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This medical device includes a computer with two screens, a helmet, three software programs, and a recording device for taking eye movement measurements.

The EyeBrain Tracker (EBT) is an eyetracking medical device, which uses algorithms to accurately track eye movements for the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis. The brain uses many different areas to produce eye movements, so if an area of the brain does not function well, the eye movements it controls will produce an abnormal behavior.
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A thread form is designed to withstand repetitive loads, shock, and loosening for implant use, as well as in artificial limbs, heart pumps, and MRI machines.

Today, engineers are successfully attacking problems from vibrational loosening to joint fatigue with a self-locking fastener called Spiralock, whose effectiveness has been validated in published test studies at leading institutions including MIT, the Goddard Space Flight Center, and British Aerospace. It has been used in extreme fastening applications, from medical implants, to the main engines of NASA’s Space Shuttle, to the Saturn Cassini orbiter and Titan Huygens probe.
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These non-toxic nano sponges are a means to deliver a drug or payload to cells in an extended-release fashion.

This invention is a means of delivering a drug, or payload, to cells using non-covalent associations of the payload with nanoengineered scaffolds; specifically, functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and their derivatives where the payload is effectively sequestered by the nanotube’s addends and then delivered to the site (often interior of a cell) of interest.
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Manufacturers are deploying mobile video collaboration solutions to improve quality, accelerate decisions, and increase productivity.

The value chain for many medical device manufacturers is increasingly complex, with suppliers or internal factories located across the country or spread around the globe. Often, production line equipment problems, product design flaws, and quality issues occur in locations that do not have local access to the best subject matter experts. And frequently, these problems occur in areas that are located in plants that require extensive travel for the subject matter expert.
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The durability and miniaturization of this technology allows for increased patient comfort in pill-cam and hearing-aid applications.

Miniaturization of medical devices offers tangible advantages to clinicians and patients alike. Smaller pill cams, for example, are more easily ingested. Likewise, smaller hearing aids are less invasive and therefore more comfortable for the wearer. But before either of these devices — and many others like them — can be reduced in size, their components must be made smaller. Magnetic reed switches are increasingly being used to enable manufacturers to reduce their footprint while maintaining tight sensitivities and performance characteristics.
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With careful planning, system integrators can select the optimal optics, filters, light sources, and cameras for their medical diagnostic instrumentation.

Custom integration of original equipment manufacturer (OEM) products can be complex, particularly for medical device integrators that build diagnostic instruments incorporating numerous optical components. Often, objective lenses, illumination sources, and imaging detectors are assembled and custom-mounted into finished instruments. Such components must not only meet stringent performance requirements, but often have to meet established Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards.
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This audio/video system provides real-time help to inexperienced ultrasound operators in remote environments.

Medical ultrasound or echocardiographic studies are highly operatordependent and generally require lengthy training and internship to perfect. To obtain quality echocardiographic images in remote environments, such as on-orbit, remote guidance of studies has been employed. This technique involves minimal training for the user, coupled with remote guidance from an expert. When realtime communication or expert guidance is not available, a more autonomous system of guiding an inexperienced operator through an ultrasound study is needed. One example would be missions beyond low Earth orbit, in which the time delay inherent with communication will make remote guidance impractical.
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Presents a solution to certain challenges that design engineers and manufacturers face when working with silicone rubber.

While silicone is the obvious material of choice in many medical applications because of its excellent biocompatibility, its physical properties make it challenging to work with. Design engineers, especially those who work with medical devices, know the difficulties of connecting flexible silicone tubing to barbed fittings or mating molded silicone parts with complex geometries to hard plastic parts. The combined elements of its flexible consistency, its inability to expand or stretch without mechanical or chemical assistance, and the tacky surface of silicone rubber, make assembly with rigid parts difficult.
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Small-diameter ball screws and stainless steel linear actuators deliver performance and durability for compact, portable, and lightweight applications.

