Tag: CERN particle collider

The Future of Medicine: Tiny Bladder and Flashlight Sensors

heart_patchesThere’s seems to be no shortage of medical breakthroughs these days! Whether it’s bionic limbs, 3-D printed prosthetic devices, bioprinting, new vaccines and medicines, nanoparticles, or embedded microsensors, researchers and medical scientists are bringing innovation and technological advancement together to create new possibilities. And in recent months, two breakthrough in particular have bbecome the focus of attention, offering the possibility of smarter surgery and health monitoring.

First up, there’s the tiny bladder sensor that is being developed by the Norwegian research group SINTEF. When it comes to patients suffering from paralysis, the fact that they cannot feel when their bladders are full, para and quadriplegics often suffer from pressure build-up that can cause damage to the bladder and kidneys. This sensor would offer a less invasive means of monitoring their condition, to see if surgery is required or if medication will suffice.

pressuresensorPresently, doctors insert a catheter into the patient’s urethra and fill their bladder with saline solution, a process which is not only uncomfortable but is claimed to provide an inaccurate picture of what’s going on. By contrast, this sensor can be injected directly into the patients directly through the skin, and could conceivably stay in place for months or even years, providing readings without any discomfort, and without requiring the bladder to be filled mechanically.

Patients would also able to move around normally, plus the risk of infection would reportedly be reduced. Currently readings are transmitted from the prototypes via a thin wire that extents from the senor out through the skin, although it is hoped that subsequent versions could transmit wirelessly – most likely to the patient’s smartphone. And given that SINTEF’s resume includes making sensors for the CERN particle collider, you can be confident these sensors will work!

senor_cern_600Next month, a clinical trial involving three spinal injury patients is scheduled to begin at Norway’s Sunnaas Hospital. Down the road, the group plans to conduct trials involving 20 to 30 test subjects. Although they’re currently about to be tested in the bladder, the sensors could conceivably be used to measure pressure almost anywhere in the body. Conceivably, sensors that monitor blood pressure and warn of aneurisms or stroke could be developed.

Equally impressive is the tiny, doughnut-shaped sensor being developed by Prof. F. Levent Degertekin and his research group at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. Designed to assist doctors as they perform surgery on the heart or blood vessels, this device could provide some much needed (ahem) illumination. Currently, doctors and scientists rely on images provided by cross-sectional ultrasounds, which are limited in terms of the information they provide.

tiny_flashlightAs Degertekin explains:

If you’re a doctor, you want to see what is going on inside the arteries and inside the heart, but most of the devices being used for this today provide only cross-sectional images. If you have an artery that is totally blocked, for example, you need a system that tells you what’s in front of you. You need to see the front, back, and sidewalls altogether.

That’s where their new chip comes into play. Described as a “flashlight” for looking inside the human body, it’s basically a tiny doughnut-shaped sensor measuring 1.5 millimeters (less than a tenth of an inch) across, with the hole set up to take a wire that would guide it through cardiac catheterization procedures. In that tiny space, the researchers were able to cram 56 ultrasound transmitting elements and 48 receiving elements.

georgia-tech-flashlight-vessels-arteries-designboom03So that the mini monitor doesn’t boil patients’ blood by generating too much heat, it’s designed to shut its sensors down when they’re not in use. In a statement released from the university, Degertekin explained how the sensor will help doctors to better perform life-saving operations:

Our device will allow doctors to see the whole volume that is in front of them within a blood vessel. This will give cardiologists the equivalent of a flashlight so they can see blockages ahead of them in occluded arteries. It has the potential for reducing the amount of surgery that must be done to clear these vessels.

Next up are the usual animal studies and clinical trials, which Degertekin hopes will be conducted by licensing the technology to a medical diagnostic firm. The researchers are also going to see if they can make their device even smaller- small enough to fit on a 400-micron-diameter guide wire, which is roughly four times the diameter of a human hair. At that size, this sensor will be able to provide detailed, on-the-spot information about any part of the body, and go wherever doctors can guide it.

Such is the nature of the new age of medicine: smaller, smarter, and less invasive, providing better information to both save lives and improve quality of life. Now if we can just find a cure for the common cold, we’d be in business!

Sources: gizmag.com, news.cnet.com

Higgs Boson Confirmed!

CERN_tunnelIn July of 2012, scientists working for the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland announced that they believed they had found the elusive “God Particle” – aka. the Higgs Boson. In addition to ending a decades-long search, the discovery also solved one of the greatest riddles of the universe, confirming the Standard Model of particle physics and shedding light on how the universe itself came to be.

But of course, this discovery needed to be confirmed before the scientific community could accept its existence as fact. The announcement made in July indicated that what the CERN scientists had found appeared to be the Higgs Boson, in that it fit the characteristics of the hypothetical subatomic particle. But as of last Thursday, they claimed that they are now quite certain that this is what they observed.

CERNJoe Incandela, a physicist who heads one of the two main teams at CERN (both made up of over 3000 individuals) claimed that: “To me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson, though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is”. In essence, he and his staff believe that may be several types of Higgs to be found, each of which behaves a little differently.

This was no small challenge, as the Higgs will only make an appearance once in every trillion collisions. Originally theorized in 1964 by British physicist Peter Higgs to explain why matter has mass, it has long been suspected that the Higgs stood alone, explaining how the six “flavors” of quarks, six types of leptons, and twelve gauge bosons, interact. Now, it may be the case that there are several, each of which moves differently and are responsible for different functions.

Higgs-bosonAnd of course, there are several larger mysteries that remain to be solved, which the discovery of the Higgs is expected to shed light on. These include why gravity is so weak, what the dark matter is that is believed to make up a large part of the total mass in the universe, and just how all the major forces of the universe work together to define this thing we know as reality.

These include gravity, weak and strong nuclear forces, and electromagnetism. The Theory of Relativity explains how gravity works, while Quantum Theory explains the other three. What has been missing for some time is a “Grand Unifying Theory”, something which could explain how these two theories could co-exist and account for all the basic forces of the universe.

If we can do that, we will have accomplished what Stephen Hawking has dreamed of for some time, and in effect be one step closer to what he described as: “understanding the mind of God”.

Source: nytimes.com