Fabrication of Flexible Transducer Arrays With Through-Wafer Electrical Interconnects Based on Trench Refilling With PDMS

Flexible transducer arrays are desired to wrap around catheter tips for side-looking intravascular ultrasound imaging. We present a technique for constructing flexible capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) arrays by forming polymer-filled deep trenches in a silicon substrate. First, we etch deep trenches between the bottom electrodes of CMUT elements on a prime silicon wafer using deep reactive ion etching. Second, we fusion-bond a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer to the prime silicon wafer. Once the silicon handle and buried oxide layers are removed from the back side of the SOI wafer, the remaining thin silicon device layer acts as a movable membrane and top electrode. Third, we fill the deep trenches with polydimethylsiloxane, and thin the wafer down from the back side. The 16 by 16 flexible 2-D arrays presented in this paper have a trench width that varies between 6 and 20 ; the trench depth is 150 ; the membrane thickness is 1.83 ; and the final substrate thickness is 150 . We demonstrate the flexibility of the substrate by wrapping it around a needle tip with a radius of 450 (less than catheter size of 3 French). Measurements in air validate the functionality of the arrays. The 250- by 250- transducer elements have a capacitance of 2.29 to 2.67 pF, and a resonant frequency of 5.0 to 4.3 MHz, for dc bias voltages ranging from 70 to 100 V.     

Pull-In Analysis of Torsional Scanners Actuated by Electrostatic Vertical Combdrives

This paper presents pull-in analysis of torsional MEMS scanners actuated by electrostatic vertical combdrives with general comb gap arrangements and cross sections. The analysis is based on a 2-DOF actuator with a single voltage control. Three failure modes of the scanners are identified as in-plane twist, transversal motion, and out-of-plane twist. For each failure mode, analytical expressions of pull-in deflection are obtained by applying 2D analytical capacitance models to the derived pull-in equations. From these, the dominant pull-in mechanism is shown to be in-plane twist for scanners with high-aspect-ratio torsional springs. The analytical calculations for both symmetric and asymmetric capacitances are shown to be in good agreement with simulation results. The optimum scanner design is achieved when the pull-in deflection matches the capacitance maximum angle. The condition can be expressed in terms of the ratio of the comb thickness to the comb gap, which is smaller than the typical aspect ratio of deep reactive ion etching. The optimum tradeoff between the maximum deflection angle and the number of movable combs is achieved by adjusting the overlap of the movable and fixed combs and the distance of the comb sets from the axis of the rotation.     

Effectiveness of consideration of deformations in problems of fingerprint identification

In the paper, we consider some refined methods for fingerprint recognition taking into account a distorting factor, namely, elastic deformations arising when a finger contacts with the scanner surface. We show that the consideration of elastic deformations significantly improves the quality of fingerprint recognition. Ushmaev Oleg Stanislavovich. Born 1981. Graduated from the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Lomonosov Moscow State University in 2002. Received candidate’s degree in 2004. Scientific interests: image processing, pattern recognition, biometrics. Author of 14 publications. Novikov Sergei Olegovich, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Information Problems RAS. Born in 1963. Graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1986. In 1990 finished the postgraduate study at the Institute of Information Problems, Russian Academy of Sciences. Candidate of Technical Sciences. Scientific interests: pattern recognition, image processing, mathematical modeling in biology. Author of two patents and more than 20 publications. Member of the International Scientific Societies SPI, IEEE Computer Society, IAPR.     

Combinatorial optimization under uncertainty

In this paper, the general problem of Euclidean combinatorial optimization under uncertainty is formulated for the first time and the concepts of a stochastic multiset, a multiset of fuzzy numbers, a stochastic Euclidean combinatorial set, and general Euclidean combinatorial set of fuzzy stochastic numbers that combines the properties of both types of uncertainty are introduced. __________ Translated from Kibernetika i Sistemnyi Analiz, No. 5, pp. 35–44, September–October 2008.     

