Dr. Rugonyi's main research interests include the analysis of biological systems, and the development of mathematical and computational models that describe them. Finite element methods and other numerical techniques, when used with appropriate physically-based models, provide a means of calculating and visualizing the response of systems to different conditions. Dr. Rugonyi's current research is mainly on the study of cardiovascular systems, which includes the analysis of blood flow through vessels and the heart, as well as the interaction of flow with tissue.
"Removing the hatching tray allowed us to space the trays further apart and have them turn to a steeper angle. The No. 1500 is exempt from use as a hatcher allowing it to avoid the mess associated with hatches and remain clean. This incubator only has to maintain one humidity setting making it easier on the eggs and easier to operate. The No. 1500 “PROFESSIONAL” is designed to be used with the No. 1550 HATCHER."
A custom-designed system by the Sandra Rugonyi Laboratory and Ruikang Wang Laboratory.
SDOCT is a non-invasive imaging technique with high resolution (5 to 20μm).
"The Servo-Nulling Pressure System, is a resistance servo-nulling transducer system designed to measure fluid pressures in microscopic structures which can be penetrated by a glass micropipette.
The system maintains constant the electrical resistance measured between the low resistance pipette fluid, and the fluid being measured by generating an equal and opposing pressure which is measured by standard pressure transducers."
"An optically-flat mirrored glass disk, wetted with an abrasive slurry, spins at 60 rpm (120 V), producing sharply beveled tips on fluid-filled glass microelectrodes of one micron or smaller. This eases cell impalement and improves the electrode's linearity. The microelectrode’s resistance can be monitored during beveling with WPI’s Omega-Tip-Z™ megohm meter. The beveler is permanently mounted on a precision magnetic plate that gives stable support for the optional 1350M Micropositioner shown. Start-up kit includes 0.05 µm alumina abrasive powder #3531, “O” ring, wick electrode, and wick support."
This protocol describes the application of a computer model to blood flow. The model predicts flow velocities and shear stresses based on user input geometries and basic flow assumptions.
This protocol describes a methodology for modeling the movement of blood throughout the body.
This protocol describes the use of Doppler optical coherence tomography to measure and map in-situ blood flow.
This protocol describes a computational method for efficiently synchronizing and arranging OCT images successively in time.
The Rugonyi Lab uses this software to process chicken heart images.
This reconstruction software converts 2-D optical coherence tomography images at many sections through the heart and their time stamps into a 3-D model of the heart and its motion in time.
"The procedure uses similarity of local structures to find the phase shift between neighboring image sequences, employing M-mode images (extracted from the acquired B-mode images) to achieve computational efficiency. Furthermore, our procedure corrects the phase shifts by considering the phase lags introduced by peristaltic-like contractions of the embryonic heart wall."
"The... ADINA System [is] for linear and nonlinear finite element analysis of solids and structures, heat transfer, CFD and electromagnetics. ADINA also offers a comprehensive array of multiphysics capabilities including fluid-structure interaction and thermo-mechanical coupling."
"The COMSOL Multiphysics simulation software environment facilitates all steps in the modeling process − defining your geometry, meshing, specifying your physics, solving, and then visualizing your results."
This software computationally models physics of user-defined environments.
"This algorithm-driven software is designed to extract the dynamic shapes of the heart myocardium and endocardium from reconstructed 4-D optical coherence tomography images. For the Rugonyi Lab's uses, images of three surfaces are collected over time: the external and internal surfaces of the myocardium layer and the endocardium (or tissue-lumen interface) surface.
To detect cardiac tissues, several layer 2-D meshes are placed around the myocardium and several 2-D edge meshes are placed around the endocardium. The meshes on each tissue layer are then linked together using active-contour techniques, and detection of the myocardial and endocardial layers is guided by a robust maximum-likelihood estimator. Linking the meshes with active-contour facilitates detection and tracking of tissue motion."