Category: Medical Tech

Prostate exams aren’t exactly an enjoyable experience, but if you ever need one, you’ll want the doctor to know what they’re doing. Unfortunately, the procedure is difficult for med students to learn, thanks to the internal nature of the examination and a lack of willing test subjects. Scientists at Imperial College London wanted to solve that problem by developing a robotic rectum that recreates the feel of the real thing and even provides haptic feedback. The cheek-clench-inducing procedure involves a doctor snapping on a glove and probing a man’s back…

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Researchers from North Carolina State University and Duke University have developed a metamaterial made of paper and aluminum that can manipulate acoustic waves to more than double the resolution of acoustic imaging, focus acoustic waves, and control the angles at which sound passes through the metamaterial. Acoustic imaging tools are used in both medical diagnostics and in testing the structural integrity of everything from airplanes to bridges.   “This metamaterial is something that we’ve known is theoretically possible, but no one had actually made it before,” says Yun Jing, an…

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Congenital heart experts from Spectrum Health Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital have successfully integrated two common imaging techniques to produce a three-dimensional anatomic model of a patient’s heart.   The 3D model printing of patients’ hearts has become more common in recent years as part of an emerging, experimental field devoted to enhanced visualization of individual cardiac structures and characteristics. But this is the first time the integration of computed tomography (CT) and three-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography (3DTEE) has successfully been used for printing a hybrid 3D model of a patient’s heart.…

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Novocure, a company now headquartered on the Jersey Isle, has announced FDA approval of the second generation of its groundbreaking Optune system. The Optune delivers so-called Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) that interfere with cell division, in a sense pausing the development of tumors that are otherwise extremely difficult to treat. When cells divide they create mitotic spindles, tiny strings that pull on chromosomes to pry them apart for duplication. These spindles are susceptible to electric fields due to a natural charge, so finely tuning the field can prevent their activity and, if accurately directed, stop tumors from growing.…

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Cancer treatments based on laser irridation of tiny nanoparticles that are injected directly into the cancer tumor are working and can destroy the cancer from within. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute and the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Copenhagen have developed a method that kills cancer cells using nanoparticles and lasers. The treatment has been tested on mice and it has been demonstrated that the cancer tumors are considerably damaged. The results are published in the scientific journal, Scientific Reports.   Traditional cancer treatments like radiation…

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At the post-grad research collaboration called Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), a team has developed a microfluidic device for testing how electric fields influence living cells. The main goal for the technology is to identify the nature of the electric fields that best disrupt the activity of cancer cells, the growth and multiplication of which has been shown in the past to be influenced by external electric fields. Potentially, there’s a chance that electrodes could be used in the future to simply stop and even kill cancer cells completely from outside the…

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Latanoprost (Xalatan) pressure reducing eye drops are the first line of defense against glaucoma. They’re unpleasant enough for a lot of patients to the point that the burning effect leads to poor adherence. What if there were contact lenses that release the drug slowly right onto the eyeball in a precise amount? Well, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and Massachusetts Eye and Ear have been successfully testing just such devices on monkeys with glaucoma in one eye.   Published in journal Ophthalmology, the team describes the creation of high and…

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