A robot controlled by thought

Researchers at the National Center for Scientific Research in France and the Japanese National Institute of Technology and Advanced Industrial Science at its Joint Robotics Laboratory (CNRS-AIST JRL) have been developing an EEG-controlled interface for a virtual avatar or physical robot. The goal is to train someday severely paralyzed people to operate a robot with their minds so it can bring things from home and maybe even clean the parts of the house.

The system is based on an artificial intelligence that understands the intentions of the user, so that the robot does not need to be micro-managed to perform simple tasks such as walking to the end of the corridor or lift a cup. Once the user focuses on a target, the robot knows what to do with it. 

Check it out in the following video in DigInfo: 

Brain Computer Interface used to controlling the movement and actions of an android robot

Visual implant helps the blind read Braille

A group of French and American researchers has succeeded in developing an ocular device that has allowed to transmit first braille patterns directly into the retina of a blind patient who has been able to read four letter words accurately and quickly.

"In this clinical test with a single blind patient, we bypassed the camera that is the usual input for the implant and directly stimulated the retina. Instead of feeling the braille on the tips of his fingers, the patient could see the patterns we projected and then read individual letters in less than a second with up to 89% accuracy," explains researcher Thomas Lauritzen, lead author of the paper.

The study, published in "Frontiers in Neuroscience, was conducted by researchers at Second Sight, the company that developed the device, called the Argus II, "the artificial retina", has already been mentioned in this blog in a post last April. As I said then, the concept is similar to the development of cochlear implants: there is a visual implant a grid of 60 electrodes attached to the retina to stimulate patterns directly on nerve cells. For this study, researchers stimulated six of these points on the grid to project braille letters.

Image: Copyright Gadget Review.

"There was no input except the electrode stimulation and the patient recognized the braille letters easily. This proves that the patient has good spatial resolution because he could easily distinguish between signals on different, individual electrodes." says Lauritzen.

The patient correctly identified 89 percent at one point, 80 percent in the case of two points, to 60 percent in the case of three words, and 70 percent of 4-letter words.

Source: 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22525-implant-lets-the-blind-read-braille-with-their-eyes.html

More for the feet

As I am one of the many runners out there that use insoles to correct defective positions while walking and running, I found this quite interesting.

At the University of Utah engineering professor Stacy Bamberg recently developed a smart insole that seems to resemble the high technology Nike shoes and other Nike products for running. In this case, it goes beyond that, as this insole could help patients with prosthetic legs and people in rehab to correct walking abnormalities after a fracture or hip replacement.

The device is called Rapid Rehab and consists of a personalized gel insole embedded with force sensors, accelerometers and gyroscopes to detect the way a person walks. Rapid Rehab also contains a wireless transmitter to send data from sensors to a custom application for your smartphone that tracks and provides immediate visual, audio or sensory feedback to the user. The current version specifically contains two force-sensitive resistors that track the pressure the foot exerts when it is on the ground, as well as an accelerometer and a gyroscope to measure foot position and angle.

Image: copyright U News Utah

At present, the insole Rapid Rehab is used by amputees who want to reduce the limp when using a prosthetic leg. However, Bamberg expects it to be also used by physiotherapists and their patients who have received a hip replacement or suffered a bone fracture and need to correct their gait, since Rapid Rehab has proven to be less expensive than a gait-analysis laboratory study, more accurate than subjective observations of a physiotherapist, and faster in providing feedback.

Source: http://unews.utah.edu/news_releases/utah-engineering-prof-invents-smart-insole-to-correct-walking-abnormalities/

A bionic foot made in Brussels

I had not written for a long time about one of my favorite topics: bionic limbs. Fortunately this morning I found an interesting story that also touched me in a particular way, since the engineers who have developed this idea live in my city, Brussels.

Indeed, research engineers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, have developed a new active transtibial prosthesis that mimics the natural movement of the ankle and using energy efficiently. Instead of using powerful engines which start and stop at every step, the system activates an electric motor continuously to continuous stretch a rubber band, which in turn is used by the foot as a source of motive power.

By reducing the total energy requirement of the prosthesis, you can use smaller batteries, reducing the overall weight of the device. Moreover, the smaller engines, quieter and more efficient can also simplify the design and implementation.

