Implants & Prosthetics

A team of Johns Hopkins University students, working with a Johns Hopkins physician and outside experts, has designed a prosthetic fit for high heels. The "Prominence" foot adapts to popular fashion for heels up to four inches high.

Curved lenses, like those in cameras or telescopes, are stacked in order to reduce distortions and resolve a clear image. A new fabrication method from Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) replaces the stacks with a single flat lens.

Iowa State engineers have developed micro-sized liquid-metal particles for heat-free soldering and metal processing applications.

An international team of scientists led by Oxford University in the UK and Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, NY, has proposed a new evaluation framework to make sure that medical devices receive better scrutiny. They compared existing approaches to medical device evaluation in the...

Researchers from MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital have developed a small, implantable device that delivers chemotherapy drugs directly to pancreatic tumors. Using mice, the team determined that the implant approach was up to 12 times more effective than the common method of delivering chemotherapy...

Engineers at Arizona State University (ASU), Tempe, have created an edible supercapacitor that, they say, can wipe out E. coli or power a camera from inside the body. Using edible foodstuffs like activated charcoal, gold leaf, seaweed, egg white, cheese, gelatin, and barbecue sauce, which can store...

Vanderbilt University researchers have created an implantable artificial kidney that is powered by a patient's own heart. The bio-hybrid device uses living kidney cells and microchip filters to keep a patient off dialysis and remove waste products, salt, and water.

A mind-controlled prosthetic arm developed by Johns Hopkins researchers allows wearers to move individual digits independently of each other. The proof-of-concept device represents an advance in technologies to restore refined hand function to those who have lost arms to injury or disease, say the...

University of Rochester researchers created a material that undergoes a shape change when triggered by body heat alone. The shape-memory polymer can be programmed to retain a temporary form and then revert back to its original structure.

Researchers at the Technological Institute of Energy, Valencia, Spain, are working to create a bio-battery that uses blood glucose to produce energy. Such a battery, they say, would cut down on the number of surgical interventions a pacemaker user must undergo.

A team at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has characterized a fundamental origami fold, or tessellation, that could be used as a building block for medical devices. The folding pattern, known as the Miura-ori, can be packed into a flat, compact...