Medical Hacks

686 Articles

A Prosthetic Arm That Doesn’t Cost An Arm And A Leg.

June 11, 2011 by 32 Comments

After a motorcycle accident that cost him is arm [Martin] and his son [Luke] chose not to give up. They used their considerable mechanical skills to create a replacement robotic arm which allowed Martin to start doing some of the simple things he had been unable to do with the prosthetic he was originally fitted with. There are not a lot of details but it seems the arm has 2 degrees of freedom with a claw manipulator, controlled via chin controls to free up his other arm. For anyone interested in similar projects you should check out the Open Prosthetics Project. There is a short video after the break which tells Martin’s story. If you don’t have an arm, build one, seems perfectly reasonable to us. Nice work guys! We look forward to seeing the next version.

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Diagnosing Diseases Like MacGyver

May 1, 2011 by 28 Comments

pancratitis_test

If you ever watched MacGyver as a kid, you know that given any number of random objects, he could craft the exact tool he would need to get out of a sticky situation. If he ever made his way into the medical research field, you could be sure that this test for Acute Pancreatitis would be among his list of accomplishments.

Designed by University of Texas grad student [Brian Zaccheo], the Acute Pancreatitis test seen in the image above looks as unassuming as it is effective. Crafted out of little more than foil, jello, and milk, the test takes under an hour to diagnose patients while costing less than a dollar.

The test works by checking the patient’s blood for trypsin, an enzyme present in high concentrations if they are suffering from pancreatitis. Once a few drops of the patient’s blood is placed on the gelatin layer of the test, it is left to sit for a bit, after which sodium hydroxide is added. If elevated trypsin levels are present, it will have eaten through the gelatin and milk protein, creating a pathway for the sodium hydroxide to reach the foil layer. If the foil is dissolved within an hour, a circuit is formed and a small LED lights up, indicating that the patient has acute pancreatitis.

The test really is ingenious when you think about it, and will be a huge help to doctors practicing in developing countries, under less than ideal working conditions.

[via PopSci via Gizmodo]

EEG-assisted Hand Control

April 29, 2011 by 5 Comments

ipsihand

[Sam Fok], an engineering student at the Washington University School of Engineering wrote in to share a project he and his classmates [Raphael Schwartz, Mark Wronkiewicz, Charles Holmes, Jessica Zhang, Nathan Brodell, and Thane Somers] have been working on as their entry in the 2011 RESNA Student Design Competition. Their project, IpsiHand, is designed to help rehabilitate those who have suffered a stroke or other Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).

Most motor functions in the body are controlled by the opposite hemisphere of the brain, a process called contralateral motor control. When a patient suffers from TBI, they often lose control over some portion of the body opposite the injury. Recent studies have shown however, that while most motor control is contralateral, hand movements also create ipsilateral brain activity. This means that the uninjured side of the brain can effectively control both hands, with a bit of mechanical assistance.

Their process uses an Emotiv Epoch EEG headset, which we have discussed before, to monitor the patients’ brain for activity. The data is sent wirelessly to a computer which processes the data, singling out ipsilateral brain waves. The computer then actuates a modified hand orthosis to control grasping in real time.

We think their work is fantastic, and the team’s creation has a wide array of applications in the field of therapy and assisted living. We wish them luck in their competition, and hope to see this technology put to good use in the future.

Teaching Children To Walk Using Video Games

April 19, 2011 by 11 Comments

team_equiliberator

Medical conditions that prevent individuals from being able to walk are difficult to handle, even more so if the patient happens to be a child. Shriner’s hospitals treat a good number of children suffering from cerebral palsy, spina bifida, or amputations. They are always looking for creative treatment methods, so their Motion Analysis Laboratory looked to some Rice University undergrads for help. They asked the group of engineers to design a system that would make physical therapy a bit more fun, while helping encourage the children along.

The team recently unveiled their project, called the Equiliberator. The game system incorporates a series of five Wii balance boards situated between a pair of pressure-sensitive handrails. The platform communicates with a computer via Bluetooth, registering the patient’s movements as he or she moves along the path. The software portion of the system consists of a monster-slaying game which requires the child to step on a particular section of the pathway to dispose of the oncoming enemies.

The game is designed to get more difficult as the child’s balance and coordination improve, encouraging them with an ever growing bank of points as they progress. The final goal of the project is to enable the pressure sensitive handrails to determine how much the child is relying on them for balance, offering in-game incentives to walk with as little support as possible.

We love seeing hacks like this which not only entertain, but truly help people in the process. Kudos to the team at Rice University – they have done a fantastic job here.

Continue reading to see a quick video describing the Equiliberator in the designers’ own words.

[via MedGadget]

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Brainwave-based Assistive Technology In The Home

April 10, 2011 by 11 Comments

eeg_smart_house

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a debilitating disease that eventually causes the afflicted individual to lose all control of their motor functions, while leaving their mental faculties intact. Those suffering from the illness typically live for only a handful of years before succumbing to the disease. On some occasions however, patients can live for long periods after their original diagnosis, and in those cases assistive technology becomes a key component in their lives.

[Alon Bukai and Ofir Benyamin], students at Ort Hermalin Collage in Israel, have been working hard on creating an EEG-controlled smart house for ALS patients under the guidance of their advisor [Amnon Demri]. The core of their project focuses around controlling everyday household items using brainwaves. They use an Emotiv EPOC EEG headset which monitors the user’s brainwaves when focusing on several large buttons displayed on a computer screen. These buttons are mapped to different functions, ranging from turning lights on and off to changing channels on a cable box. When the user focuses on a particular task, the computer analyzes the headset’s output and relays the command to the proper device.

As of right now, the EEG-controlled home is only a project for their degree program, but we hope that their efforts help spur on further advancements in this field of research.

Continue reading to see a pair of videos demonstrating their EEG-controlled smart house in action.

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Quick And Dirty Film Dosimeter

March 17, 2011 by 22 Comments

With all the talk of radiation in the media today [freddysam] posted a quick Instructable about using standard camera film as a radiation dosimeter. Film is sensitive to other forms of radiation other than visible light, and high speed films are even more susceptible due to their chemistry, which has caused all sorts of headaches to travelers before most people went digital. This uses that headache as a simple way to see if you have been exposed to abnormal amounts of radiation in a  3 step process.

  1. Get some film. Yes they still sell it, it can still be found just about anywhere.
  2. In a dark room unroll a little out of the metal can and put it back in its black plastic container.
  3. Develop it if you think you have been exposed.

The idea is to let a few frames of film to be exposed to normal background radiation and develop it so you have something to compare with in the future, then you can unroll a bit more, and if you think your going into a hot area you can develop that newly exposed film to see roughly how much more radiation there was, maybe helping you sleep better at night.

Zigbee-powered Wireless Scale

March 11, 2011 by 5 Comments

[joe] wanted to make it easy to record his weight every day, and added a few bits to decode the weight and send it to his computer. The end result is a ZigBee-powered wireless scale. Additionally, his scale can track more than one person’s data simply by knowing whose previous weight the new measurement is closest to. Now [joe] and his family can spend more time working out, and less time messing with spreadsheets and data entry.

[joe]’s build is not only elegant, but well-documented, too. He walks through the reasons he chose this specific floor scale, reverse engineering it to decode the weight, then provides links to his schematics, source code, and pretty much everything else you would need to play along at home.