University of Cincinnati - College of Engineering

Senior BME Students Design Medical Devices

Marie Borowczak, Biomedical Engineering, Class of 2011

For the past two quarters, senior biomedical engineering students have been working on their capstone projects. The capstone project is where six teams of students, with four students in each team, take a clinical problem and design, produce a functional prototype, and evaluate a device. Though most of the students were engineers, there were also some industrial design students involved. Despite the fact that this project sounds stressful and intense, students worked on their favorite parts of their projects. One student, Liran Oren, said, "For me the best part about the project was building the prototype. I felt like a little kid in a toy store… putting your little toy together… You finally see how all these long hours of brainstorming, sketching, modeling on the computer, refining the design again and again are finally coming into life in the form of a prototype."

Ben Fey is part of the Bioreactors Senior Design Team.

One capstone project was the Saphenous Vein Harvester (SVH) which was investigated by two teams, the One-Pass SVH and the Polar Bear SVH team. Though both were investigating the same clinical problem, each team brainstormed and created its own device to solve the problem. Both teams' goal was to create a minimally invasive device for the treatment of coronary artery disease for developing countries.

Coronary artery disease is the cause of over 7.2 million deaths each year, according to the World Health Organization. The most common treatment procedure for this disease is coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). However, many developing countries do not have the resources for this procedure. Both devices use a bronchoscope, which the physician uses to look at the surgical area in order to eliminate the use of a camera. One of the differences between the One-Pass and Polar Bear device is that the Polar Bear uses a bipolar cautery system. The bipolar cautery system only takes the tissue the user wants, allowing for an increase in the procedure's safety. Other differences between the devices include the shape of the handles and the controls used to manipulate the end-effector. Both devices could provide an effective, inexpensive way for harvesting bypass vessels and open the door for medical devices in developing countries.

Another capstone project was the BiliPen device, seen in Figure 1, which was completed by team members Liran Oren, Chris Lam, Jennifer Stewart, Khanh Cao, and industrial design student Margot Decker. The BiliPen is able to measure, non-invasively, bilirubin levels in newborns. Bilirubin is a yellow substance found in bile. Too much bilirubin, called hyperbiliruimia, can lead to kernicterus, a neurological disorder. The heel-stick method, which draws blood from the baby's heel, is used most commonly in measuring bilirubin levels. However, this method can be traumatizing for the family involved.

The BiliPen uses optical reflectance spectroscopy. When the BiliPen is connected to a computer, an algorithm is used to quantify both skin and bilirubin. These values can be correlated to the bilirubin values of the heel-stick method. This is briefly demonstrated in Figure 2. This team's hard work paid off when they were selected to attend the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance Conference (NCIIA) in Tampa, Florida, where only 15 universities from across the nation were invited.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Several teams will also be presenting their projects at Ohio Valley Affiliates for Life Sciences (OVALS). Congratulations and good job to everyone!