Research Interests

  • Applications of neuroengineering on Deep Brain Stimulations (DBS)
  • Analyzing mechanotransduction and electrotransduction in soft tissues
  • Applications of solid mechanics in soft tissues
  • Mathematical and computational modeling of biological phenomena

A detailed blog post about research interests and skills can be found here.

Neural Pathway Reconstruction using Tractography

EEG Signal Processing

Applying Savitzky-Golay filter to characterize the noise signal prior to the stimulus (DBS).

Keywords: Mechanotransduction, Mechanical Bidomain Model

Mechanotransduction: the process or the mechanism that cells sense and respond to mechanical signals or stimuli.

Mechanical Bidomain Model: A model developed nearly ten years ago by Puwal and Roth (2010) that is being used to analyze mechanotransduction and growth and remodeling of cardiac tissue which are often affected by mechanical forces. Mechanical bidomain model has successfully predicted cell growth in human embryonic stem cell colonies (which is useful in regenerative medicine) and cell growth in a tissue under an uniaxial stretch using in silico models.

Key Findings

Cardiac anisotropy with mechanical bidomain computer simulations gives unexpected distributions of mechanotransduction that disappears for isotropy.

From cellular level mechanical properties to organ level

Selected Research Projects

  1. Perturbation Solutions for the Mechanical Bidomain Model Including Anisotropy
  2. Mechanical Bidomain Model of Cardiac Muscle With Unequal Anisotropy Ratios
  3. Indentation of Anisotropic Cardiac Tissue Using a Three-dimensional (3D) Mechanical Bidomain Model

The main objective of these three projects is to study the effects of anisotropy on cardiac mechanotransduciton.

Why analyzing effects of anisotropy is important ?

Electrical conductivity in cytoskeleton and extracellular matrix are anisotropic. Mechanical signal pathways in cardiac tissue can also be anisotropic since mechanical signals can transfer from cell to cell via desmosomes in intercalated disk without the involvement of extracellular matrix. This is similar to transfer of electrical signals via gap junctions.

Research Projects and Applications

Project 1

Perturbation methods were applied to a cardiac tissue which has a ischemic region surrounded by a healthy tissue. Changes in both magnitude and spatial distribution of bidomain displacement (mechanotransduction) were observed under abrupt tension. This is a preliminary study designed to observe effects of anisotropy on bidomain displacement. This analysis can be apply to an injured tissue.

Project 2

This study was inspired by a similar analysis conducted using electrical bidomain model. Soft tissues inherit complex fiber geometries. Therefore, this project was designed to analyze effects of anisotropy on distribution of bidomain displacement (mechanotransduction) in a cardiac tissue that has fiber curvature.

Even though this analysis uses in silico models, results can be tested using in vitro experiments. It is important to consider the fiber geometry of tissues since regions that have abrupt changes in fiber angle can cause mechanotransduction ‘hot spots’.

Project 3

Equations of the mechanical bidomain model were extended to three-dimensions (3D). Cardiac tissue indentation was tested using the 3D model. Finite difference method was used to generate computer simulations.

Applications: understanding tumor growth and wound healing, cardiac hypertrophy

Determination of Fe I abundances of star Beid

Absorption spectra of star HD26574 (Beid) in the wavelength region of 4200 Å to 5000 Å were generated using a 45 cm Cassegrain telescope in Arthur C Clarke Institute for Modern Technology (ACCIMT) in Sri Lanka.

The spectrum of the star was extracted using the two reference images produced by shifting the original spectrum. Pixels of the images were identified using a wavelength-calibrated spectrum of the reference lamp (Fe-Ne cathode lamp).

Wavelength spectra were generated by identifying peaks using the spectrum of the Fe-Ne cathode lamp and by applying different polynomials such as Chebyshev, Spline 1, Spline 3 and Legendre to obtain the best fit.

Key Findings