Medical Hacks

658 Articles

3D Printing Bone

May 9, 2016 by 11 Comments

What do you print with your 3D printer? Key chains? More printer parts (our favorite)? Enclosures for PC boards? At Johns Hopkins, they want to print bones. Not Halloween skeletons, either. Actual bones for use in bodies.

According to Johns Hopkins, over 200,000 people a year need head or face bone replacements due to birth defects, trauma, or surgery. Traditionally, surgeons cut part of your leg bone that doesn’t bear much weight out and shape it to meet the patient’s need. However, this has a few problems. The cut in the leg isn’t pleasant. In addition, it is difficult to create subtle curved shapes for a face out of a relatively straight leg bone.

This is an obvious application for 3D printing if you could find a suitable material to produce faux bones. The FDA allows polycaprolactate (PCL) plastic for other clinical uses and it is attractive because it has a relatively low melting point. That’s important because mixing in biological additives is difficult to do at high temperatures.

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Hackaday Prize Entry: Raimi’s Bionic Arm

May 8, 2016 by 9 Comments

Sometimes, the most amazing teams make the most wonderful things happen, and yet, there is just not enough time to finish all the features before the product ships. This is what happened to Raimi, who came to this world missing a right hand and half of her right forearm. Raimi is now 9 years old, and commercial mechatronic prostheses are still only available to those who can afford them. When Raimi’s father approached [Patrick Joyce] to ask him for help in building an affordable prosthesis, he knew it would matter, and went right to work.

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Soldering Iron Cauterization

May 3, 2016 by 92 Comments

Medical hacks are not for the weak of stomach, so read further at your own risk. [Todd Harrison] shows you how to remove a stubborn skin wart using a good ol’ soldering iron, and a fair endurance for pain. After all, cauterization is a well known and documented medical procedure. If you have the stomach for this, read on, or better, check out his 9 minute video after the break. If there are kids around, turn down the volume between 1:40 to 2:20.

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Saving Lives With Open-Source Electrocardiography

April 29, 2016 by 17 Comments

A few months ago, MobilECG wowed us with a formidable electrocardiograph (ECG, also EKG) machine in the format of a business card, complete with an OLED display. We’ve seen business card hacks before, but that was the coolest. But that’s peanuts compared with the serious project that it supports: making an open-source ECG machine that can actually save lives by being affordable enough to be where it’s needed, when it’s needed.

The project, MobilECG, is an open-source, wearable device that supports all of the major ECG modes. In their talk, [Péter Isza] and [Róbert Csordás] taught us a lot about what that exactly entails and how the heart works. We learned a lot, and we’ll share some of that with you after the break.

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Passwords? Just Use Your Head!

April 25, 2016 by 26 Comments

Biometrics–the technique of using something unique about your body as a security device–promises to improve safety while being more convenient than a password. Fingerprints, retinal scans, and voice identification have all found some use, although not without limitations.

Now researchers in Germany want you to use your head, literally. SkullConduct measures vibrations of your skull in response to a sonic signal. A small prototype was successful and is particularly well suited for something you are holding up to your head anyway, like a smartphone or a headset like a Google Glass.

There are some limitations, though. For one thing, background noise can be a factor. It stands to reason, also, that more testing is necessary.

This looks straightforward enough that you could try your own version of it. After all, scanning veins in your hand has been hacked. We’ve even seen a biometric safe.

Poopable Cameras

April 24, 2016 by 51 Comments

Pill cameras, devices for ‘capsule endoscopy’, or in much cruder terms, ‘poopable cameras’, are exceedingly cool technology. They’re astonishingly small, communicate through a gastrointestinal tract to the outside world, and have FDA certification. These three facts also mean pill cameras are incredible expensive, but that doesn’t mean a hardware hacker can’t build their own, and that’s exactly what [friarbayliff] is doing for his entry into The Hackaday Prize.

First things first: [friarbayliff] is not building one of these for human consumption. That’s a morass of regulatory requirements and ethical issues. This pill camera is only being built as an experiment, because it would be fun to build one. The pill cams swallowed by patients every day have millions of dollars in R&D behind them before human trials. That said, given a good food-safe enclosure, I’d down one of these as an experiment.

This pill camera will use a simple, off-the-shelf 2 megapixel image sensor that can be bought on eBay for less than five dollars. With a small 32-bit micro, these cameras are easy to drive and capture images from. Power is provided from a single silver oxide button cell battery and a boost converter. In total, [friarbayliff] estimates the total PCB area to be just under one square inch, making this a relatively inexpensive device to build. There will be a radio transceiver in there somewhere, but [friar] hasn’t figure that part out yet.

Pill cameras are some amazing technology, but relatively inaccessible unless you get a used one. Ew. [Mike Harrison] tore one of these pill cams apart a few years ago, and it really is an incredible device. Building one for fun – even if it won’t be used in a human – is a fantastic learning experience and a great entry for the 2016 Hackaday Prize.

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Custom Media Player Helps Hacker’s Autistic Son

April 18, 2016 by 39 Comments

Getting to play with technology is often the only justification a hacker needs to work on a build. But when your build helps someone, especially your own special-needs kid, hacking becomes a lot more that playing. That’s what’s behind this media player customized for the builder’s autistic son.

People generally know that the symptoms of autism cover a broad range of behaviors and characteristics that center around socialization and communication. But a big component of autism spectrum disorders is that kids often show very restricted interests. While [Alain Mauer] doesn’t go into his son [Scott]’s symptoms, our guess is that this media player is a way to engage his interests. The build came about when [Alain] was unable to find a commercially available media player that was simple enough for his son to operate and sturdy enough to put up with some abuse. A Raspberry Pi came to the rescue, along with the help of some custom piezo control buttons, a colorful case, and Shin Chan. The interface allows [Scott] to scroll through a menu of cartoons and get a preview before the big show. [Scott] is all smiles in the video below, and we’ll bet [Alain] is too.

Pi-based media player builds are a dime a dozen on Hackaday, but one that helps kids with autism is pretty special. The fact that we’ve only featured a few projects aimed at autistics, like this 2015 Hackaday Prize entry, is surprising. Maybe you can come up with something like [Alain]’s build for the 2016 Hackaday Prize.

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