Bioimpedance analysis is a noninvasive, low cost and a commonly used approach for body composition measurements and assessment of clinical condition. There are a variety of methods applied for interpretation of measured bioimpedance data and a wide range of utilizations of bioimpedance in body composition estimation and evaluation of clinical status. This paper reviews the main concepts of bioimpedance measurement techniques including the frequency based, the allocation based, bioimpedance vector analysis and the real time bioimpedance analysis systems. Commonly used prediction equations for body composition assessment and influence of anthropometric measurements, gender, ethnic groups, postures, measurements protocols and electrode artifacts in estimated values are also discussed. In addition, this paper also contributes to the deliberations of bioimpedance analysis assessment of abnormal loss in lean body mass and unbalanced shift in body fluids and to the summary of diagnostic usage in different kinds of conditions such as cardiac, pulmonary, renal, and neural and infection diseases.

Dielectrophoresis (DEP) is a label-free, accurate, fast, low-cost diagnostic technique that uses the principles of polarization and the motion of bioparticles in applied electric fields. This technique has been proven to be beneficial in various fields, including environmental research, polymer research, biosensors, microfluidics, medicine and diagnostics. Biomedical science research is one of the major research areas that could potentially benefit from DEP technology for diverse applications. Nevertheless, many medical science research investigations have yet to benefit from the possibilities offered by DEP. This paper critically reviews the fundamentals, recent progress, current challenges, future directions and potential applications of research investigations in the medical sciences utilizing DEP technique. This review will also act as a guide and reference for medical researchers and scientists to explore and utilize the DEP technique in their research fields.

Magnetic resonant-based wireless power transfer system (WPTS) is an efficient way to energize critical biomedical devices, such as wireless capsule endoscopes, where a direct wire connection is not practical. However, low power transfer efficiency (PTE) and poor received power stability (RPS) are usually the main bottlenecks of WPTS in this application. Thus, this paper proposes an efficient WPTS that tremendously improves the PTE and enriches the RPS. In order to improve the PTE, an optimum three-coil inductive link is adopted with a compact wearable power transmitting coil-I (PTC-I) and a 2-3D power receiving coil. As a result, the stability is improved with the new configuration of the power transmission coil-III (PTC-III) and power combining technique at the receiving side. To confirm the validity of the proposed design, proof-of-concept prototypes were implemented for an experimental test. Results obtained from the experimental test assured that the proposed PTC-I-based system achieved a PTE of more than 8% while transferring 758 mW of power with 68.7% RPS. The best overall RPS attained by the proposed PTC-III based system is 79.2%. This system achieved a PTE of 5.4% transferring at least 570 mW of power. In comparison, the performance of the proposed designs greatly outweighs the previous designs.

This paper presents a state-of-the-art survey of smartphone (SP)-based solutions for fall detection and prevention. Falls are considered as major health hazards for both the elderly and people with neurodegenerative diseases. To mitigate the adverse consequences of falling, a great deal of research has been conducted, mainly focused on two different approaches, namely, fall detection and fall prevention. Required hardware for both fall detection and prevention are also available in SPs. Consequently, researchers’ interest in finding SP-based solutions has increased dramatically over recent years. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no published review on SP-based fall detection and prevention. Thus in this paper, we present the taxonomy for SP-based fall detection and prevention solutions and systematic comparisons of existing studies. We have also identified three challenges and three open issues for future research, after reviewing the existing articles. Our time series analysis demonstrates a trend towards the integration of external sensing units with SPs for improvement in usability of the systems.