Octavio Ramírez

This study presents a novel approach to sternum prosthesis design, aiming to address the limitations of the current solutions by employing compliant mechanisms. The research focuses on developing a prosthetic design capable of generating lifting movements on ribs during breathing. First, a videogrammetry experimental test and virtual simulations were conducted to ascertain the vertical forces applied to each sternum joint. Subsequently, a compliant mechanism design was initiated, involving optimization and finite element analysis (FEM). A comprehensive kinematic performance analysis was performed to evaluate the prosthetic design. The results indicate that the obtained displacements of each rib closely align with those reported in the existing literature, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed solution. In conclusion, the developed sternum prosthesis exhibits the capability to recover approximately 56% of the ribs’ natural movements, highlighting its potential as an innovative and promising solution in the field of chest prosthetics.

This research shows an image processing method to determine the liver tissue’s mechanical behavior under physiological damage caused by fibrosis pathology. The proposed method consists of using a liver tissue CAD/CAE model obtained from a tomography of the human abdomen, where the diaphragmatic surface of this tissue is compressed by a moving flat surface. For this work, two tools were created—the first to analyze the deformations and the second to analyze the displacements of the liver tissue. Gibbon and MATLAB^® were used for numerical analysis with the FEBio computer program. Although deformation in the scenario can be treated as an orthogonal coordinate system, the relationship between the total change in height (measured) and the deformation was obtained. The outcomes show liver tissue behavior as a hyperelastic model; the Mooney–Rivlin mathematical characterization model was proposed in this case. Another method to determine the level of physiological damage caused by fibrosis is fractal analysis. This work used the Hausdorff fractal dimension (HFD) method to calculate and analyze the 2D topological surface.