The Heart of The Matter: Technology In The Future of Cardiology
Sound, rhythm, rate, structure, function – countless features of the heart are measured to keep it healthy for as long as possible. Recently, an army of digital health technologies joined the forces of traditional preventive tools in cardiology to counter stroke, heart attack, heart failure or any other cardiovascular risks. In the future, minuscule sensors, digital twins, and artificial intelligence could strengthen their ranks. Let’s see what the future of cardiology might look like!
Fitness trackers, chatbots and A.I.
against heart disease
Let’s say 36-year-old Maria living in Sao Paulo in
2033 decides one d...
Source: The Medical Futurist - March 12, 2019 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Future of Medicine Health Sensors & Trackers Portable Diagnostics cardiology cardiovascular cardiovascular diseases digital digital twin health trackers heart heart health heart rate heart soun Source Type: blogs
Resistance-Sensing Needle Helps Improve Injection Accuracy
While most medical tools have seen incredible advances over the past century, the syringe has remained relatively unchanged despite room for improvement. Without the use of live imaging or sensing systems, which require additional time and resources, nurses and physicians must rely on blind insertion techniques using superficial anatomical landmarks, fluid return, and tactile feedback to accurately deliver a syringe’s contents. These techniques can be problematic when targeting smaller areas, or regions where overshoot can result in harm to the patient. One such region is the suprachoroidal space, located between the...
Source: Medgadget - March 11, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Mark O'Reilly Tags: Anesthesiology Cardiology Critical Care Emergency Medicine Ophthalmology Surgery Source Type: blogs
Microfluidic Device Pulls Exosomes from Blood to Test for Cancer
Exosomes are tiny vesicles that seemingly all the cells in our bodies produce. Initially, exosomes were thought to be a way for cells to expunge built-up trash, but over the past decade or so scientists have discovered that they seem to play an important role in regulating a variety of biochemical processes. One thing that has been discovered is that neoplasms produce a lot more exosomes than healthy cells, and that the exosomes can carry biomarkers pointing to the existence of the tumors.
Filtering out exosomes from blood, because of their extremely small size, is not easy, but it’s a focus of a number of research i...
Source: Medgadget - February 28, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Genetics Materials Nanomedicine Oncology Source Type: blogs
Nanoparticles Highlight Organ Transplant Rejection Through Fluorescent Urine
Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a sophisticated nanoparticle that can alert clinicians to the early stages of transplanted organ immune rejection through a simple urine test. The nanoparticles can accumulate in transplanted organs and detect immune rejection, whereupon they release molecules that turn the urine of the organ recipient fluorescent. Using a simple urine test, clinicians can then assess if organ rejection is happening, potentially replacing the need for invasive biopsies.
Organ transplantation provides organ recipients with a new lease of life, but it is not without risks and complications. One of t...
Source: Medgadget - February 21, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Nanomedicine Surgery Source Type: blogs
Light-Activated Tether-Free Neural Stimulation Device
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have developed an ultra-small implantable neural stimulation device that can be activated using a laser and which doesn’t require a cable that tethers it to a controller outside the body. The researchers hope that the device could pave the way for less invasive neural stimulation therapy in neurological disorders and help scientists to explore neural circuits in the brain.
Neural stimulation therapy involves electrically stimulating neurons to produce a therapeutic effect, and it holds potential in treating neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. The technique is ...
Source: Medgadget - February 19, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Materials Neurology Source Type: blogs
Photoacoustic Imaging Measures Temperature Deep Within Body
When using heat and other forms of radiation to ablate tumors, it is usually difficult to know just how hot the tissues around your target are getting, particularly when working deep within the body. MRI and ultrasound can be useful in many cases, but they have limitations and can produce misleading readings. To have a better option, researchers at Duke University have been working on using photoacoustic imaging as a tool to remotely measure the temperature of deep-seated tissues.
Photoacoustic imaging involves shining light onto an object, heating it ever-so-slightly, and then using ultrasound to detect the waves that re...
Source: Medgadget - February 13, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Diagnostics Source Type: blogs
Silicon Photonics Device for Arterial Stiffness: Interview with Roel Baets and Patrick Segers, Imec and Ghent University
Imec, a research and innovation hub for nanoelectronics and digital technologies based in Belgium, in collaboration with numerous partners, has developed a new medical device to screen for arterial stiffness, a risk-factor for cardiovascular disease. Routine screening of arterial stiffness in a doctor’s office is currently impossible, meaning that this risk-factor is underused in the fight against cardiovascular disease. The new device is based on silicon photonics and could enable minimally skilled medical staff to easily and non-invasively assess patients for arterial stiffness at the point of care.
The silicon photoni...
