New Ultrasound System Brings New Level of Precision to MRI-guided Biopsies
For MRI-guided breast biopsies, a scan is typically performed with the patient in the prone position and ultrasound is then used to guide the needle based on the scan while the patient is in supine position. This creates an imaging mismatch because, as everyone knows, the breast changes shape between the two positions, creating a lot of uncertainty when taking tissue samples.
Researchers at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering and the Fraunhofer Institute for Medical Image Computing have developed a system called MARIUS (Magnetic Resonance Imaging Using Ultrasound) that solves this problem in a...
Source: Medgadget - November 21, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Editors Tags: in the news... Source Type: blogs
Scientists Predict Time It Takes from Alzheimer’s Diagnosis to Nursing Home and Death
A Columbia University Medical Center-led research team has clinically validated a new method for predicting time to full-time care, nursing home residence, or death for patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
+Alzheimer's Reading Room
The method, which uses data gathered from a single patient visit, is based on a complex model of Alzheimer’s disease progression that the researchers developed by consecutively following two sets of Alzheimer’s patients for 10 years each.
The results were published online ahead of print in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
Subscribe to the Alzheimer's Reading Room
Email:
...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - November 11, 2013 Category: Dementia Authors: Bob DeMarco Source Type: blogs
Engineers Significantly Improve Capabilities of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a relatively new neurological tool for treating conditions such depression and Parkinson’s disease, but because of technological challenges there’s a lot of work that’s being done to improve the delivery systems to be both safer and more precise. TMS requires using a coil to generate a rapidly changing magnetic field that induces electrical eddy currents within the brain, non-invasively activating neurons that are associated with whatever condition is being researched or treated. One major problem is that current TMS system designs can only generate sufficient ...
Source: Medgadget - November 4, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Editors Tags: in the news... Source Type: blogs
Applied RNAi
Patrick Arbuthnot and Marc S. Weinberg present a new book on Applied RNAi: From Fundamental Research to Therapeutic Applications In this book an international panel of RNAi experts critically review the most interesting advances in basic applied RNAi research, highlight the applications in RNAi-based therapies and discuss the technical hurdles that remain. Topics covering the fundamental biological aspects of applied RNAi research include: the role of miRNAs in trinucleotide repeat disorders; miRNAs and HIV pathogenesis; miRNAs for epigenetic gene silencing; the role of miRNAs in virus-related cancers; non-canonical miRNA...
Source: Microbiology Blog: The weblog for microbiologists. - October 20, 2013 Category: Microbiology Source Type: blogs
Tactile Capsule Restores Surgeons Sense of Touch During Laparoscopy (VIDEO)
Laparoscopy accounts for more than two million surgical procedures each year in the U.S.. While it has brought many benefits in terms of cost reduction and safety, one drawback of this approach is the lack of tactile feedback for the surgeon. To address this problem, a team of engineers from Science and Technology of Robotics in Medicine (STORM) Lab at Vanderbilt University have developed a small, wireless capsule which aims to restore tactile feedback to the physician during laparoscopic surgery.
The prototype capsule is equipped with a pressure sensor, wireless transmitter, accelerometer, magnetometer and battery, all ho...
Source: Medgadget - October 18, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Gavin Corley Tags: Ob/Gyn Surgery Thoracic Surgery Urology Source Type: blogs
New MIT Institute for Medical Engineering & Science (IMES)
I miss being a student at MIT. Those were definitely some of the best days of my life. Recently, MIT launched their Institute for Medical Engineering & Science (IMES). Although HST was there when I was a student, IMES simply didn't exist.
The Institute for Medical Engineering and Science pioneers novel research and graduate education paradigms to advance health and educate leaders working at the convergence of engineering, science, and clinical medicine. IMES brings together MIT’s strengths in engineering, basic science, innovation, and entrepreneurship with clinical practice and research through its strategic partn...
Source: Medicine and Technology by Dr. Joseph Kim - October 8, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Tags: MIT Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology Massachusetts Institute of Technology Source Type: blogs
Drug Patch Treatment Takes New Strides
While drug discovery has taken major strides in the past few decades, drug delivery is still a relatively static field. The vast majority of pharmaceuticals can only be delivered orally or intravenously; in the hospital, this poses a problem with patients who are nauseous, unable to take medications by mouth, and/or who lack IV access. Drug patches are already a useful noninvasive way to deliver treatment like pain medication, but their applicability for other therapeutics has been limited.
Now, as reported in the journal Advance Materials, bioengineers at the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engingeering, ...
Source: Medgadget - September 9, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Ravi Parikh Tags: in the news... Source Type: blogs
Pro Football Team Experiments with Cone Beam CT Imaging
This article strikes me as rather schizophrenic. Although the lead sentence refers to the early detection of brain injury, the subsequent emphasis was on cone beam CT scanning and referred to this particular type of imaging as useful for musculoskeletal radiology and orthopaedic imaging of extremities. The academic talent they tapped at Johns Hopkins was from the Department of Biomedical Engineering rather than neurologists or radiologists. I was left with the opinion that the main thrust of this project in Buffalo was to focus on "point-of-care" orthopedic injuries among the players rather than brain...
