Diabetes mellitus affects 25.8 million Americans (8.3%) and over 300 million people worldwide. Clinical trials indicate that proper management of blood glucose levels is critical in preventing or delaying complications associated with diabetes. Thus, there is a common need to monitor and manage blood glucose properly for people with diabetes. However, the patients’ compliance for recommended monitoring frequency is low due to the pain and inconvenience of current standard finger-pricking tests. To promote patient adherence to the recommended self-monitoring frequency, non-invasive/ minimally invasive glucose testing approaches are needed. Luminescent microparticle sensor is an attractive solution. For these sensors to be deployed in vivo, a matched optical system is needed to interrogate dermally-implanted sensors. This research project investigated the light propagation in skin and the interaction with implants using Monte Carlo modeling. The results of the modeling were used to design an optical system with high interrogation and collection efficiency (40~300 times improvement). The optical system was then constructed and evaluated experimentally. A stable skin phantom mimicking the optical properties of human skin was developed as a permanent evaluation medium to minimize the use of animals. The optical properties of the skin phantom matched the maximum published values of human skin in scattering and absorption over the spectral range of 540~700nm in order to avoid overestimation of the capability of the system. The significant photon loss observed at the connection between the designed system and a commercial spectrometer was overcome using two optimized designs: a two-detector system and a customized low-resolution spectrometer system. Both optimization approaches effectively address the photon loss problem and each showed good SNR (>100) while maintaining a sufficient system resolution for use with fluorescent materials. Both systems are suitable for luminescence measurement, because broad bands of the luminescent spectrum are of interest. In the future, either system can be easily modified into a more compact system (e.g. handheld), and it can be directly coupled to an analog-to-digital converter and integrated circuits offering potential for a single compact and portable device for field use with luminescent diagnostic systems as well as implanted sensors.

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Yes / Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) has great advantages over traditional endoscopy because it is portable and easy to use, especially in remote monitoring health-services. However, during the WCE process, the large amount of captured video data demands a significant deal of computation to analyze and retrieve informative video frames. In order to facilitate efficient WCE data collection and browsing task, we present a resource- and bandwidth-aware WCE video summarization framework that extracts the representative keyframes of the WCE video contents by removing redundant and non-informative frames. For redundancy elimination, we use Jeffrey-divergence between color histograms and inter-frame Boolean series-based correlation of color channels. To remove non-informative frames, multi-fractal texture features are extracted to assist the classification using an ensemble-based classifier. Owing to the limited WCE resources, it is impossible for the WCE system to perform computationally intensive video summarization tasks. To resolve computational challenges, mobile-cloud architecture is incorporated, which provides resizable computing capacities by adaptively offloading video summarization tasks between the client and the cloud server. The qualitative and quantitative results are encouraging and show that the proposed framework saves information transmission cost and bandwidth, as well as the valuable time of data analysts in browsing remote sensing data. / Supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (2013R1A1A2012904).

