Type B aortic dissection (TBAD) represents a serious medical emergency with up to a 50% associated 5-year mortality caused by thoracic aorta, dissection-associated aneurysmal (DAA) degeneration, and rupture. Unfortunately, conventional size-related diagnostic methods cannot distinguish high-risk DAAs that benefit from surgical intervention from stable DAAs. Our goal is to use DAA stiffness measured with magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) as a biomarker to distinguish high-risk DAAs from stable DAAs. This is a feasibility study using MRE to (1) fabricate human-like geometries TBAD phantoms with different stiffnesses, (2) measure stiffness in TBAD phantoms with rheometry, and (3) demonstrate the first successful application of MRE to the thoracic aorta of a human volunteer. AD phantoms with heterogenous wall stiffness demonstrated the correlation between MRE-derived stiffness and rheometric measured stiffness. A pilot scan was performed in a healthy volunteer to test the technique's feasibility in the thoracic aorta.

Falling on the ground can cause serious injuries such as bruises, broken bones, head injuries, etc. Annually, 684,000 individuals die globally from falling to the ground. There are more than 37 million fall injuries that require medical care each year. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention anticipates seven fall deaths every hour by 2030. In Saudi Arabia, falls are the sixth major cause of death and the seventh major cause of living with a disability. Furthermore, falling to the ground becomes a risk factor with age, obesity, and presence of balance affecting diseases due to the fact that individuals have difficulty getting up after a fall, and the majority of them stay on the ground for more than an hour. As a result, the risk of multiple injuries, dehydration, pressure ulcers, rhabdomyolysis, hypothermia, and pneumonia increases. This study aims to design and analyze a device that can assist individuals, especially seniors, at risk to rise up after a fall to the ground with no external help from others. The design of the device was modeled using SolidWorks 2017 (Dassault Systems, Waltham, MA, USA). Also, finite element analysis (FEA) was performed to study von Mises stresses and total deformation on the model. FEA results showed that the device could withstand lifting an overweight individual from the ground without reaching the maximum failure stress of a conventional material such as aluminum.

Background: Measuring contrast sensitivity for each of the three cone types separately allows for a more precise and clinically valuable assessment of color vision. This study examined how pupil size affects cone contrast sensitivity (CCS). Methods: This study included 50 participants of equal gender. The mean age was 20.88 (±1.8) years. Using the ColorDx, a Landolt C stimulus of various sizes in an adaptive screening mode, we sequentially determined contrast sensitivity for long-, medium-, and short-wavelength stimuli. Two consecutive measurements were performed on participants, one with their natural pupil size (range 4–5 mm diameter) and, subsequently, with six artificial eye pupils (1 mm to 6 mm). Results: Generally, the 1 mm pupil size caused the greatest reduction in contrast sensitivity for two of the three cones. There was no significant main effect of sex (F = 0.96, df = 1, p = 0.32) on the log cone contrast sensitivity of the L-cone. However, pupil size had a significant main effect (F = 116.1, df = 6, p < 0.001). Within each sex, the log CCS was significantly reduced as the pupil size decreased compared with the normal pupil size. Conclusions: New technologies that assess individual cone pathway functions could potentially assist in identifying early or progressive conditions that may impact color vision pathways from the retina to the brain. Standardized protocols—such as controlled retinal illumination—are critical to avoid misinterpretation.