) et la contrôlabilité exacte (espace contrôlable). Des nouvelles inégalités d'énergie permettent de mettre en oeuvre la Méthode fréquentielle et la Méthode d'Unicité de Hilbert. / This thesis is concerned with the stabilization and the exact controllability of two wave equations by means of only one control acting on the boundary of the domain. In the case of dynamic control, the control is introduced into the system by differential equation acting on the boundary. It is indeed a hybrid system. The control can be also applied directly on the boundary of one of the equations. In this case, the control is indirect but unbounded. The behavior of the obtained system depends on theways of coupling. Various results are established for the stabilization (exponential or polynomial) and the exact controllability (controllable space of initial data). A new inequality of energy allows to apply the Frequency Method and the Hilbert Uniqueness Method.

Cette thèse est consacrée à l’étude de la stabilisation de certains systèmes distribués avec contrôle frontière de type dynamique. Nous considérons, d’abord, la stabilisation de l’équation de la poutre de Rayleigh avec un seul contrôle frontière dynamique moment ou force. Nous montrons que le système n’est pas uniformément (autrement dit exponentiellement) stable; mais par une méthode spectrale, nous établissons le taux polynomial optimal de décroissance de l’énergie du système. Ensuite, nous étudions la stabilisation indirecte de l’équation des ondes avec un amortissement frontière de type dynamique fractionnel. Nous montrons que le taux de décroissance de l’énergie dépend de la nature géométrique du domaine. En utilisant la méthode fréquentielle et une méthode spectrale, nous montrons la non stabilité exponentielle et nous établissons, plusieurs résultats de stabilité polynomiale. Enfin, nous considérons l’approximation de l’équation des ondes mono-dimensionnelle avec un seul amortissement frontière de type dynamique par un schéma de différence finie. Par une méthode spectrale, nous montrons que l’énergie discrétisée ne décroit pas uniformément (par rapport au pas du maillage) polynomialement vers zéro comme l’énergie du système continu. Nous introduisons, alors, un terme de viscosité numérique et nous montrons la décroissance polynomiale uniforme de l’énergie de notre schéma discret avec ce terme de viscosité. / This thesis is devoted to the study of the stabilization of some distributed systems with dynamic boundary control. First, we consider the stabilization of the Rayleigh beam equation with only one dynamic boundary control moment or force. We show that the system is not uniformly (exponentially) stable. However, using a spectral method, we establish the optimal polynomial decay rate of the energy of the system. Next, we study the indirect stability of the wave equation with a fractional dynamic boundary control. We show that the decay rate of the energy depends on the nature of the geometry of the domain. Using a frequency approach and a spectral method, we show the non exponential stability of the system and we establish, different polynomial stability results. Finally, we consider the finite difference space discretization of the 1-d wave equation with dynamic boundary control. First, using a spectral approach, we show that the polynomial decay of the discretized energy is not uniform with respect to the mesh size, as the energy of the continuous system. Next, we introduce a viscosity term and we establish the uniform (with respect to the mesh size) polynomial energy decay of our discrete scheme.