Biomechanics of Bone / Bone Biomechanics
Iman Zoljanahi Oskui
Volume 12, Issue 1 , June 2018, , Pages 75-84
Abstract
With the increase in lifespan there are many concerns related to ability of the hard tissues such as teeth to meet the physical demands over an extended period of function. The dentin has a special microstructural feature that governs its mechanical behavior, e.g., fracture mechanics: cylindrical tubules ...
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With the increase in lifespan there are many concerns related to ability of the hard tissues such as teeth to meet the physical demands over an extended period of function. The dentin has a special microstructural feature that governs its mechanical behavior, e.g., fracture mechanics: cylindrical tubules that are called dentin tubules. These tubules are gradually occluded in the elderly. The present study is aimed to investigate the effects of microstructure and its aging-related changes of the considered fiber-reinforced composite dentin on the fracture behavior and crack propagation trajectory, utilizing linear elastic fracture mechanics and finite element method. Obtained results indicate that the crack propagation path depends on geometrical microstructure of the dentin as well as respective mechanical properties and arrangement of dentin tubules. Also our results delineate that occlusion of dentinal tubule due to the aging plays a significant role at crack propagation trajectory and behaves as a barrier to crack growth.
Biomedical Image Processing / Medical Image Processing
Somayeh Maleki Balajoo; Davoud Asemani; Hamid Soltanian-Zadeh
Volume 9, Issue 1 , April 2015, , Pages 99-111
Abstract
Although the cognitive deficits due to age-related brain differences have been largely analyzed, the altered connectivity of task related functional networks in aging requires more studies. As the brain of old adults experience some alterations in task performance during cognitive challenges, the related ...
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Although the cognitive deficits due to age-related brain differences have been largely analyzed, the altered connectivity of task related functional networks in aging requires more studies. As the brain of old adults experience some alterations in task performance during cognitive challenges, the related effects on connectivity of functional networks are here evaluated using event-related functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). The fMRI data have been acquired for simple visual and motor tasks. For each subject, several Functional Connectivity (FC) networks including, motor, visual and the default mode networks are firstly calculated using a conventional voxel-wise correlation analysis with predefined region of interest. Then, the strength of functional connectivity is assessed and compared for different age groups. The current study has evaluated three hypotheses on FC of aging brain: the frontal regions involved with motor network try to compensate for declines in the posterior regions, default-mode network is less suppressed and, the posterior regions involved with visual network exhibit less connectivity. The first two hypotheses are accepted by analysis results but visual network behaves differently. Also, results show that the task related functional connectivity is considerably altered in old adults compared to young adults. Old adults demonstrate higher connectivity strength on average with a slightly smaller variance than young adults.
