March 2012

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Briefs: Medical

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...

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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping

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....

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Briefs: Medical
Nano Sponges for Drug Delivery and Medicinal Applications

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...

Briefs: Medical

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...

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Features: Medical

Development of medical devices that are molded from thermoplastics or that have plastic components should begin with collaboration between the OEM’s engineering team and the mold...

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Features: Medical

Ultrasound has long been associated with diagnostic imaging, but it is increasingly being explored and utilized as a beneficial, non-invasive tool for applications ranging from surgery to therapy....

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Applications: Medical

A medical device developer in Southern California embarked on a search for help in the process of developing a diagnostic medical instrument. They visited product vendors, contract...

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Applications: Medical

COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) is a lung disease associated with airflow obstruction. A chronic, debilitating, and sometimes fatal condition, COPD is one of...

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Applications: Imaging

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, but evaluating it carries risks of its own. Though often beneficial, X-ray angiography and CT...

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Global Innovations: Imaging

Surgeons use 3D X-rays to check the results before the patient has left the operating room. One issue with currently available 3D X-ray systems, such as C-arms, is that they interfere with the...

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Products: Medical

The V12Z06MA Series of conical antivibration base mounts from Advanced Antivibration Components (New Hyde Park, NY) are designed to dampen shock and vibration for compression loads up to 1632 kgf (3598 lbf). Their metric...

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Products: Test & Measurement

NVision (Coppell, TX) has partnered with Materials Analysis (Dallas, TX) to offer product defect analysis that can potentially be introduced in product liability litigation to prove a manufacturer innocent of...

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Products: Medical

Werth (Old Saybrook, CT) has introduced an “OnTheFly” method for rapid measurement with image processing. ScopeCheck® and VideoCheck® coordinate measuring machines can now take measurements while in constant...

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Products: Medical

Sensirion AG (Staefa, Switzerland) offers the SDP600 series of differential pressure sensors, featuring low energy consumption for long-term battery operation. The SDP606 and SDP616 sensors are designed to enter sleep mode...

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Products: Materials

NuSil Technology (Carpinteria, CA) has added three new products to the VersaSil line, which is now a series of six high-consistency elastomers. The VersaSil 40, 60, and 80 present new ranges in durometer, offering versatility for...

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Products: Medical

The STH and STQ pumps from Fluid Metering (Syosset, NY) are suitable for precision mixing, diulating, and proportional metering for OEM medical, analytical, and industrial instrumentation. The pumps consist of two FMI...

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Products: Sensors/Data Acquisition

AWAIBA (Madeira, Portugal) offers DRAGSTER 2x-8K-7um image sensors that process images at the intended velocities and send the information out via Camera Link (both Dual or Four Camera Link sockets) or alternatively via double...

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Products: Medical

Thomas Division (Sheboygan, WI), a Gardner Denver Company, offers the 2220 Series brushless DC oil-less air compressor designed for medical and other applications requiring a compact, lightweight compressor with...

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Products: Medical

Value Plastics (Fort Collins, CO) offers a 2012 catalog coupled with an interactive PDF, featuring information on over 4,000 off-the-shelf parts as well as new products including the MQC Series of quick connect fittings and a new...

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Products: Medical

Sarstedt (Newton, NC) has introduced a 13 × 75 mm configuration to its existing line of false-bottom screw cap aliquot tubes. False-bottom tubes feature an elevated conical base that lifts serum/plasma yields to a more...

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Products: Robotics, Automation & Control

Power Technology (Little Rock, AR) has announced the availability of PNF Series green wavelength spectrum lasers suitable for surgical and X-ray alignment applications on dark or pigmented skin. Green lasers are more...

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Products: Medical

The VAN-115/230AC-K19 AS-Interface Power Supplies from Pepperl+Fuchs (Twinsburg, OH) are Class II and 90.5 percent efficient. A compact 42-mm-wide design allows users to stack them side-by-side to reduce the size of...

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Products: Mechanical & Fluid Systems

POSITAL, a unit of FRABA Inc. (Hamilton, NJ), now offers absolute rotary encoders with a combined interface that enables simultaneous communication of both absolute and incremental rotary position data. The new interface...

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Mission Accomplished: Medical

Diseases the affect the back of the eye include age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy, and uveitis. Although many therapies exist to treat these...

