The Local Group of BEST (Board of European Students of Technology) in the city of Thessaloniki, BEST Thessaloniki, holds a ten-day academic seminar on “Bioengineering”, from 7 to 16 March 2018.
Through a series of lectures, educational visits and practice, the seminar participants -23 students from technology institutions across Europe and Canada and 12 undergraduate students from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki- have the opportunity to gain insight into various aspects of biomedical technology, tissue engineering, bioinformatics, and the development of algorithms for organ functions.
In this framework, BEST Thessaloniki and its guest students visited the facilities of Medical Physics Laboratory of the Medical School of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), on Wednesday, 14 March, to attend a four-hour Workshop, entitled “Assessment of sleep quality using polysomnographs: The example of drug intervention “SmokeFreeBrain” to quit smoking”.
AUTH Medical Physics Lab research staff members Dr. Christos Frantzidis, Dr. Haris Styliadis and PhD Candidate Antonis Βillis welcomed the participants of the seminar and informed them on how they can assess the sleep architecture (stages, duration) and sleep quality within polysomnographic and wearable sensor recordings, presenting them the example of the “SmokeFreeBrain” sleep study; a project that aims at smoking cessation in high risk target groups.
During the workshop, participants learnt about pathological findings, such as apneas and arousal, and how they are recognized and analyzed. Moreover, the visiting students participated in a demonstration on how to prepare a log in real time. They were also interactively involved to familiarize themselves with the processes used. Specifically, an experimental person was asked to sleep for 30-45 minutes in a quiet and dark environment, while the tour continued with questions/queries and discussion between participants and the research staff members. After that, data from the experimental person were taken and automatically analyzed, so that participants see everything that has been discussed previously on a theoretical level. Through these activities, the seminar speakers aimed to inform the participants, so that in the end of the workshop, each of them can understand basic neurophysiologic underpinnings of sleep, familiarize with relevant biomedical technology setups and use of specific software for the analysis of signals and the production of sleep reports.
Dr. Franzidis, Dr. Styliadis and Mr. Billis received the appreciative comments of Lab’s guests. Lab of Medical Physics and Thessaloniki Active & Healthy Ageing Living Lab and its members were invited to contribute to the annual BEST seminar for second consecutive year.