Source: Medgadget - January 31, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Cardiology Diagnostics Exclusive Medicine Vascular Surgery Source Type: blogs
Silicon Photonics Device to Screen for Arterial Stiffness: Interview with Roel Baets and Patrick Segers, Imec and Ghent University
Imec, a research and innovation hub for nanoelectronics and digital technologies based in Belgium, in collaboration with numerous partners, has developed a new medical device to screen for arterial stiffness, a risk-factor for cardiovascular disease. Routine screening of arterial stiffness in a doctor’s office is currently impossible, meaning that this risk-factor is underused in the fight against cardiovascular disease. The new device is based on silicon photonics and could enable minimally skilled medical staff to easily and non-invasively assess patients for arterial stiffness at the point of care.
The silicon photoni...
Source: Medgadget - January 31, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Cardiology Diagnostics Exclusive Medicine Vascular Surgery Source Type: blogs
Computational Model of Heart ’s Mitral Valve to Predict Surgery Outcomes
Mitral valve repairs are complex surgeries that require particular attention to each patient’s unique anatomy, type of regurgitation such as in Carpentier’s classification, and other factors. Recently, transcatheter mitral valve implants have started to become popular, but they’re very difficult to place so as not to obstruct nearby blood flow. Bioengineers at The University of Texas at Austin, Penn Medicine and Georgia Tech have developed a computational modeling method for the movement of mitral valve flaps, which may allow physicians to simulate different surgical techniques and predict which will work ou...
Source: Medgadget - January 31, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Cardiac Surgery Cardiology Informatics Source Type: blogs
Self-Administered Long-Lasting Contraceptive Patch
Long lasting female contraceptives typically require trained professionals to perform injections and to implant devices, something that’s not always available in low-resource settings. Researchers at Georgia Tech and University of Michigan have created a microneedle patch that can deliver a long lasting contraceptive by simply being pressed against the skin. It has already been successfully tested on lab rats, showing that the blood levels of the hormone delivered via the patch increased to appropriate levels. The technology is similar to the flu vaccine patch that was also developed at Georgia Tech.
“There...
Source: Medgadget - January 28, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Materials Ob/Gyn Reproductive Medicine Source Type: blogs
Postdoc position available in the O-Lab at Duke University
We are looking for a highly motivated early-career scientist to join the O-Lab, led by Prof. Tobias Overath, in the Department of Psychology& Neuroscience at Duke University. Work in our lab investigates how sounds, from simple sinusoids to complex speech signals, are processed in the human brain, using a combination of behavioral (psychoacoustics) and neuroimaging methods (fMRI, EEG, ECoG) to track the underlying neural processes. Current projects investigate the transformation from acoustic to linguistic analysis of temporal speech structure, online measures of statistical learning, and optimization of cochlear ...
Source: Talking Brains - January 17, 2019 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
15-Minute MRI Coming Out of the University of Arizona
Researchers at the University of Arizona ’s College of Engineering are reducing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan time to 15 minutes by using multiplexed sensitivity-encoding (MUSE), a technology that eliminates many of the time-consuming elements of MRI.The group of researchers led by Nan-kaei Chen, PhD, associate professor of biomedical engineering, were awarded a $2.1 million grant from theNational Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to create faster MRI scans that will be beneficial to patients who struggle to lay still in the machine for 40 minutes to an hour. The five- year project specifically targe...
Source: radRounds - January 12, 2019 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Biodegradable Implantable Blood Flow Sensor
Researchers at Stanford University have developed a biodegradable blood flow sensor that can be wrapped around an artery during vascular surgery, and then monitor blood flow thereafter. The battery- and wire-free device can let a clinician know if a vessel is blocked, helping them to address complications after surgery before they become a significant problem. As the sensor is biodegradable, it does not need to be surgically removed later, and simply breaks down and disappears.
Assessing whether vascular surgery has been a success can be difficult, and sometimes if an issue develops, it can be too late to easily treat it. ...
Source: Medgadget - January 10, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Surgery Vascular Surgery Source Type: blogs
Implant Simultaneously Reads and Stimulates Brain to Control Parkinson ’s, Other Diseases
Electrical stimulation may serve to treat a variety of brain-related conditions, and there are already a number of products that help to control Parkinson’s, essential tremor, addiction, and depression. Though there’s a considerable ongoing progress, most of the currently available technologies are not very smart and certainly can’t measure brain activity and respond to it simultaneously.
Researchers at University of California, Berkeley, have developed a wireless electrode array implant that can read and contemporaneously stimulate the brain. The technology, being commercialized by Cortera Neurotechnol...
Source: Medgadget - January 2, 2019 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: Materials Neurology Neurosurgery Psychiatry Rehab Source Type: blogs
Post-doctoral position: Sensory-motor interactions in typical speech production and stuttering
TheLaboratory for Speech Physiology and Motor Control(PI Ludo Max, Ph.D.) at the University of Washington (Seattle) announces an open post-doctoral position in the area ofsensorimotor interactions in the control of speech movements by typical children and adults as well as individuals who stutter. The lab is located in the University of Washington's Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences and has additional affiliations with the Graduate Program in Neuroscience and the Department of Bioengineering. Seehttp://faculty.washington.edu/ludomax/lab/for more information.The successful candidate will use electroencephalogr...
Source: Talking Brains - December 18, 2018 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