Advanced medical device designs are evolving rapidly and demand higher standards for medical equipment reliability. Applying linear motion components to these medical applications yields the best results when collaboration begins at the early stages of the design. Beginning with specification requirements provided by the medical device manufacturer, definition of design priorities must be incorporated for finished devices intended for human use, including:
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New technology offers improved fluid-handling capacity and strong, skin-friendly adhesion for direct-contact wound treatment, stoma care, and other applications.

An aging population and accompanying demand for wound dressing and stoma care technologies that provide better treatment than conventional techniques have prompted the medical adhesives industry to produce a new generation of product solutions. One recently proven technology is a highly breathable formulation with superior fluid-handling capacity called Avery Dennison® Thin Absorbent Skin Adhesive, which is poised to shift current market expectations of conventional acrylic adhesives.
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This method can be performed on multiple devices simultaneously or one at a time as quality control.

A variety of silicon-fabricated devices is used in medical applications such as drug and cell delivery, and DNA and protein separation and analysis. In applications such as drug delivery from implantable devices, the silicon device structure must have superior precision. In particular, the nano-channel size in implantable drug delivery membranes strongly determines the drug release from the implanted reservoir. An accidental difference in the nano size may translate into ineffective medical treatment or dangerous overdosing.
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Novel infrared fibers provide precision heating and curing of glues in medical device assemblies, improving workflow and design.

Adhesives are often used as the joining compound between substrates in the medical device industry. Typical applications for adhesives include tube-to-connector bonding, steel-cannula-to-hub bonding, and any other joining process. Adhesives work particularly well in the assembly of dissimilar materials where traditional solvent-welding methods are being eliminated due to workplace safety legislation and where other joining methods such as ultrasonic welding and laser welding are inadequate.
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This technique could help semiconductor makers create key components of long-lasting micro-electromechanical systems for medical implants.

A new method developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) offers a precise way to engineer microscopic cuts in a diamond surface, yielding potential benefits in both measurement and technological fields.*
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Key selection factors for OEMs to consider include wireless protocol selection, battery selection, operating-voltage and space constraints, and wireless receiver location.

Wireless foot switches for the control of medical devices are gaining acceptance and growing in popularity — prompting OEMs to design medical equipment for use with a wireless foot switch or to accept a wireless foot switch as a pre-sale or post-sale option.
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A new software tool aims to make computer-aided tissue analysis faster, more accurate, and more consistent.

Researchers at the University of Michigan Health System and their colleagues have developed a software tool that aims to make the detection of abnormalities in cell and tissue samples faster, more accurate, and more consistent. The technique, known as Spatially-Invariant Vector Quantization (SIVQ), can pinpoint cancer cells and other critical features from digital images made from tissue slides.

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Among other advantages, a new resin offers an attractive option for manufacturers seeking to move toward animal-derivative-free materials.

Material selection plays an important role in the design of a medical device or bioprocessing system. It can improve end-user satisfaction, product reliability, and manufacturability of the device, as well as simplify the 510(k) application process. Various certifications such as animal-derivative-free, USP Class VI, and ISO 10993-5 are just a few of those desired by medical device manufacturers and biopharmaceutical companies. As a result, Value Plastics, a Nordson company, has chosen to mold a large variety of its connectors with a new polypropylene resin in order to better fulfill customer needs and expectations. This material, manufactured by Flint Hills Resources, is represented by part numbers ending in “-6005.” This technical brief will explain the multiple benefits to manufacturers who incorporate this resin into their end products.

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This system offers advantages over traditional optical comparators, including the ability for multiple operators to compare parts to the CAD file at any one time.

Manufacturers of orthopedic implants take great care to ensure that their products are of the highest quality. One way they do this is by performing numerous inspection operations at various stages throughout the manufacturing process. These have great value — however, they also represent considerable expense. Until recently, implant manufacturers reaped only a small fraction of the potential benefits of these efforts mainly because, in the end, few records of the inspection operations remained. Those that did exist were of poor and irregular quality. This is reasonable, considering in-process inspections are performed on the shop floor by system operators, whose primary function is to manufacture parts. Most inspection records consisted of a few checkmarks on a paper report indicating that the required inspection had indeed been performed successfully. These records do not do justice to industry-wide, high-quality standards.

