University of Texas at Dallas mechanical engineers have designed a 3D-printed femur that could help doctors prepare for surgeries to repair bones and develop treatments for bone tumors. The engineers, who worked in collaboration with UT Southwestern Medical Center orthopedic surgeons, published their first study on the 3D-printed thigh bone online Aug. 5 in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research. The study, which focused on the middle section of the bone, establishes 3D-printing parameters for a femur for use in biomechanical…
Ultrasound, once used almost exclusively to take images of the body, is quickly developing into a targeted therapy that can have a potentially life-changing impact on our brains, according to the authors of a new article. For decades, health professionals across the world have used ultrasound as a means of monitoring the development of unborn babies and assessing the health of patients’ internal organs. But writing in the journal PLOS Biology, researchers from Stanford University, the University of Plymouth, and…
… revolutionizes the diagnosis of head and neck tumors. Head and neck cancers are among the ten most common cancers worldwide. Head and neck tumors account for about 3-5% of all cancers, with squamous cell carcinomas being the predominant form. They occur in areas such as the oral cavity, pharynx and larynx. An international team of researchers led by Sara Wickström has now developed a new technique that allows the properties of cancer cells and their surrounding tissue to be…
…offers new hope in the fight against bacterial infections. Researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of California San Diego have made an exciting breakthrough in the battle against bacterial infections. The Bozhi Tian (UChicago) and Gürol Süel (UC San Diego) labs have developed a cutting-edge bioelectronic device that taps into the natural electrical activity of certain bacteria found on our skin, paving the way for a drug-free approach to managing infections. This groundbreaking study, published in DEVICE, reveals how programmable electrical…
…represents a breakthrough for tissue-interfaced bioelectronics. New material from the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering can create better brain-machine interfaces, biosensors, and pacemakers. The ideal material for interfacing electronics with living tissue is soft, stretchable, and just as water-loving as the tissue itself—in short, a hydrogel. Semiconductors, the key materials for bioelectronics such as pacemakers, biosensors, and drug delivery devices, on the other hand, are rigid, brittle, and water-hating, impossible to dissolve in the way hydrogels have traditionally been…
Particularly beneficial for rural U.S. areas, developing countries. Researchers at The University of Texas at El Paso have created a portable device that can detect colorectal and prostate cancer more cheaply and quickly than prevailing methods. The team believes the device may be especially helpful in developing countries, which experience higher cancer mortality rates due in part to barriers to medical diagnosis. “Our new biochip device is low-cost — just a few dollars — and sensitive, which will make accurate…
Spinal canal stenosis – a bony narrowing of the spinal canal – can be agonizing. If it presses on the spinal cord, it comes to chronic pain and paralysis. Surgical intervention is often the only solution: In Germany alone, 111,000 cases are treated every year. However, since stenosis is close to the spinal cord, bony decompression, in which the constrictions are removed using high-speed milling, is risky. A new robot-assisted, optically monitored laser surgery system developed at the Fraunhofer Institute…
Imaging technique developed at the MHH enables regional imaging of lung function without radiation exposure and breathing stops. Recognizing and assessing lung diseases is a medical challenge. Conventional computed tomography (CT) is well suited to depicting the structure of the lungs in high resolution. However, it provides little information about lung function and also exposes patients to radiation. The lung function test is well established, but only provides values for the entire lung, i.e. it only tells us whether the…
Hand-held instrument uses sound waves to detect biomarkers in tiny amounts of blood. Patients who go to the doctor to provide a blood sample are typically faced with a needle and syringe and hours or days of waiting to get results back from a lab. University of Colorado Boulder researchers hope to change that with a new handheld, sound-based diagnostic system able to deliver precise results in an hour with a mere finger prick of blood. The team describes the system…
Researchers will use tissue-on-chip technology as a new way to explore the relationship between the lungs and brain. Scientists are developing advanced tools to understand and treat neurological symptoms such as brain fog associated with respiratory diseases like influenza. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) within the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), awarded a three-year contract to researchers at the University of Rochester to develop…
DOE tasks a Jefferson Lab team to evaluate whether proton therapy cancer treatments may serve as a safer alternative to treatments using radioactive isotopes. Radiation therapy techniques have been used for more than a century to treat cancers. Physicists in the Radiation Detector and Imaging group and associated with the Biomedical Research & Innovation Center (BRIC) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility have been for several years pursuing radiation therapy technology improvements in collaboration with…
First successful demonstration of a dual-media NV diamond laser system. Measuring tiny magnetic fields, such as those generated by brain waves, enables many new novel opportunities for medical diagnostics and treatment. The research team led by Dr. Jan Jeske at Fraunhofer IAF is working on a globally innovative approach to precise magnetic field measurements: Laser Threshold Magnetometry. The researchers have now combined an NV diamond and a laser diode in a resonator, successfully demonstrating the sensor system with two active…
An AI research collaboration led by EPFL professor Alexander Mathis creates a model which provides deep insights into hand movement, which is an essential step for the development of neuroprosthetics and rehabilitation technologies. In neuroscience and biomedical engineering, accurately modeling the complex movements of the human hand has long been a significant challenge. Current models often struggle to capture the intricate interplay between the brain’s motor commands and the physical actions of muscles and tendons. This gap not only hinders…
A new hand-held scanner developed by UCL researchers can generate highly detailed 3D photoacoustic images in just seconds, paving the way for their use in a clinical setting for the first time and offering the potential for earlier disease diagnosis. In the study, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the team show their technology can deliver photoacoustic tomography (PAT) imaging scans to doctors in real time, providing them with accurate and intricate images of blood vessels, helping inform patient care. Photoacoustic…
Clinical study of microscope-integrated system lays groundwork for using OCT to define tumor margins and reveal subsurface brain anatomy. Researchers have successfully integrated a megahertz-speed optical coherence tomography (MHz-OCT) system into a commercially available neurosurgical microscope and demonstrated its clinical usefulness. This advancement represents an important step toward developing an OCT instrument that could be used to identify tumor margins during brain surgery. OCT is a non-invasive imaging technique that provides high-resolution, cross-sectional images of tissue that allow visualization of…
Thanks to New Machine Learning Method… Using smartly trained neural networks, researchers at TU Graz have succeeded in generating precise real-time images of the beating heart from just a few MRI measurement data. Other MRI applications can also be accelerated using this procedure. Medical imaging using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is very time-consuming since an image has to be compiled from data from many individual measurements. Thanks to the use of machine learning, imaging is also possible with less MRI…