People who are hearing impaired have a difficult time following a conversation in a multi-speaker environment such as a noisy restaurant or a party. While current hearing aids can suppress background noise, they cannot help a user listen to a single conversation among many without knowing which speaker the user is attending to. A cognitive hearing aid that constantly monitors the brain activity of the subject to determine whether the subject is conversing with a specific speaker in the environment would be a dream come true.

A new nuclear imaging technique may help identify women at increased risk of heart damage due to their cancer treatment. The new imaging test uses the radiotracer technetium-99 labelled Annexin V, which was developed by Atreus, an Ottawa-based company that was later acquired by Advanced Accelerator Applications, a developer of innovative radiopharmaceuticals. Annexin is an investigational radiotracer and currently has been approved only for investigational use.

A biopsy robot made from 3D printed plastic can be used in an MRI scanner. The advantage of plastic is that the robot can carry out a biopsy (removing a piece of tissue) during a breast cancer scan in an MRI, which significantly increases accuracy. The Stormram 4 is a stimulus for the entire diagnostic phase of breast cancer; the accurate needle control, effectively real-time MRI scanning and a single, thin-needle biopsy enable quicker and more accurate diagnoses to be made. The researchers believe medical robotics is sure to become standard procedure in hospitals in the near future.

Researchers have developed a terahertz imaging approach that, for the first time, can acquire micron-scale resolution images while retaining computational approaches designed to speed up image acquisition. This combination could allow terahertz imaging to be useful for detecting early-stage skin cancer without requiring a tissue biopsy from the patient.

Cold forming, or cold forging, is becoming a more popular option for manufacturing precision engineered miniature and micro surgical and medical components. ¹ Manufacturers that purchase custom cold formed components for their assemblies do so with a view to reduce raw material and labor costs while also improving yield and component reliability. While the parts are generally very small, a large percentage of them contain a wide variety of expensive — and often precious — raw materials, and any reduction of waste adds directly to the bottom line. Cold forming’s other advantage of retaining or even improving repeatable quality over alternative methods is another reason it is becoming increasingly popular.

The qualities that make skin an incredible organism are the same ones that make it a challenge to stick to. Engineers may know all too well the headaches that can come with selecting adhesives for their stick-to-skin medical device projects. But it’s not all irritations, rashes, and pulled hair.

Electrical engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a temperature sensor that runs on only 113 picowatts of power — 628 times lower power than the state of the art and about 10 billion times smaller than a watt. This “near-zero-power” temperature sensor could extend the battery life of wearable or implantable devices that monitor body temperature, Internet of Things devices, and more.

Combining a new hydrogel material with a protein that boosts blood vessel growth could improve the success rate for transplanting insulin-producing islet cells into persons with type 1 diabetes. In an animal model, the technique enhanced the survival rate of transplanted insulin-producing cells, restoring insulin production in response to blood glucose levels and curing these diabetic animals.

There hasn’t been a gold standard for how orthopedic spine surgeons promote new bone growth in patients, but now Northwestern University scientists have designed a bioactive nanomaterial that is so good at stimulating bone regeneration it could become the method surgeons prefer.

People who suffer a stroke often undergo a brain scan at the hospital, allowing doctors to determine the location and extent of the damage. Researchers who study the effects of strokes would love to be able to analyze these images, but the resolution is often too low for many analyses.