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Findings could spur the development of a clinically useful, non-invasive tool sensitive enough to detect, diagnose, and monitor lens change earlier than current methods.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness worldwide; they affect more than 20 million people and result in ~1.3 million operations annually in the United States. Current methods of cataract detection are based on subjective observation of lens opacity by Rayleigh light scattering using a slit lamp. These methods are not sensitive enough to reveal structural changes on a molecular level; they can only reveal defects once their size becomes comparable with the optical wavelength (400-600 nm). This occurs at a very late stage of cataract development.
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Valveless design and sapphire-hard internals provide drift-free accuracy without recalibration for millions of maintenance-free dispenses.

From R&D in the laboratory to production process control, from disposable component assembly to OEM diagnostic instrumentation, a broad array of medical and medical support applications rely on precise dispensing or metering of fluids. But just as diverse as the applications are the varieties of fluids, their chemical and physical characteristics, and the specific application parameters. It could then be concluded that fluid control components, including pumps, need to have the flexibility to handle many different fluids and applications.

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A low-cost, robust prototype device conveys the quality and trend of physiological data (oxygen saturation, heart rate, respiratory rate) over time, utilizing an intuitive user interface.

Pulse oximetry non-invasively measures blood oxygen saturation (SpO₂) and heart rate using a photo sensor to track the amount of absorbed light emitted by a red and infra-red LED. It allows for the rapid diagnosis of hypoxemia (low blood oxygen levels), which is difficult to identify clinically until the blood turns blue (a late sign). Since becoming the standard of care during anesthesia in the early 1980s, pulse oximetry has extended throughout much of the hospital, greatly improving patient safety due to early detection of clinical deterioration. This can rescue a patient from the permanent effects of lack of oxygen, such as brain damage or death.
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This technology can be integrated into different applications for reliable liquid and/or gas flows, including ambulatory pain pumps, insulin administration, and wound care systems.

Accuracy and reliability are key issues in the medical device industry — especially regarding administration of medical fluids or gases. Many medical fluid administration sets are provided with a flow restrictor. So far, a glass capillary is usually applied. However, this component has many shortcomings. The multi bore flow restrictor presented here solves many of these shortcomings as experienced with the present flow restrictors, and provides cost advantages.
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A patent-pending, natural, self-assembling technology could overcome problems associated with the body’s rejection of prosthetics and implants.

Cardiovascular stents and other medical implants increase lifespan and quality of life for millions around the world — yet adverse effects attenuate their full potential. Bionanomatrix coatings for such devices can vastly improve long-term outcomes.
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Thermoelectric Assemblies (TEAs) offer precise temperature control for applications with tight space constraints and low weight requirements.

Thermal management of medical electronic devices and systems is now more challenging. Power densities continue to increase while product form factors continue to shrink. Simple thermal management solutions, such as passive cooling (adding a fan and heat sink), are no longer typically viable to meet required performance and reliability specifications. In today’s complex medical operating environment, Thermo electric Assemblies (TEAs) are necessary to provide precise temperature control via cooling and heating in a variety of modular platforms.
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This technology may be used to obtain a critical view of the posterior segment of the eye when a dense cataract or vitreous hemorrhage is present.

An ophthalmic ultrasound system evaluates ocular structures more clearly by providing images of all aspects of the anterior segment. It provides images of the eye and tissues around and behind the eye to determine the presence of pathology when doctors are prohibited from viewing it directly due to opacity of the cornea, lens, or the vitreous gel that fills the eye.
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Unlike prior devices, these would enable measurement of volumes of specimens.

Improved devices have been proposed for collecting sweat for biochemical analysis — especially for determination of the concentration of Ca²⁺ ions in sweat as a measure of loss of Ca from bones. Unlike commercially available sweat-collection patches used previously in monitoring osteoporosis and in qualitative screening for some drugs, the proposed devices would not allow evaporation of the volatile chemical components (mostly water) of sweat. Moreover, the proposed devices would be designed to enable determination of the volumes of collected sweat. From these volumes and the quantities of Ca²⁺ and/or other analytes as determined by other means summarized below, one could determine the concentrations of the analytes in sweat.
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