Check out the video, it's amazing how well it resembles the motion of an actual foot!

White Paper on AMP-Foot 2.0: Intact Mimicking Behavior with a Powered Ankle Prosthesis Transtibial

Treating liver cancer

I would like to write today about two different approaches to treat liver cancer, which have been recently presented in the news, both coming from Southampton in UK.

I read about the first one last 12th of November in BBC News. It is about a "chemo-bath", consisting of isolating the organ so the chemotherapy drugs don't reach other parts of the body. In words of Dr Brian Stedman, a consultant interventional radiologist at Southampton General Hospital: "To cut off an organ from the body for 60 minutes, soak it in a high dose of drug and then filter the blood almost completely clean before returning is truly groundbreaking."

The procedure was baptised as Chemosaturation with Percutaneous Hepatic Perfusion (CS-PHP) and it was used for the first time in UK in two patients with a cancer that had spread to the liver. The method had already been used in Germany, Italy, Ireland, France and the US. Furthermore, a study carried out in the US showed that patients who received this treatment survived 5 times longer than patients who received the best alternative care. 

Image copyright: DELCATH SYSTEMS INC - FORM 8-K - EX-99.1 - EXHIBIT 99.1 - June 3, 2011

This approach could save lives of patients whose cancer has spread to the liver from a primary tumor, for example the melanoma of the eye. Once the cancer reaches the liver, there is no effective treatment and survival is usually no more than four months, with one in ten patients living for a year. However, with this new treatment the time these melanoma patients can live is extended without the disease progressing.

In this new treatment the chemo drug is infused directly into the liver via catheter into the artery. Blood in the veins leading out of the liver is then captured and filtered through a specially designed, double-balloon catheter to filter out the drug before the cleaned blood is returned to the body. The approach allows the drug to be delivered, at a higher dosage than usual, directly to the liver and target the cancer tumor there, but in a minimally invasive manner.

Secondly, researchers at the University of Southampton led by Professor Salim Khako hepatology and Aymen Al Shamkhani immunologist, reported on 12th October that they will investigate how to boost innate immunity in humans to treat liver cancer. The idea is to stimulate the participation of NK cells (Natural Killer cells) to eliminate hepatocellular carcinoma cells.

Professor Khako highlights that hepatocellular carcinoma accounts for 90% of all primary liver tumors and to date is a very difficult condition to treat, in addition to being one of the growing mortal diseases in the world.

In a first phase the professor proposed a clinical trial using these NK cells in the treatment. He announced that three types of patients will have the formation of this cell stimulated to find the most appropriate method. When the team manages to find the most efficient system to stimulate NK cells, trials will be carried out in order to determine the best treatment for liver cancer, the university reported.

The BBC article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-20270400

The power of your ear

For the first time, scientists have managed to connect a medical implant and feed it with the energy of a natural battery that we all carry in our inner ear. Yes, all mammals have in their inner ear an "endocochlear potential" similar to a battery. It is located in a chamber filled with ions that, with the aid of sound waves, produce electricity gradients which become auditory nerve signals processed by the brain. In words of the discovers at MIT: 

"The ear converts a mechanical force — the vibration of the eardrum — into an electrochemical signal that can be processed by the brain; the biological battery is the source of that signal’s current. Located in the part of the ear called the cochlea, the battery chamber is divided by a membrane, some of whose cells are specialized to pump ions. An imbalance of potassium and sodium ions on opposite sides of the membrane, together with the particular arrangement of the pumps, creates an electrical voltage." 

"We have known for 60 years that this battery exists and that it’s really important for normal hearing, but nobody has attempted to use this battery to power useful electronics." says Konstantina Stankovic, a researcher at Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciencies and Technology. 

So far, they have managed to use this source of electricity to power a tiny device without affect hearing.

Image: Patrick P. Mercier - MIT website

This technique could be used to power small ear implants which assist people with hearing loss, to deliver drugs to the body or to feed other sensors. At present, the voltage and power are so weak that scientists had to design a mini converter circuit so the electricity could be exploited by a small electronic device (see the image for a close view into the device size).

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/biological-battery-1107.html