Source: Lab Soft News - August 19, 2013 Category: Pathologists Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Information Technology Imaging Other Than Pathology Medical Research Source Type: blogs
BITalino: What if you could make your own body signals monitor?
Hugo Silva is a researcher at the IT – Instituto de Telecomunicações in Portugal and is a co-founder of PLUX – Wireless Biosignals, a company focused on creating cutting edge technologies for the healthcare and quality of life sectors.
The Do-It-Yourself (DIY) movement has been driving countless innovations and stimulating an age of creative engineering that is greatly expanding. The next wave is just around the corner and goes by the name BITalino, a DIY development kit that wants the world to be a bit more… physiological. As of today, you can use it to create not only your own body signals monitor but do ...
Source: Medgadget - August 12, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Hugo Silva Tags: Guest Post Source Type: blogs
Social media, research and museum curatorship — a concrete example
Discussions with Rebekah Higgitt(@beckyfh) sometimes extend over 15-25 turns with up to a handfull of interlocutors.
But even if the chat relayed above is pretty mundane, it illustrates some of the experiences a growing number of users of social media for academic and curatorial purposes have made:
Social media allow for instant discussion: Within a few minutes Jaipreet, Nathaniel, David and I were engaged in a conversation about a neglected topic (the representation of smell) in the history of STM and STM museums.
Social media increase the chances of contacts between researchers and curators considerably: The four of ...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - July 30, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Thomas Söderqvist Tags: blogging curation history of medicine material studies museum studies public outreach senses smell social web media Twitter Source Type: blogs
Up-and-Coming Disruptive Woman: Nina Tandon
DW recently sat down with July’s Up-and-Coming Disruptive Woman, Nina Tandon PhD, MBA, to discuss her innovative work in tissue engineering. Nina Tandon is a TED Senior Fellow, Staff Associate Postdoctoral Researcher in the Laboratory for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering, Columbia University, and adjunct professor of Electrical Engineering at the Cooper Union. Nina studies electrical signaling in the context of tissue engineering, and has worked with cardiac, skin and neural tissue. Nina spent her early career in telecom (Avaya Labs) and transitioned into biomedical engineering via her Fulbright scholarship in Italy, wh...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - July 24, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Health 2.0 Innovation Personalized Medicine Technology Up-and-coming Disruptive Women Source Type: blogs
On the Road with the Artificial Pancreas
He is the most interesting man in the world.The "he", fyi, is Ed Damiano...a biomedical engineer turned Artificial Pancreas guru, and father of a type 1 child with diabetes. (and a speaker this year at Friends for Life. Perhaps he has been other years, but I've been kind of out of the loop. I was excited to hear his talk this year, to find out exactly how the Massachusetts clinical trials are going. (very well, apparently. On track to submit to the FDA in 2016, perhaps on time to be approved in time for his son to go off to college in 2017). And I was impressed by his drive (and smarts), but namely, I needed one very impor...
Source: The D-Log Cabin - July 23, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: HVS Source Type: blogs
Medical Mobile App Draft Guidance Reaches 2nd Birthday
On July 21, 2011 the FDA released its “Draft Guidance for Industry and Food and Drug Administration Staff – Mobile Medical Application.” We have discussed this draft and mobile apps generally here, here, and here. As with all draft guidance documents, following the release of the draft the FDA is supposed to receive and review comments (reported to be about 130), and then issue a revised draft, a final guidance document, withdraw the draft, or do none of these for an extended period, just letting the draft sit. The latter appears to be the fate of many drafts. The two years that this draft has been out ...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - July 15, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: William Hyman Tags: Standards & Regulatory Source Type: blogs
Bringing Medical Quality Data into The Hands of Consumers
by Julien Penders, Program Manager Body Area Networks, imec/Holst Centre, Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
Should you blame your parent if you’re overweight or diabetic? Well, it is known that there is a genetic component to it, but there is more to it – your lifestyle. Companies like 23andMe now allow consumers to find out whether their genetic code contains markers that increase their chance of contracting certain diseases. This may sound scary to many, but here is your opportunity to get healthier. Genetics gives you a probability of contracting a disease – it gives you a risk. But we can live healthier if we adapt our...
Source: Medgadget - June 27, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Julian Penders Tags: Guest Post Source Type: blogs
FDA Offers (draft) Guidance on Cyber Security
The FDA has issued a draft guidance document on the expected content of premarket submissions with respect to medical device cybersecurity. This guidance targets individual medical devices rather than the network they may be resident on, and it also includes non-networked devices. The FDA notes that both networking capability and portable media increase vulnerability. The latter issue might be called intermittent or remote connectivity.
Guidance documents tell interested people what the FDA’s current thinking is relevant to its regulatory authority, in this case the review of 510(k), PMA and related submissions...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - June 14, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: William Hyman Tags: connectivity Standards & Regulatory Wireless Medical Devices Source Type: blogs
