Medical tools

Many of us know at least one person who has a hearing aid that sits on a shelf somewhere, collecting dust. The usual complaint: The thing just doesn't work right.

A professor at the University of Essex in the U.K. says these aren't just excuses, but legitimate complaints. "Today's hearing aids don't help to separate sounds--they just amplify them," said Ray Meddis, who has led work on a new kind of hearing aid. "They often make everything too noisy for the wearer, especially in social situations like parties, and some wearers still can't make out what people are saying to them. They find the whole experience so uncomfortable that they end up taking their hearing aids out," Meddis said in a statement released today.

Meddis and his team at Essex have been working on a new kind of aid they say could revolutionize what is now an antiquated approach to treating hearing impairments. The key, they say, is to use unique computer models (what they call "hearing dummies") that treat the root causes, not just the symptoms, of the user's unique condition.

"In the same way that a tailor's dummy is used to measure and fit a garment for a particular person, our software dummy is used to gauge a patient's hearing requirements so that their hearing aid can then be programmed to suit their needs," Meddis said.… Read more

Temple University physics department chair Rongjia Tao made headlines in 2008 when he developed a simple device that creates an electric field to thin fuel, thereby reducing the size of the droplets injected into the engine and improving fuel efficiency.

Now, Tao and former graduate student Ke Huang are unveiling their latest research that this same principle, when applied to the human body, can help thin blood and reduce one's risk of heart attack--without the side effects of blood thinners such as aspirin.

After testing numerous blood samples at Temple, the physicists were able to use a magnetic field of 1.3 Telsa (roughly equivalent to what is used in an MRI) for just one minute to polarize the red blood cells, which contain iron, thereby causing those cells to link together in short, streamlined chains flowing down the center of blood vessels and reducing friction along the walls.

The result: smoother blood flow. In fact, after just 1 to 12 minutes of exposure to the magnetic field via a 1,000-pound magnet, blood viscosity decreased by 20 to 30 percent for several hours. Eventually, blood viscosity returned to previous levels.… Read more

In a recent study of 37 healthy and symptomatic adults and children, a wireless near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) device performed as well in diagnosing bladder disease as current and often invasive techniques, such as cystoscopy.

"Currently, diagnosing bladder dysfunction usually requires an invasive test that involves urethral and rectal catheter insertion to measure bladder pressure and urine output--a stressful and painful procedure that provides a limited amount of physiologic information," said lead author Andrew Macnab, a pediatrics and urology professor at the University of British Columbia, in a news release.

"Our study shows that near-infrared spectroscopy--a non-toxic and … Read more

May is National Stroke Awareness month, and Boca Raton, Fla.-based NovaVision is using the occasion to trumpet a successful new therapy for partial vision loss due to stroke.

According to NovaVision's statistics, stroke is a primary cause of serious long-term disability and often causes partial blindness due to neurological trauma and visual field loss. For example, a stroke victim might retain general sight, but lose their peripheral vision or even the ability to see if he or she moves eyes to the left or right. Until now, according to NovaVision research, the opinion amongst most physicians stated such … Read more

After being available for several years in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout Europe, Swedish firm Sectra's digital mammography system has now been approved by the FDA for use in the U.S. (It was also approved for use in Canada in March and in Russia in April.)

The system, called MicroDose, uses technology called photon counting that results in two key changes over traditional mammograms: higher-resolution images at half the radiation exposure.

"Until now, digital mammography systems in the U.S. have managed to reduce the radiation dose slightly below those of film-based systems," Dr. Jesper … Read more

While microscopes might be affixed to cell phones, they don't usually look like them. But it seems the researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF in Germany got the designer bug when they developed this one.

In this case, though, form is actually following function. The microscope is flat because it has been entirely rethought, with several tiny lenses to simultaneously scan one image instead of one that scans and then groups together many images.

"Our ultrathin microscope consists of not just one but a multitude of tiny imaging channels, with lots of tiny lenses arrayed alongside one another" Dr. Frank Wipperman, who managed the team, said in a news release. "Each channel records a tiny segment of the object at the same size for a 1:1 image."… Read more

Cameras are getting smaller fast. Just last week, the Naneye camera was declared the world's smallest at just 1mm x 1mm.

Now the Naneye can claim another prize--being the smallest for the shortest amount of time. Because today the Tel Aviv-based medical device firm Medigus has unveiled a camera that is just 0.99mm wide.

Making such a big deal of a difference that is but a fraction of a millimeter may seem like splitting hairs, but in the world of endoscopic devices, even a hair width counts.

"Medical procedures that have not been possible until now become possible with the world's smallest camera," said Dr. Elazar Sonnenschein, Medigus CEO, in a news release. "The advanced technology provides the medical community and patients with safe, quality and cost-effective treatment."

The silicon-based camera houses a dedicated 0.66mm x 0.66mm sensor with image resolution at 45,000 pixels (so not exactly high-resolution at just under 1/20th of a megapixel). Cost has yet to be disclosed, but Medigus says pricing should be "sufficiently low" for use in disposable devices.

The firm says it will be supplying samples in the coming weeks to companies in the U.S. and Japan for use in endoscopic and surgical devices in such fields as cardiology, orthopedics, gastroenterology, and gynecology.… Read more

When a 54-year-old man collapsed outside a grocery store on a cold winter's night in rural Minnesota recently, a bystander and a trained first responder who happened to be nearby came together to administer CPR.

Five minutes later, paramedics arrived, continued the CPR, and over the course of the next half-hour delivered six defibrillation shocks.

Then a Mayo Clinic flight crew arrived by helicopter, and they proceeded to administer advanced CPR on the still-pulseless patient. After delivering a total of 11 shocks, the team still couldn't get a pulse, so they upped the drugs, did CPR for two more minutes, and delivered the final, twelfth shock.… Read more

DNA molecules are not merely carriers of information. They are also highly stable and programmable, which is why researchers have been working so feverishly on a design strategy called DNA origami.

And now a team at MIT is developing a program that makes the game playable by more than just a select few.

DNA origami--constructing specific 2D and 3D shapes out of DNA strands--could prove to be a highly effective means of developing nanoscale tools, such as synthetic photocells that perform artificial photosynthesis and highly targeted drugs (think of sending a cancer drug to hunt down a specific tumor).

But it's still young. Paul Rothemund of CalTech first introduced DNA origami in 2006 (thereby making the cover of Nature and delivering a TED Talk showing tiny DNA smiley faces), and William Shih's lab at Harvard Medical School was able to up the game from 2D to 3D a few years later.

The result is that today a small number of brilliant and highly specialized minds are bent over a nanoscale game of origami, playing with various sequences to try to build specific shapes for specific tasks. Imagine a room of highly sophisticated gamers playing with building blocks in a world without Tetris; if they had the game, they'd be able to work faster.… Read more