A bionic hand with the sense of touch

Aabo Dennis Sorensen, Danish 36, lost his left hand 10 years ago when a firecracker exploded during the celebration of New Year. He never expected to regain feeling or to feel something. But now he has recovered the sense of touch thanks to a bionic hand that allows him to catch and identify objects even blindfolded.

The prototype is connected to the nerves of Dennis' left arm and serves as a link between his body and the machine. Scientists from Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Britain and Denmark have participated in the project - developed at the Gemelli hospital in Rome and published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine' - and they are confident that this prosthesis will revolutionize the lives of many people with amputations.

In their daily life, Sorensen used a prosthesis that detects muscle movements and allows him to open and close the hand but it doesn't allow to have any sense of touch, so he needs to be careful not to break the stuff he tries to grab. The new prosthesis, named LifeHand 2 is more sophisticated as it combines intranervous connections, robotics and computer science to recreate the sense of touch.

The patient was implanted tiny electrodes with the thickness of a human hair in the ulnar and median nerves of the arm before putting the bionic hand, which is equipped with several artificial sensors. These sensors measure the strain on the tendons of each finger to find the force required to catch every object. Computer algorithms transform this information into electrical signals that the nerves can interpret.

The result is a feeling very near to real touch, including different intensities that have allowed Sorensen distinguish shapes and textures of different objects. In a series of experiments blindfolded, he can recognize the basic forms of a series of objects and notice the differences between and orange and a baseball. Scientists will now work to ensure that the hand is able to differentiate between more refined textures and between hot and cold and get the patient to live "several months" with the device.

"It was a great experience. It was amazing to feel something after feeling nothing for so many years ," said Sorensen. "I have been pretty close to the same feeling as if I had a normal hand", he assured.

The device is still experimental and it won't be available for a few years yet. Researchers still have work ahead to reduce components and the amount of cables which limit its current use to the lab. Nevertheless, it is a fantastic advancement of technology that surely someday many people will be enjoying around the world.

Ophthalmologic adapter for iPhone

Welch Allyn received clearance from FDA for its application iExaminer, which connects the iPhone to a PanOptic ophthalmoscope, providing more possibilities and useful information on examination of the fundus. This combined system allows doctors to take pictures of the eye and also save images for later review or to share with colleagues. Furthermore, the system is essentially a telemedicine product that can make possible for ophthalmologists to reach remote clinics missing an eye care specialist.

The iExaminer provides an optical alignment with the eyepiece of the ophthalmoscope and the camera of the phone and is compatible with the iPhone 4 and 4S models. There is also a complementary application of Welch Allyn to complete the package, and is available for download in the Apple App Store.

More info in the website of the product:

http://www.welchallyn.com/promotions/iExaminer/index.html

Copyright Welch Allyn

Mobile DNA analysis in real time through your smartphone

More on mobile health technology.

Biomeme, a new company from Philadelphia, is planning to launch an easy to use system that can perform a real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR is its acronym in English ) and provide results through any smartphone, without using expensive lab equipment or an expert to work in it. The goal is to provide medical professionals, regardless of their location, the ability to perform advanced diagnostics and monitoring diseases.

Biomeme platform transforms a smartphone into a mobile laboratory for advanced DNA diagnostic and disease monitoring in real time. The system includes:

- A docking station for the real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)

- A mobile application to control the system through wireless connection, analyze the results in real time and send them to the cloud

- Target test equipment for sample preparation and identification of pathogens or diseases, according to its specific DNA or distinctive RNA.

This low cost system requires no special laboratory equipment and could allow mobile inspection at a healthcare point, agriculture, monitoring of vectors, veterinary medicine, environmental monitoring, and even education.

More info here: http://bio-meme.com/


Copyright bio-meme

Building a smartscope

Smartphones are becoming more and more important in the medical sector, ranging from mHealth to medical applications which can turn your smartphone into a medical device. In this post I would like to talk about what someone has recently achieved by just using a Smartphone and some creativity: user Yoshinok from Instructables web site has managed to turn a smartphone into a microscope.

Well technically he didn't use just a smartphone. You'll need also a small box, a LED light and a laser pointer lens. With all this in place, you can increase the zoom of your smartphone 175x, allowing you to observe plant cells and details of objects, like a real microscope.

The invention seems to work perfectly. At least, in the video the user gets to see cells and details of coins, among other things. It also allows you to take a photo or video of the analyzed object... This invention only proves that when you use your creativity the possibilities are endless.