Ce travail de thèse a pour objectif principal d'améliorer la sensibilité d'un micro-récepteur RMN implantable, utilisé dans le cadre de la micro-spectroscopie localisée in vivo. Dans la première partie de cette thèse, nous avons réexaminé la fabrication et modélisation de ce micro-récepteur par rapport à sa sensibilité. Parmi les deux procédés de fabrication proposés (électrodéposition du micro-récepteur avec un underpass sur un substrat de silicium et de verre), nous avons retenu celui-qui nous a permis d'obtenir les meilleures performances en termes de facteur de qualité. Les prototypes fabriqués avec ce procédé ont été caractérisés à l'aide d'un modèle que nous avons développé, basé sur une équation à coefficients polynomiaux. Ceux-ci ont été établis à partir de la simulation du layout du capteur et ont été réajustés en fonction des mesures. Ce modèle polynomial nous a conduits à un circuit équivalent du micro-récepteur, permettant d'approfondir l'étude de son comportement électrique en radio fréquences. La deuxième partie de ce travail est développée autour de l'association d'un amplificateur faible bruit (LNA) au plus près du micro-récepteur, afin d'améliorer sa sensibilité. Nous avons analysé l'état de l'art de l'amplification de micro-bobines RMN ainsi que l'interaction électromagnétique entre un circuit intégré et l'environnement RMN. En partant de cette analyse et des contraintes à remplir par le circuit d'adaptation (en termes de transmission de puissance, gain en tension et adaptation faible bruit), nous avons proposé un circuit d'amplification locale permettant d'améliorer la sensibilité du capteur. Nous avons validée notre démarche par simulation (avec notre micro-récepteur) et nous avons vérifié l'intérêt de celle-ci en RMN (avec une bobine de surface). Les résultats de ce travail nous ont permis d'établir des solutions concrètes pour atteindre la sensibilité nécessaire à nos applications / The aim of this thesis is to improve the sensitivity of an implantable micro NMR sensor, dedicated to the in vivo local micro-spectroscopy. In the first part of this thesis, we re-examined the design and modeling of this micro-sensor according to its sensitivity. We proposed two micromachining processes (electrodeposition of the micro-sensor with an underpass on a silicon and glass substrate) and we kept the one allowing the higher quality factor. The prototypes made with the chosen process were characterized thanks to a model that we developed, based in an equation with polynomial coefficients. These coefficients were determined from the layout of the sensor and were adapted to match the measurements. From this polynomial model, we proposed an equivalent circuit of the micro-sensor to have a better knowledge of its electrical behavior at high frequencies. The second part of this work is about the closer association of a low noise amplifier (LNA) with the micro-sensor to improve its sensitivity. We analyzed the state of art on the amplification of NMR micro-coils and the electromagnetic interaction between the integrated circuits ant the NMR environment. From this analysis and the conditions of the matching network (power transmission, voltage gain and low noise matching), we proposed a local amplification circuit achieving the sensitivity improvement of the sensor. This approach was validated by simulation (with our micro-sensor) and verified in an NMR system (with a surface coil). The results of this work allow us to set practical solutions to reach the required sensitivity of our applications

<div>Glutamate is the principal excitatory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system. As one of the most abundant neurotransmitters, glutamate plays an essential role in many processes of the central nervous system and beyond. As a result, any disruption that causes an abnormal glutamate level can significantly impact the central nervous system's neurological functions. Glutamate excitotoxicity is a neuropathology that persists in many neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease as well as in the traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries. Thus, the ability to obtain precise information about the extracellular glutamate level in the living brain and spinal cord tissue may provide new insights into the fundamental understanding of glutamate in neurological disorders and neurophysiological phenomena.</div><div><br></div><div>Conventional bioanalytical techniques that characterize glutamate levels <i>in vivo</i> have a low spatiotemporal resolution that has impeded our understanding of this dynamic event. The electrochemical sensor has emerged as a promising solution that can satisfy the requirement for highly reliable and continuous monitoring methods with an excellent spatiotemporal resolution for the characterization of extracellular glutamate concentration. In this thesis, I present various amperometric biosensors fabricated using a simple direct ink writing technique for<i> ex vivo </i>and <i>in vivo</i> glutamate monitoring.</div><div><br></div><div>The amperometric biosensor is fabricated by immobilizing glutamate oxidase on nanocomposite electrodes made of platinum nanoparticles, multiwalled carbon nanotubes, and a conductive polymer. The biosensors demonstrate good sensitivity and selectivity that can be inserted into a spinal cord and measure extracellular glutamate concentration. Additionally, another type of glutamate biosensor is fabricated from commercially available activated carbon with platinum microparticles. We utilize astrocyte cell culture to demonstrate our biosensor's ability to monitor the glutamate uptake process. We also present a direct measurement of glutamate release from optogenetic stimulation in mouse primary visual cortex brain slides. </div><div><br></div><div>Moreover, we explore a new type of material, perovskite nickelate-Nafion heterostructure, to fabricate biosensors and measure glutamate inside the mouse brain. Finally, by utilizing the nanocomposite ink and direct ink writing technique, we also fabricate the gold-ruthenium non-enzymatic glucose biosensor. We apply a modified Butler-Volmer non-linear model to evaluate the impact of geometrical and chemical design parameters of non-enzymatic biosensor performance. </div><div><br></div>