Designing a System to Obtain Electrodermal Activity for Wearables
In recent years, activity trackers and other wearable electronic devices have gained popularity due to users’ desire to monitor, measure, and track using various real-time features related to their fitness or health, including the number of steps they take, their heart rate, their heart rate variability (HRV), the users’ temperature, their activity and/or stress levels, etc.
New Products and Services: September 2018 Medical Design Briefs
Coordinate Measuring Machine
Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence, North Kingstown, RI, has released a new coordinate measuring machine (SMM) platform. The Global S CMM is part of the company’s Enhanced Productivity Series (EPS) featuring smart technologies such as user experience (UX) enhancements, measurement software, and advanced “green” options. The EPS platform is designed specifically to simplify the creation, execution, and analysis of measurement routines. The Global S CMM platform utilizes PC-DMIS CMM software for the collection, evaluation, management, and presentation of manufacturing data. Leveraging software advancements, common tasks such as the selection of probe tips and importing files are now 3–8 times faster than existing solutions.
Early Detection of Neuro Diseases
A new wireless eye-tracking technology is based on electro-oculography (EOG), an ophthalmology technique used to examine eyes and record eye movement. The technology, which is integrated into a standard pair of eyeglasses, can significantly improve augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) experiences.
New Patch Boosts Brightness in Medical Diagnostic Tests
Fluorescence-based biosensing and bioimaging technologies are widely used in research and clinical settings to detect and image various biological species of interest. While fluorescence-based detection and imaging techniques are convenient to use, they suffer from poor sensitivity. For example, when a patient carries low levels of antigens in the blood or urine, the fluorescent signal can be feeble, making visualization and diagnosis difficult. For this reason, fluorescence-based detection is not always preferred when sensitivity is a key requirement.
Product of the Month: September 2018 Medical Design Briefs
Advanced Wound Care Products
Vancive Medical Technologies, an Avery Dennison business, Chicago, IL, offers six advanced wound care materials for private labeling by medical device original equipment manufacturers (OEMs): silicone wound contact layer, thin absorbent wound dressing, odor-absorbing hydrocolloid, superabsorbent dressing, silicone adhesive coated polyurethane foam, and barrier film spray and swab.
Intelligent Machines: Can You Build a Robot You Can Trust?
3D Printed Device — Game Changer for Spinal Cord Injuries
A groundbreaking 3D-printed device could someday help patients with long-term spinal cord injuries regain some function. A 3D-printed guide, made of silicone, serves as a platform for specialized cells that are then 3D printed on top of it. The guide would be surgically implanted into the injured area of the spinal cord where it would serve as a type of “bridge” between living nerve cells above and below the area of injury. The hope is that this would help patients alleviate pain as well as regain some functions like control of muscles, bowel, and bladder.
In this new process, researchers start with any kind of cell from an adult, such as a skin cell or blood cell. Using new bioengineering techniques, the medical researchers are able to reprogram the cells into neuronal stem cells. The engineers print these cells onto a silicone guide using a unique 3D-printing technology in which the same 3D printer is used to print both the guide and the cells. The guide keeps the cells alive and allows them to change into neurons. The team developed a prototype guide that would be surgically implanted into the damaged part of the spinal cord and help connect living cells on each side of the injury.
Nano-Optic Endoscope Sees Deep into Tissue
A new class of endoscopic imaging catheters — termed nano-optic endoscopes — overcome the limitations of current systems. The new endoscopes see deep into tissue at high resolution. The use of nano-optic catheters that incorporate metalenses into their design will likely change the landscape of optical catheter design, resulting in a dramatic increase in the quality, resolution, and functionality of endoscopic microscopy. The researchers say this will ultimately increase clinical utility by enabling more sophisticated assessment of cell and tissue microstructure in living patients.
Metalenses based on flat optics are a game-changing new technology because the control of image distortions necessary for high-resolution imaging is straightforward compared to conventional optics, which requires multiple complex shaped lenses.
Bioengineered Lung Successfully Transplanted
A research team has bioengineered lungs and transplanted them into adult pigs with no medical complications. To produce a bioengineered lung, a support scaffold was created using a lung from an unrelated animal that was treated using a special mixture of sugar and detergent to eliminate all cells and blood in the lung, leaving only the scaffolding proteins or skeleton of the lung behind. This is a lung-shaped scaffold made totally from lung proteins.
The cells used to produce each bioengineered lung came from a single lung removed from each of the study animals. This was the source of the cells used to produce a tissue-matched bioengineered lung for each animal in the study. The lung scaffold was placed into a tank filled with a carefully blended cocktail of nutrients and the animals’ own cells were added to the scaffold following a carefully designed protocol or recipe. The bioengineered lungs were grown in a bioreactor for 30 days prior to transplantation. Animal recipients were survived for 10 hours, two weeks, one month and two months after transplantation, allowing the research team to examine development of the lung tissue following transplantation and how the bioengineered lung would integrate with the body.
Pill-Sized Sensor Detects Gases in the Gut
New trials of a breakthrough swallowable sensor have revealed the device is 3,000 times more accurate than current technology used to diagnose many gut disorders. The findings show the revolutionary gas-sensing capsule could surpass breath testing as the benchmark for diagnosing gut disorders, paving the way to solving previously undiagnosed conditions.
The vitamin pill-sized capsule provides real time detection and measurement of hydrogen, carbon dioxides, and oxygen in the gut. The data can be sent to a mobile phone.