Mobile Diagnosis via Smartphone

While many companies are using mobile analytics to measure their mobile advertising and marketing campaigns, scientists are developing healthcare-related smartphone apps that could actually save lives. The new apps are designed to help doctors by integrating with medical devices, enabling the smartphone to become the tool for data handling, analytics, visualization and communication.

For example, scientists at the Center for Systems Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital have integrating a microNMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) device that accurately detects cancer cells with a smartphone, according to the article.

Another example was recently presented at Biotechnia 2013 by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT): the nanopotentiostat, an Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) system for monitoring age-related risk factors. AAL systems continuously monitor patients at home and are networked with medical centers to enable medical observation and diagnosis without inconvenient visits to the doctor. In the case of the nanopotentiostat, one of its major features is that it integrates three different sensors in one platform.

This mini all-rounder can determine the blood sugar, lactic acid or cholesterol from a single patient sample, use fluorescence to detect selected biomarkers and record the patient’s heart frequency and oxygen saturation. The data is processed via an app and forwarded securely to the patient’s doctor. This system has been developed by Fraunhofer FIT in cooperation with Charité and T-Systems Deutschland in the MAS (Nanoelectronics for Mobile AAL Systems) project that is sponsored by the EU and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Further information:

http://www.fit.fraunhofer.de/en/presse/13-09-12.html

Biomaterials of the future

A group of scientists from the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan (USA) has discovered a new material made of spherical gold nanoparticles which could become the best flexible electricity conductor ever designed to date. "Essentially the new materials of metal nanoparticles behave as elastic. This is just the beginning of a new family of materials that can be manufactured from a variety of nanoparticles for a wide range of applications," explains lead author, Nicholas Kotov.

The elastic conducting materials research today is driven by technology needs. For example, we would all like to have flexible mobile phones or tablets that do not break if dropped. But some of the most important applications envisioned for these new materials in the future have more to do with medical implants that can move with the body.

Since graphene was first synthesized, something which earned Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010, it seems that this material built from carbon will solve all the challenges that scientists face nowadays. But, though their properties are amazing, definitely it is not the only flexible conductor currently being investigated.

According to the authors of the publication that has just appeared in the journal 'Nature', the possibilities range from cardiac implants capable of transmitting electrical impulses of the heart and move with the cardiac muscle itself to brain electrodes or flexible electronics. As cited in the work, the conductivities of electricity achieved with this material made of five layers of gold are similar to those of mercury, which is a great conductor. This property makes Kotov and his colleagues see this material as a candidate for the manufacture of electrodes, in particular, Kotov is interested in further research on the development of brain implants. "These can alleviate many diseases, such as severe depression, Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. It can also serve as part of artificial limbs and other prostheses controlled by the brain," says Kotov.

In the same vein, researchers at the University of Berkeley have uncovered one of the most complex electronic systems ever built on plastic. The invention consists of a thin plastic sheet that emits light with an intensity that reflects just the right amount of pressure applied to its surface, giving clues about how interfaces for flexible computers could be designed in the future. Described in the journal Nature Materials, the new light emitting electronic "skin" (that's how it is called by its inventors), is an extension of previous work Ali Javey lab, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. Javey group has developed a process which uses a large number of traditional manufacturing techniques for silicon uniformly and reliably integrating various organic and inorganic constituents on a plastic.

Human brain atlas with highest resolution

The dream of a neuroscientist is to have an accurare representation of the human brain and now we are closer than ever to that ideal with BigBrain, a digital reconstruction of the human brain full 3D and ultra-high resolution. BigBrain is the essential tool neurological laboratories worldwide need in order to elucidate the form and function of our brains.

Processing the brain layers - Amunts, Zilles, Evan et al (Science)

It is true that there are currently other brain atlas, but they only arrive at the macroscopic level, or visible. Its resolution only reaches the level of a cubic millimeter, and in that volume of brain, 1,000 neurons can easily fit. The new BigBrain offers a resolution very close to cellular dimension, according to scientists who have created it. That means you get to discriminate each small circuit of neurons that is behind our mental activity, which may include all available information on the brain, from genes and neurotransmitter receptors to cognition and behavior.

To construct BigBrain, researchers have taken samples from a patient 7400. The reference brain is based on a woman who died at age 65, which was sliced in 7,400 histological sections of just 20 microns. The BigBrain, according to its creators, opens the way for understanding the neurobiological basis of cognition, language and emotion, and also to investigate neurological diseases and develop drugs against them. The model is presented in Science and will be available for registered users at http://bigbrain.cbrain.mcgill.ca.