Biomedical applications description

Volume 4 is intended to summarize the principles required for these biomedical applications of time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. For this reason, many of the chapters describe the development of red/NIR probes and the mechanisms by which analytes interact with the probes and produce spectral changes. Other chapters describe the unique opportunities of red/NIR fluorescence and the types of instruments suitable for such measurements. Also included is a description of the principles of chemical sensing based on lifetimes, and an overview of the ever-important topic of immunoassays. 

Artificial Soft Biologies. In addition to sutures, polymers are used for a number of biomedical applications, as illustrated in Figure 5.128. Polymers used for hard structural applications such as dentures and bones are presented in this figure, but will be described in the next section. In this section, we will concentrate on polymers for soft biological material applications and will limit the description to mechanical properties as much as possible. 

This textbook provides an overview of biomedical mass spectrometry with particular emphasis on GC/MS and quantitative methods. In addition, descriptions are provided of the various types of mass spectrometers and ionization techniques that are used for biomedical applications. 

Polyanhydrides are a class of bioerodible polymers that have shown excellent characteristics as drug delivery carriers. The properties of these biomaterials can be tailored to obtain desirable controlled release characteristics. Extensive research in this promising area of biomaterials is the focus of this entry. In the first part of the entry, the chemical structures and synthesis methods of various polyanhydrides are discussed. This is followed by a discussion of the physical, chemical, and thermal properties of polyanhydrides and their effect on the degradation mechanism of these materials. Finally, a description of drug release applications from polyanhydride systems is presented, highlighting their potential in biomedical applications. 

Introduction Description of Sensors Biomedical Applications of Physical Sensors... 

Microcellular materials exist in many forms. Methods for production of these materials are as varied as potential applications. This chapter reviews the technology of one class of microcellular materials, microcellular foams, which are sought for biomedical applications. Included is a description of several methods of foam production, foam morphologies, and present uses for microcellular foam materials. New methods of microcellular foam production and potential uses for the resultant foam materials are important to those interested in biomaterials and contemporary biomedical applications. It is for this reason that advances in microcellular foam formation are emphasized in the final section of this chapter. Increasingly, it is becoming evident that microcellular foams can be used effectively in many medical applications, particularly polymeric foam materials which are being investigated in this laboratory. For this reason, the focus of this chapter pertains to possible biomedical applications of polymeric microcellular foams. 

There are many examples of current efforts where small organometallic compounds are being investigated for biomedical application. Following is a short description of some of these. 

Classification, or the division of data into groups, methods can be broadly of two types supervised and unsupervised. The primary difference is that prior information about classes into which the data fall is known and representative samples from these classes are available for supervised methods. The supervised and unsupervised approaches loosely lend themselves into problems that have prior hypotheses and those in which discovery of the classes of data may be needed, respectively. The division is purely for organization purposes in many applications, a combination of both methods can be very powerful. In general, biomedical data analysis will require multiple spectral features and will have stochastic variations. Hence, the field of statistical pattern recognition [88] is of primary importance and we use the term recognition with our learning and classification method descriptions below. 

Spatial heterogeneity and low reproducibility of surface roughness of the first generation of substrates for the surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) were the basic restrictions of the quantitative description of effect and comparative analysis of data obtained in different laboratories. For this reason SERS spectroscopy, despite of high selectivity and sensitivity, has not got wide application as a routine analytical technique in physical, chemical and biomedical laboratories. 

The annual symposium proceedings of the biomedical section of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) contain descriptions of new and current research on application of lasers and optics in biomedicine. 

This chapter has concentrated on only the major derivative classes employed in GC-MS, and only a few examples of each could be mentioned. However, the literature, including the other chapters of the present handbook, contains an abundance of references and descriptions of other derivative types, many of which will have hidden mass spectrometric potential for particular applications. Trace analyses have been covered in depth for steroids [202] and cannabinoids [203] and in the application of NICI to drugs [204] and neurotransmitters [205]. A recent volume [206] includes a number of specialist chapters devoted to the application of mass spectrometry in different areas of biomedical research. It can be consulted for more in-depth information of work done with particular analyte classes, and contains a short overview of chemical derivatization for mass spectrometry, including some GC-MS examples [207], Comprehensive reviews by Evershed, covering developments and new applications of GC-MS, contain many references to derivati-... 

Based on the above description, it is no doubt to say that stearic acid along with its derivatives are important and promising materials in biomedical science. With the progress of chemical industry, stearic acid of high purity and quality, or various stearic acids derivatives can be produeed to meet different requirements of medical application. 

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