A Framework for Coordinated Control of Multiagent Systems and Its Applications

In this paper, a framework is proposed for the distributed control and coordination of multiagent systems (MASs). In the proposed framework, the control of MASs is regarded as achieving decentralized control and coordination of agents. Each agent is modeled as a coordinated hybrid agent, which is composed of an intelligent coordination layer and a hybrid control layer. The intelligent coordination layer takes the coordination input, plant input, and workspace input. In the proposed framework, we describe the coordination mechanism in a domain-independent way, i.e., as simple abstract primitives in a coordination rule base for certain dependence relationships between the activities of different agents. The intelligent coordination layer deals with the planning, coordination, decision making, and computation of the agent. The hybrid control layer of the proposed framework takes the output of the intelligent coordination layer and generates discrete and continuous control signals to control the overall process. To verify the feasibility of the proposed framework, experiments for both heterogeneous and homogeneous MASs are implemented. The proposed framework is applied to a multicrane system, a multiple robot system, and a MAS consisting of an overhead crane, a mobile robot, and a robot manipulator. It is demonstrated that the proposed framework can model the three MASs. The agents in these systems are able to cooperate and coordinate to achieve a global goal. In addition, the stability of systems modeled using the proposed framework is also analyzed.     

Is team training in briefings for surgical teams feasible in simulation?

We developed a module for surgical team training using briefings in simulated crisis scenarios and here we report preliminary findings. Nine surgical teams (34 trainees) participated in a pre-training simulation, followed by an interactive workshop on briefing and checklists, and then a post-training simulation. Both technical and non-technical skills were assessed via observation during simulations by expert trainers who provided feedback on performances at the end of simulation. Trainees also reported their attitudes to briefings and evaluated the training. Pre-training attitudes to briefing were positive, some of which improved post-training and trainees’ evaluation of the training was positive. Surgeons’ technical skill improved significantly post-training, but their decision-making skill was rated lower than other non-technical skills, compared to other trainees. The training did not appear to greatly improve non-technical skill performance. Training surgical teams in simulation is feasible but much more work is needed on measurement development and training strategy to confirm its efficacy and utility.     

A Secure Grid Medical Data Manager Interfaced to the gLite Middleware

The medical community is producing and manipulating a tremendous volume of digital data for which computerized archiving, processing and analysis is needed. Grid infrastructures are promising for dealing with challenges arising in computerized medicine but the manipulation of medical data on such infrastructures faces both the problem of interconnecting medical information systems to Grid middlewares and of preserving patients’ privacy in a wide and distributed multi-user system. These constraints are often limiting the use of Grids for manipulating sensitive medical data. This paper describes our design of a medical data management system taking advantage of the advanced gLite data management services, developed in the context of the EGEE project, to fulfill the stringent needs of the medical community. It ensures medical data protection through strict data access control, anonymization and encryption. The multi-level access control provides the flexibility needed for implementing complex medical use-cases. Data anonymization prevents the exposure of most sensitive data to unauthorized users, and data encryption guarantees data protection even when it is stored at remote sites. Moreover, the developed prototype provides a Grid storage resource manager (SRM) interface to standard medical DICOM servers thereby enabling transparent access to medical data without interfering with medical practice.     

Building language resources for a Multi-Engine English-Filipino machine translation system

In this paper, we present the building of various language resources for a multi-engine bi-directional English-Filipino Machine Translation (MT) system. Since linguistics information on Philippine languages are available, but as of yet, the focus has been on theoretical linguistics and little is done on the computational aspects of these languages, attempts are reported here on the manual construction of these language resources such as the grammar, lexicon, morphological information, and the corpora which were literally built from almost non-existent digital forms. Due to the inherent difficulties of manual construction, we also discuss our experiments on various technologies for automatic extraction of these resources to handle the intricacies of the Filipino language, designed with the intention of using them for the MT system. To implement the different MT engines and to ensure the improvement of translation quality, other language tools (such as the morphological analyzer and generator, and the part of speech tagger) were developed.     

A technique for measuring charges of relativistic nuclei in a nuclear emulsion on the PAVICOM automated facility

A technique for measuring the charges of relativistic nuclei in thick emulsion layers irradiated in a longitudinal direction is described. This technique has been implemented on the PAVICOM completely automated facility at the Lebedev Physical Institute. The calibration curves for relativistic nuclei with Z > 3 are presented. The advantages of this technique are demonstrated using charge measurements of ²⁸Si nuclear fragments as an example.