Combining neuroscience and robotic research has gained impressive results in the rehabilitation of paraplegic patients. A research team led by Prof. Gordon Cheng from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) was able to show that exoskeleton training not only helped patients to walk, but also stimulated their healing process. With these findings in mind, Prof. Cheng wants to take the fusion of robotics and neuroscience to the next level. Prof. Cheng, by training a paraplegic patient with the exoskeleton within…
Mobile, distributed systems that provide medical care to the public can be a crucial addition to the existing healthcare infrastructure in crises and emergencies such as the current Corona pandemic. Six of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s institutes have joined forces under the lead management of the Fraunhofer IFF in Magdeburg and are developing an integrated system for mobile, distributed medical care in the Demo-medVer project. What makes it special is that all of the complete system’s components are modularized, are closely interconnected,…
A multi-channel recording device developed at TU Graz for pathological lung sounds and associated automatic lung sound analysis could support existing screening methods for early detection of, for example, Covid-19 infections. This now requires clinical data and interdisciplinary collaboration. They whistle, hiss and crackle. Our bodies constantly make sounds that (fortunately) are not always audible to the naked ear. The occurrence of certain noises or changes in normal sounds can be an indication of illness. Using the example of the…
New AI-based algorithm processes tissue oxygenation data faster and more accurately than conventional techniques. Tissue oxygenation is a measure of the oxygen level in biological tissue and is a useful clinical biomarker for tissue viability. Abnormal levels may indicate the presence of conditions such as sepsis, diabetes, viral infection, or pulmonary disease, and effective monitoring is important for surgical guidance as well as medical care. Several techniques exist for the measurement of tissue oxygenation, but they all have some limitations….
Method measures naturally occurring electron transfers. Bacterial infections have become one of the biggest health problems worldwide, and a recent study shows that COVID-19 patients have a much greater chance of acquiring secondary bacterial infections, which significantly increases the mortality rate. Combatting the infections is no easy task, though. When antibiotics are carelessly and excessively prescribed, that leads to the rapid emergence and spread of antibiotic-resistant genes in bacteria — creating an even larger problem. According to the Centers for…
Magnetic resonance imaging has become an indispensable tool for medical diagnostics. Using metamaterials – printed circuit boards whose properties can be systematically adjusted – can increase measurement sensitivity by a factor of five. Metamaterials can also make scans faster and quieter. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institutes for Digital Medicine MEVIS and for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR are working together to make examinations more pleasant for patients. Magnetic resonance imaging – MRI for short – lets doctors image…
The air we exhale contains information that can assist with the diagnosis of disease. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Project Hub for Microelectronic and Optical Systems for Biomedicine MEOS are now developing solutions designed to enable the analysis of breath gas for this purpose. Although their research focuses on the early detection of cancer, the same principle could also be applied to distinguish between COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases. Some diseases have a distinct odor. A faintly sweet and fruity acetone…
The world’s fastest whole-body PET/CT scanner is being put into service today at Bern University Hospital’s Inselspital Department of Nuclear Medicine. This scanner of the latest generation opens up new dimensions in research, diagnostics and therapy planning. The manufacturer (Siemens Healthineers) chose Bern as the location for the first installation worldwide because of its top-class research, its proven concept for networked operation and its role as a leading center in medicine. Positron emission tomography (PET) is a diagnostic imaging procedure…
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is indispensable in medical diagnostics. However, MRI units are large and expensive to acquire and operate. With smaller and cost-efficient systems, MRI would be more flexible and more people could benefit from the technique. Such mini MRI units generate a much weaker signal that is difficult to analyze, though. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biophysical Chemistry and the Center for Biostructural Imaging of Neurodegeneration have now developed a method amplifying the signal so…
Catching deadly diseases like cancer early on is key to improving patient survival odds. However, diseases are much harder to diagnose in their preliminary stages because people often haven’t developed symptoms yet and only trace amounts can be found in their bodies. Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering want to make it easier to catch diseases earlier in the process, improving patient outlooks and taking some of the load off the medical system. The researchers have created an approach…
Researchers have developed a chip that is powered wirelessly and can be surgically implanted to read neural signals and stimulate the brain with both light and electrical current. The technology has been demonstrated successfully in rats and is designed for use as a research tool. “Our goal was to create a research tool that can be used to help us better understand the behavior of different regions of the brain, particularly in response to various forms of neural stimulation,” says…
Imaging technology offers advantages for diagnostics, other uses. Current state-of-the-art techniques have clear limitations when it comes to imaging the smallest nanoparticles, making it difficult for researchers to study viruses and other structures at the molecular level. Scientists from the University of Houston and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center have reported in Nature Communications a new optical imaging technology for nanoscale objects, relying upon unscattered light to detect nanoparticles as small as 25 nanometers in diameter. The…
A simple method developed at KAUST uses laser beams to create graphene electrodes that have better performance than those produced through older methods. Electrodes consisting of graphene, an atypical form of carbon, may transform the way electroactive substances are detected and measured in numerous fields ranging from food safety and clinical diagnosis to environmental monitoring1,2,3. Graphene comprises multiple ultrathin and highly ordered sheets of interconnected honeycomb-shaped rings of carbon atoms. This multilayered architecture provides the material with exceptional electronic properties,…
Sometimes an image gives those who can read it correctly a deeper insight into what they can see. In many scientific disciplines, the key to extracting meaningful information from large three-dimensional images, obtained from X-ray tomography or optical microscopy, is segmentation, a tedious and time-consuming task if done manually. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS), Heidelberg University, the KIT and the Technical University of Darmstadt now present Biomedisa, an easy-to-use open-source online platform…
Researchers at FAU and the Graz University of Technology are hoping to improve the imaging of cell metabolism using a special technique. The use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in modern medicine allows accurate imaging of the soft tissue in the human body, thus enabling changes such as tumours to be diagnosed. However, several medical conditions cause changes to occur in the cell metabolism before substantial changes to the structure of the tissue can be detected with MRI. A team…
Freiburg researchers develop guidelines to standardize analysis of electrodes How can scientists measure and define the performance of neural electrodes if there are no uniform standards? Freiburg microsystems engineer Dr. Maria Asplund together with Dr. Christian Böhler and Prof. Dr. Thomas Stieglitz, as well as Prof. Dr. Luciano Fadiga and Dr. Stefano Carli from the Italian Institute of Technology at the University of Ferrara, Italy, have developed guidelines to standardize the testing of the performance of electrodes for neural interfaces…
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