Healthcare and Quality of Life

Lab for Sensory and Physiological Signal Processing 

My research interests are in signal processing, modeling and instrumentation, prbeenincipally as applied to biomedical engineering. My major area of specialization has developing techniques for improving estimates of the amplitude of the surface electromyogram (EMG). EMG, the electrical activity of skeletal muscle, can be described mathematically as a random (stochastic) process which is amplitude modulated. When muscular effort is low, the amplitude of EMG is low; when muscular effort is high, the amplitude of EMG is high. Thus, better estimates of EMG amplitude improve the ability to determine the activation level of muscles. Applications of this technology include myoelectrically-controlled powered prosthesis, analysis of gait, non-invasive estimation of torques about a joint and ergonomics. I have also been involved in needle EMG decomposition in clinical and scientific studies; as well as high-resolution surface EMG, in which arrays of tightly-spaced, small electrodes are placed on the skin surface and used to detect the activity of individual motor units.

Research Areas:

Integrated Circuits and Systems Lab (ICAS)

Our research program explores the designs of a range of biomedical devices from implantable devices to wearable devices that ensure device security, personal privacy, accurate bio-sensing, and reliable operation and proposes possible directions of study that tackle the fundamental challenges including

i) Sustainable Energy Harvesting Systems for Continuous Long-Term Health Monitoring: how sustainable energy harvesting and its efficient storage and usage are possible for continuous long-term personal health monitoring,

ii) Secure Bio-implants and Wearables: how the security of all these sensors associated with smart healthcare will be assured in terms of maintaining proper functionality of devices and protecting private information,

iii) Wireless, Sensor Interfaces for Medical and General Purpose IoTs: how accurate and reliable sensing interfaces will be able to receive very low-amplitude signals coming from various environments, such as inside the body.

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Embedded Computing Lab

Our research group is focused on the computer vision and deep learning algorithms, efficient hardware architecture designs, and their applications to autonomous driving, robotics, and embedded systems. Our research works have been published regularly in top venues such as CVPR, ICCV, ICRA, IROS, RAL, TPAMI, TNNLS, TMM, TCAS1, etc. Our mission is to build integrate circuits for artificial intelligence.

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Center for Imaging and Sensing

To assist our industrial partners in their quality assurance and imaging requirements. It focuses on inspection and imaging methodologies, fundamental sensor and instrumentation research, and turn-key prototype system development.

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Center for Bioelectromagnetic Modeling & Design

Our research (jointly with Mass General Hospital, A. A. Martinos Ctr. for Biomed. Imaging) is in bioelectromagnetics of the brain in application to neurostimulation and neurophysiological recordings. It includes both computational modeling at mesoscale and multiscale, and experiment.

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Bringing Awareness through Systems for Humans (BASH) Lab

The Bringing Awareness through Systems for Humans Lab (BASH Lab) focuses on understanding and enhancing the usability, intelligence, and processing capabilities of tiny low-power edge computing devices to realize their full potential in our daily lives.

We aim to develop a new set of artificially intelligent edge computers that provide sustainable and scalable sensing solutions in various application domains ranging from health wearable to environment monitoring.

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