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Creators/Authors contains: "Gu, Xianfeng."

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  1. Minimally invasive endovascular therapy (MIET) is an innovative technique that utilizes percutaneous access and transcatheter implantation of medical devices to treat vascular diseases. However, conventional devices often face limitations such as incomplete or suboptimal treatment, leading to issues like recanalization in brain aneurysms, endoleaks in aortic aneurysms, and paravalvular leaks in cardiac valves. In this study, we introduce a new metastructure design for MIET employing re-entrant honeycomb structures with negative Poisson's ratio (NPR), which are initially designed through topology optimization and subsequently mapped onto a cylindrical surface. Using ferromagnetic soft materials, we developed structures with adjustable mechanical properties called magnetically activated structures (MAS). These magnetically activated structures can change shape under noninvasive magnetic fields, letting them fit against blood vessel walls to fix leaks or movement issues. The soft ferromagnetic materials allow the stent design to be remotely controlled, changed, and rearranged using external magnetic fields. This offers accurate control over stent placement and positioning inside blood vessels. We performed magneto-mechanical simulations to evaluate the proposed design's performance. Experimental tests were conducted on prototype beams to assess their bending and torsional responses to external magnetic fields. The simulation results were compared with experimental data to determine the accuracy of the magneto-mechanical simulation model for ferromagnetic soft materials. After validating the model, it was used to analyze the deformation behavior of the plane matrix and cylindrical structure designs of the Negative Poisson's Ratio (NPR) metamaterial. The results indicate that the plane matrix NPR metamaterial design exhibits concurrent vertical and horizontal expansion when subjected to an external magnetic field. In contrast, the cylindrical structure demonstrates simultaneous axial and radial expansion under the same conditions. The preliminary findings demonstrate the considerable potential and practicality of the proposed methodology in the development of magnetically activated MIET devices, which offer biocompatibility, a diminished risk of adverse reactions, and enhanced therapeutic outcomes. Integrating ferromagnetic soft materials into mechanical metastructures unlocks promising opportunities for designing stents with adjustable mechanical properties, propelling the field towards more sophisticated minimally invasive vascular interventions. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available August 1, 2024
  2. Given a loop or more generally 1-cycle r r of size L on a closed two-dimensional manifold or surface, represented by a triangulated mesh, a question in computational topology asks whether or not it is homologous to zero. We frame and tackle this problem in the quantum setting. Given an oracle that one can use to query the inclusion of edges on a closed curve, we design a quantum algorithm for such a homology detection with a constant running time, with respect to the size or the number of edges on the loop r r , requiring only a single usage of oracle. In contrast, classical algorithm requires \Omega(L) Ω ( L ) oracle usage, followed by a linear time processing and can be improved to logarithmic by using a parallel algorithm. Our quantum algorithm can be extended to check whether two closed loops belong to the same homology class. Furthermore, it can be applied to a specific problem in the homotopy detection, namely, checking whether two curves are not homotopically equivalent on a closed two-dimensional manifold. 
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  3. Abstract With specific fold patterns, a 2D flat origami can be converted into a complex 3D structure under an external driving force. Origami inspires the engineering design of many self-assembled and re-configurable devices. This work aims to apply the level set-based topology optimization to the generative design of origami structures. The origami mechanism is simulated using thin shell models where the deformation on the surface and the deformation in the normal direction can be simplified and well captured. Moreover, the fold pattern is implicitly represented by the boundaries of the level set function. The folding topology is optimized by minimizing a new multiobjective function that balances kinematic performance with structural stiffness and geometric requirements. Besides regular straight folds, our proposed model can mimic crease patterns with curved folds. With the folding curves implicitly represented, the curvature flow is utilized to control the complexity of the folds generated. The performance of the proposed method is demonstrated by the computer generation and physical validation of two thin shell origami designs. 
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  4. Wang, Linwei ; Dou, Qi ; Fletcher, P. Thomas ; Speidel, Stefanie ; Li, Shuo (Ed.)
    We presented a novel radiomics approach using multimodality MRI to predict the expression of an oncogene (O6-Methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase, MGMT) and overall survival (OS) of glioblastoma (GBM) patients. Specifically, we employed an EffNetV2-T, which was down scaled and modified from EfficientNetV2, as the feature extractor. Besides, we used evidential layers based to control the distribution of prediction outputs. The evidential layers help to classify the high-dimensional radiomics features to predict the methylation status of MGMT and OS. Tests showed that our model achieved an accuracy of 0.844, making it possible to use as a clinic-enabling technique in the diagnosing and management of GBM. Comparison results indicated that our method performed better than existing work. 
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  5. In this work we present a framework of designing iterative techniques for image deblurring in inverse problem. The new framework is based on two observations about existing methods. We used Landweber method as the basis to develop and present the new framework but note that the framework is applicable to other iterative techniques. First, we observed that the iterative steps of Landweber method consist of a constant term, which is a low-pass filtered version of the already blurry observation. We proposed a modification to use the observed image directly. Second, we observed that Landweber method uses an estimate of the true image as the starting point. This estimate, however, does not get updated over iterations. We proposed a modification that updates this estimate as the iterative process progresses. We integrated the two modifications into one framework of iteratively deblurring images. Finally, we tested the new method and compared its performance with several existing techniques, including Landweber method, Van Cittert method, GMRES (generalized minimal residual method), and LSQR (least square), to demonstrate its superior performance in image deblurring. 
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  6. null (Ed.)
    This work proposes a rigorous and practical algorithm for quad-mesh generation based the Abel-Jacobi theory of algebraic \textcolor{red}{curves}. We prove sufficient and necessary conditions for a flat metric with cone singularities to be compatible with a quad-mesh, in terms of the deck-transformation, then develop an algorithm based on the theorem. The algorithm has two stages: first, a meromorphic quartic differential is generated to induce a T-mesh; second, the edge lengths of the T-mesh are adjusted by solving a linear system to satisfy the deck transformation condition, which produces a quad-mesh. In the first stage, the algorithm pipeline can be summarized as follows: calculate the homology group; compute the holomorphic differential group; construct the period matrix of the surface and Jacobi variety; calculate the Abel-Jacobi map for a given divisor; optimize the divisor to satisfy the Abel-Jacobi condition by integer programming; compute \textcolor{red}{a} flat Riemannian metric with cone singularities at the divisor by Ricci flow; \textcolor{red}{isometrically} immerse the surface punctured at the divisor onto the complex plane and pull back the canonical holomorphic differential to the surface to obtain the meromorphic quartic differential; construct a motorcycle graph to generate a T-Mesh. In the second stage, the deck transformation constraints are formulated as a linear equation system of the edge lengths of the T-mesh. The solution provides a flat metric with integral deck transformations, which leads to the final quad-mesh. The proposed method is rigorous and practical. The T-mesh and quad-mesh results can be applied for constructing Splines directly. The efficiency and efficacy of the proposed algorithm are demonstrated by experimental results on surfaces with complicated topologies and geometries. 
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