When Mason Engineering's Qi Wei sees people with vision troubles, she knows there is more to the problem than meets the eye.

She researches strabismus, which is misaligned crossed eyes. "When people have strabismus, their eyes don't line up to look at the same place at the same time," says Wei, an associate professor in the Department of Bioengineering. {module In-article}

One or both eyes may turn in, out, up or down. It's a prevalent problem, especially with children. It affects 18 million people in the United States. "Strabismus can be debilitating because people with the condition develop double vision, blurred vision, eyestrain, or other symptoms impairing daily activities."

Wei and three other principal investigators from different universities are creating a data-driven supercomputer model of the eye for diagnosing and treating strabismus with almost $1.8 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health. "We hope the neuro-biomedical model we are developing will help doctors better determine how best to treat strabismus," she says.

Each eye has six extraocular muscles that control eye position and movement. Strabismus occurs when these muscles don't function properly due to complex neurological, anatomical, or perceptual abnormalities, she says.

Some people are born with the condition, while others develop it later due to medical conditions or other reasons, Wei says.

It's complicated and hard to diagnose and treat effectively, she says. Typically, the condition is treated with surgery that manipulates one or more extraocular muscles. Generally, surgeons rely on experience and intuition to decide the best surgical treatment, she says.

Although a few computer models for the treatment of the condition exist, Wei and colleagues are fine-tuning their model, which will overcome others' critical limitations. Using clinical data from 50 strabismic patients who've been operated on, the team will test hypotheses that they hope will advance the knowledge on treating two common types of strabismus.

The model will include clinical information from patients' MRIs, the surgical procedures used to correct the condition, and surgical outcomes. Co-investigator Joseph Demer, an ophthalmologist and biomedical engineer with the Stein Eye Institute at UCLA, operates on patients with strabismus. He provides the data and assists with clinical interpretations of the model.

Mike Buschmann, chair of Mason's bioengineering department says, "Dr. Wei uses a sophisticated approach to modeling eye movements and worked closely with the clinical community to get one step closer to solving some very significant problems in human vision. The future of her research holds great promise and is a shining example of collaboration between a bioengineer and a clinician."

Wei, a computer scientist by training, says the biomedical field "lets you work on a real problem and make it better."

She understands the fear and frustration of having eye issues. "I don't have strabismus, but I'm very nearsighted. Without glasses, I can't walk outside. I've had glasses since I was seven years old.

"I am still nervous when I am tested on the vision chart," she says. "I hope that one-day people can be treated more effectively taking advantage of scientific tools.

"Strabismus is complicated, and computer models might be flawed, but someone has to come up with a breakthrough," she says.

Chip's novel architecture enables ultra-fast data processing, less energy consumption

A new wireless transceiver invented by electrical engineers at the University of California, Irvine boosts radio frequencies into 100-gigahertz territory, quadruple the speed of the upcoming 5G, or fifth-generation, wireless communications standard.

Labeled an "end-to-end transmitter-receiver" by its creators in UCI's Nanoscale Communication Integrated Circuits Labs, the 4.4-millimeter-square silicon chip is capable of processing digital signals significantly faster and more energy-efficiently because of its unique digital-analog architecture. The team's innovation is outlined in a paper published recently in the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

"We call our chip 'beyond 5G' because the combined speed and data rate that we can achieve is two orders of magnitude higher than the capability of the new wireless standard," said senior author Payam Heydari, NCIC Labs director and UCI professor of electrical engineering & computer science. "In addition, operating in a higher frequency means that you and I and everyone else can be given a bigger chunk of the bandwidth offered by carriers."

He said that academic researchers and communications circuit engineers have long wanted to know if wireless systems are capable of the high performance and speeds of fiber-optic networks. "If such a possibility could come to fruition, it would transform the telecommunications industry, because wireless infrastructure brings about many advantages over wired systems," Heydari said. {module In-article}

His group's answer is in the form of a new transceiver that leapfrogs over the 5G wireless standard - designated to operate within the range of 28 to 38 gigahertz - into the 6G standard, which is expected to work at 100 gigahertz and above.

"The Federal Communications Commission recently opened up new frequency bands above 100 gigahertz," said lead author and postgraduate researcher Hossein Mohammadnezhad, a UCI grad student at the time of the work who this year earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering & computer science. "Our new transceiver is the first to provide end-to-end capabilities in this part of the spectrum."

Having transmitters and receivers that can handle such high-frequency data communications is going to be vital in ushering in a new wireless era dominated by the "internet of things," autonomous vehicles, and vastly expanded broadband for streaming of high-definition video content and more.

While this digital dream has driven technology developers for decades, stumbling blocks have begun to appear on the road to progress. According to Heydari, changing frequencies of signals through modulation and demodulation in transceivers has traditionally been done via digital processing, but integrated circuit engineers have in recent years begun to see the physical limitations of this method.

"Moore's law says we should be able to increase the speed of transistors - such as those you would find in transmitters and receivers - by decreasing their size, but that's not the case anymore," he said. "You cannot break electrons in two, so we have approached the levels that are governed by the physics of semiconductor devices."

To get around this problem, NCIC Labs researchers utilized a chip architecture that significantly relaxes digital processing requirements by modulating the digital bits in the analog and radio-frequency domains.

Heydari said that in addition to enabling the transmission of signals in the range of 100 gigahertz, the transceiver's unique layout allows it to consume considerably less energy than current systems at a reduced overall cost, paving the way for widespread adoption in the consumer electronics market.

Co-author Huan Wang, a UCI doctoral student in electrical engineering & computer science and an NCIC Labs member, said that the technology combined with phased array systems - which use multiple antennas to steer beams - facilitates a number of disruptive applications in wireless data transfer and communication.

"Our innovation eliminates the need for miles of fiber-optic cables in data centers, so data farm operators can do ultra-fast wireless transfer and save considerable money on hardware, cooling and power," he said.