Introduction to the Special Section on Engineering ... - IEEE Xplore

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NANOBIOSCIENCE, VOL. 14, NO. 7, OCTOBER 2015

Introduction to the Special Section on Engineering Sciences for Biology and Medicine Conference (ESBM 2015) This Special Section of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NANOBIOSCIENCE comprises 9 accepted papers selected from the 2nd Engineering Sciences for Biology and Medicine Conference (ESBM 2015) organized in Tunisia from 1–3 May 2015. The conference received 52 contribution submissions from over 11 countries which went through a very rigorous review process. It provided a multidisciplinary assembly of researchers from several fields of interference of physics, chemistry, informatics, and mathematics with biology and medicine. The accepted papers illustrate the variety of applications of fundamental sciences in the field of nano-, immune- and biosensors, medical image modelling, and dosimetry. • The paper by M. Hammami et al. presents an experimental study of the development of a high sensitive immunosensor for the detection of tumoral stroma biomarkers as the macrophage mannose receptor presented by tumor associated macrophages in cell cancer microenvironment. The results analysis demonstrate a specific interaction between the immobilized antibody onto modified low cost electrodes and the target molecule rHu-MMR so-called CD206 or MRC1 for concentrations lower than 10.0 ng/mL and the limit of detection was estimated to be lower than 15 pg/mL. • The paper of N. Khedimallah et al. propose the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy technique for heavy metals , , and by means of determination, namely, a gold electrode functionalized with PVC-tannin biomembrane. This later displayed a high affinity and high response sensitivity to Zn (II). It was shown that impedimetric rebetween , , and sponses was linear for . This demonstrated the to concentrations from great potential of these biosensors for quantitative detection of heavy metals in wastewater. • The paper of R. E. Fernandez et al. discusses the design, fabrication, and testing of a flexible microfluidic bioimpedance sensor capable of detecting cell viability and biomass variations. The devices were fabricated on indium tin oxide coated PET sheets. The ease of fabrication and assembly facilitates rapid evaluation of different prototypes in a short amount of time, consuming minimal amounts of expensive biological moieties. The authors showed the potential of this inexpensive device (expected to be $1 per sensor) as a disposable microfluidic bioimpedance sensor that can differentiate between healthy and dead Saccharomyces Cerevisiae samples at varying volume fractions. From the analysis, we have shown that the sensor has potential applications in bioprocess monitoring where cost efficiency is as important as accuracy. • The paper of F. Saâdaoui et al. proposed a new methodology for processing the heterogeneous occupational medicine data by connecting a set of well-known techniques. This simple interconnection has created a system that can fill a significant number of unobserved data, before allowing to analyze and Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TNB.2015.2500138

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model on the same dimensionally reduced subspace an heterogenous set of quantitative and qualitative factors. The paper of A. Tekari et al. studied the regional variations in cartilage explants derived from bovine knee joints. As such, this heterogeneity makes it difficult to generate reproducible data from tissues subjected to mechanical loads in vitro, especially in cases where small variations between the experimental groups were expected. The paper of T. Sahnoun et al. showed a considerable improvement in the modeling of planar dose distribution when comparing AAA to PBC especially for large field sizes, large wedge angles at 6 MV photon energy. This improvement is proved by EDW factors, relative profiles and planar dose distribution comparisons. It underligned that the PBC isn't reliable for planning large fields treatment with 60 and 45 EDW at 6 MV photon energy. In addition, the results proved the efficiency of 2D ionization chamber array to measure planar dose distribution for high 1D modulated fields with large wedge angles and IMRT beams in consequence. The paper of L. Sellami et al. demonstrated the effect of changing characteristics of a mass from one slice to another on lesion characterization and radiologist accuracy which justifies the development of a CAD tool in a multi-slices breast ultrasound. For that reason, three steps were needed. The first step consists on the image preprocessing to reduce speckle noise and enhance image quality. The second step is the image segmentation to locate the suspicious areas. The third step permits the extraction of the morphological and textural features that characterize the mass. Differentiation between lesion types as it could benign or malignant type would be more accurate since it would afford from this automated analysis more useful information and characteristics. On the other hand, the change in textural or morphological feathers in multiple slices analyzing for the same lesion could be combined by a classifier to predict malignancy. The paper of J. Boughariou et al. used the swLORETA technique for inverse problem resolution was applied on simulated dipoles experiment. They investigated the effect of the introduction of the normalization process on the localization results. Indeed, the use of the genetic algorithm proved that swLORETA presents a more accurate and more robust inverse solutions. The paper of L. Sellami et al.suggests a breast cancer lesion characterization by ultrasound sequences imaging. Using BI-RADS features, it demonstrates the possibility of surveying precisely the changing characteristics of a breast cancer lesion within a considered ultrasound images' sequence. The results obtained had shown the lesion form changing depending on the treated slice, as well as the values' differences for the morphological and the textural features. This would allow extracting more information about breast cancer lesions helping then radiologist to converge more rapidly and with a certain reinforced precision to the accurate clinical action to conduct.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NANOBIOSCIENCE, VOL. 14, NO. 7, OCTOBER 2015

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Ramzi Maalej is presently full professor in Physics at the University of Sfax, Tunisia. He graduated from the University of Sfax with an M.S. degree in 1995, Ph.D. degree in quantum physics from University of Tunis El Manar, Tunisia, in 2001, and the Habilitaion HDR in 2007. Prof. Maalej is leading a young research group “Photonic and Advanced Materials Group.” His research interests include theoretical and experimental studies of lanthanide-doped materials for laser, optoelectronic, biosensor, and nanomedicine applications. His recent research has been financed by many projects with several international partner laboratories. He organized two editions of the Engineering Sciences for Biology and Medicine (ESBM) in 2013 and 2015 in Tunisia.