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Products: Electronics & Computers

ICCNexergy (Chicago, IL) has launched a 20-watt desktop power supply line for medical (MWA020) applications. It offers fully regulated DC output in 5V, 9V, 12V, and 24V models. All models feature an LED and are backed by a...

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Products: Materials

The Micro-Twin Screw compounder from Technovel Corporation (Osaka, Japan) offers special capabilities including RPMs up to 4400, high torque drive system, and pressure resistant barrel. The modular screw design can...

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INSIDER: Imaging
Taking A Closer Look at Traumatic Brain Injury

Each year, upwards of 1.5 million cases of traumatic brain injury (TBI) occur in the United States. Conventional imaging methods don't always provide physicians with as much detail as they would like when it comes to determining how the injury damaged the patient's brain tissue, predicting how the...

INSIDER: Medical
New Laser Technology Detects Melanoma at Crucial Earlier Stage

Although often curable if detected early, melanoma causes the deaths of nearly 9,000 Americans each year. The incidence of melanoma is increasing at a rate faster than that of any of the seven most common cancers. A new medical diagnostic device invented by John A. Viator, Ph.D, an...

INSIDER: Medical
Implantable Sensor Enables Non-Invasive Patient Monitoring After Surgery

Following an orthopedic procedure, surgeons usually rely on X-rays or MRIs to monitor the progress of their patients' recovery. A new implantable sensor developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute could provide surgeons with detailed, real-time information from the actual...

INSIDER: Medical
Imaging Tool Measures How Much Surgeons Feel the Heat

Simulated surgeries are a great tool for training surgical residents — but does a tool exist to determine precisely when a surgical resident is ready to move on to operate on a human patient? With this question in mind, an interdisciplinary team of University of Houston computer scientists...

News: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A (Texas) Toast to Biomedical Innovation

Texas...home of Johnson Space Center, the NSBRI, good BBQ, and now, for the first time, the Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) show. Last week, in Fort Worth, TX, local exhibitors demonstrated evidence of the Lone Star State as an important hotspot for medical device development.

News: Medical
Nanotechnology's Big Medical Implications

Nanotechnology, the science of manipulating matter on a molecular scale, offers obvious advantages for the medical market. However, the question of nanotoxicology — the study of the toxicity of nanomaterials — may also play a role in the future of this technology. In 2006, the FDA formed the...

INSIDER: Medical
Origami-Inspired Paper Sensor Offers Diagnostic Capabilities

Inspired by the paper-folding art of origami, scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a 3D paper sensor that may be able to test for diseases such as malaria and HIV for less than 10 cents a pop. One-dimensional paper sensors, such as those used in pregnancy...

INSIDER: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Inexpensive Sensor May Speed Up Detection of Life-Threatening Disease

An integrated microfluidics-waveguide sensor developed at Stanford University School of Medicine has the potential to simplify the diagnosis of diseases ranging from life-threatening immune deficiencies to the common cold. The device sorts and counts cells in small samples of...

INSIDER: Imaging
Upgraded Endoscope Can Target Cancerous Tumors

A marriage between the endoscope and a new field of medical imaging — Cerenkov Luminescence Imaging (CLI) — may allow surgeons to more completely remove cancerous tumors. The technique, called Cerenkov Luminescence Endoscopy (CLE), offers advantages over both traditional endoscopic and imaging...

INSIDER: Medical
Device Aims to Make Physical Exams Less Touch and Go

The first gateway to the detection of potentially cancerous tumors or lesions often occurs during the physical exam at the doctor's office, which is performed through touch. As one might imagine, conclusions made from such a test could be very subjective, depending on the physician's...

Ask the Expert

Dan Sanchez on How to Improve Extruded Components
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Improving extruded components requires careful attention to a number of factors, including dimensional tolerance, material selection, and processing. Trelleborg’s Dan Sanchez provides detailed insights into each of these considerations to help you advance your device innovations while reducing costs and speeding time to market.

Inside Story

Inside Story: Establishing Safe EO Residual Levels for Medical Devices
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To find out more about the expertise required to establish safe EO Residual levels for medical devices, Medical Design Briefs recently spoke with Leonard Harris, Manager, Chemistry and Container Testing for Eurofins Medical Device Testing (Lancaster, PA).

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