Engineering Commons^™

Knee Joint Biomechanics In Transtibial Amputees In Gait, Cycling, And Elliptical Training, Greg Orekhov, A. Matt Robinson, Scott J. Hazelwood, Stephen M. Klisch

Biomedical Engineering

Transtibial amputees may experience decreased quality of life due to increased risk of knee joint osteoarthritis (OA). No prior studies have compared knee joint biomechanics for the same group of transtibial amputees in gait, cycling, and elliptical training. Thus, the goal of this study was to identify preferred exercises for transtibial amputees in the context of reducing risk of knee OA. The hypotheses were: 1) knee biomechanics would differ due to participant status (amputee, control), exercise, and leg type (intact, residual) and 2) gait kinematic parameters would differ due to participant status and leg type. Ten unilateral transtibial amputee and …

Mechanisms Of Reduced Vascular Tone Following Arteriogenesis Induced By Femoral Artery Ligation, Christopher Hatch

Biomedical Engineering

The presence of a developed, native collateral network can decrease the severity of ischemic injury proceeding arterial occlusion. The collateral network must under arteriogenesis to enlarge and increase blood flow to the ischemic region. Although there has been tremendous effort attempting to understand the mechanisms of arteriogenesis, no therapies have been successful in improving patient outcome. To better understand the mechanisms involved in arteriogenesis, the effect of nitric oxide production, myogenic tone, and a-adrenergic receptors were evaluated as these have been identified as playing an important role in vascular injury. Arteriogenesis was induced by ligating the femoral artery between the …

Microscope System, Virginia Brannaman, Gavin Shavey, Ricardo Lasa

Biomedical Engineering

This project aims to improve upon the current microscope stand for the Olympus compound microscope in the Microcirculation and Vascular Regeneration (MaVR) laboratory in order to minimize angular deflection of the microscope objective with respect to surgical stage.

Marine Chemistry Control System, Natalie Weisenburger, Kathryn Turk, Julio Sierra

Biomedical Engineering

The aim of this project is to design a control system that manipulates different variables of ocean chemistry including pH, temperature, DO, N2 , and CO2 content for research by ocean chemists of marine species and their environments in 2, 5 gallon tanks.

Cej Ankle Support Report, Christine Prothe, James Baldwin, Erik Espinoza

Biomedical Engineering

This document provides information about an ankle support device designed to allow for ankle dorsiflexion and plantar flexion. In this document the product’s specifications, objectives and expectations are outlined. Included in this document is background information, stage gate process, prototype design development and considerations, and qualification requirements.

House Calls Mobile Virtual Stethoscope, Abigail Lindquist, Abigael Donohue, Trey Nahhas

Biomedical Engineering

The purpose of this scope of work is to outline the progress of the Virtual Stethoscope design and development project as sponsored by House Calls Mobile. This device looks to provide accessible at-home care for patients all over the country through the mobile phone stethoscope attachment. With the virtual stethoscope technology, patients will be able to perform high-quality, in-home observation of heart, stomach, and lung sounds to be transmitted to a physician in real time. Eliminating the need to travel to a doctor’s office encourages patients to perform more regular checkups, increasing their likelihood potentially of life-saving early diagnoses. This …

Sand Foot: A Prosthesis For Walking On Sand, Samantha A. Galicinao, John Dewing, Daniel Dugan Dotson, Christopher Urasaki

Biomedical Engineering

This critical design report describes the product development of a prosthesis for use on sand. Quality of Life Plus (QL+), a national non-profit organization aimed to develop prostheses for veterans and people with disabilities, introduced this project and its accompanying challenger, Sgt. Brady, to Cal Poly’s Interdisciplinary Senior Project class in September 2018. After consulting with Sgt. Brady and QL+ and performing extensive research, the Sand Foot team defined customer requirements and engineering specifications to meet these requirements. Comfortability, durability, and sandproof were key customer requirements. Several conceptual models were brainstormed and a final design was selected based on the …

Cooking Hand Multi-Tool, Amanda D. Meares, Amy H. Wilson, Ethan G. Littlejohn, Duania A. Evans

Biomedical Engineering

The purpose of this project was to devise a solution for Jorge Segura, a US Marine who was wounded in Afghanistan and had to have his non-dominant arm amputated above the elbow. His current prosthetic attachments are not suited to cooking tasks, so he needed a way to cook more effectively with either prosthetic attachments or accessibility devices. The main tasks that he needed help with was holding down food on cutting boards and stabilizing pots, pans, and bowls especially when stirring. After background research, exploring commercially available devices, and talking with our challenger, our solution was to design three …

Automated Microscope Stage, Corin Nishimoto, Alison Flesch, Theo Anastos

Biomedical Engineering

This document seeks to describe the background information, customer requirements, design specifications, indications for use, selected materials, proposed budget, prototypes, final design, manufacturing processes, and testing methods regarding the CellOptimizer automated microscope stage product.

Fluid Delivery System For A Cell Culture On A Microfluidic Chip, Austin J. Roeder, Colleen A. Richards, Emily A. Matteson

Biomedical Engineering

This project report provides a description of the progress made in the development of a fluid delivery system for a microfluidic cell culture on a chip. The system is intended to be used in a humidified incubator in a university laboratory and the fluid delivery system is required to exist and operate within that incubator for extended periods of time. Therefore, the system will be gravity-driven and contain no electronic components. The key specification of the system is to provide fluid flow at a constant velocity.

After manufacturing and testing the device, all specifications were met except for the fluid …

Hands-Free Ultrasound Transducer Attachment, Christina Harrison, Glenn Farina, Harshveer Dhaliwal

Biomedical Engineering

This document describes a background on current ultrasound technologies and the troubles that have inspired the need for a hands-free ultrasound transducer device, as well as the regulatory requirements, like patents and standard codes, for the intended invention. It also explains the Stage Gate Review process used to project plan the design of the device, a description of the final design and how it was developed, and the IQ/OQ/PQ. The objectives necessary to design this device, in order to meet all the requirements of the sponsor, are also summarized here. The design process including manufacturing instructions, prototype evolution, and the …

Ideomotion Gait Training Thigh Prompt, Kristin Schmidt, Elizabeth Peterson, Dalton Jennings

Biomedical Engineering

This document serves as our project report at its completion for developing thigh prompts to be used with the LiftWalker. In this document we outline our project from its beginning to end. We describe our process from understanding the background and our customer requirements, transforming these customer requirements into engineering specifications, performing the stage gate process, developing and evolving the design, testing the design, and finally drawing conclusions and making recommendations for the future.

Concussion Indication Device, Taylor O'Donoghue, Isabel Jellen, Eric Shechter

Biomedical Engineering

In this document we summarize our intent to design and manufacture a device that will be used in conjunction with a football helmet, will detect impact forces to the head, and notify the user to seek out further medical attention when subjected to forces large enough to cause concussions. We describe the large market including all levels of football players and the need for improved technology that will not only be effective in elucidating risks but encouraging players to use the device over the alternatives. To design the device, we have researched the problem of concussions in football and have …

Flash-Mold Machine For Manufacturing Drug Implants, Conor Vache, Sonja Daebelliehn, Ryan Thomson

Biomedical Engineering

This Final Project Report provides the reader with a comprehensive detailing of all of the actions and work that has been completed for this Senior Design Project. In this report, the Cal Poly Biomedical Engineering Senior Project Team will discuss some background on the existing Mark I Flash-Mold Machine currently in use by Gesea Biosciences, background information on Gesea Biosciences, the Customer Requirements and Design Specifications of the new machine, Quality Engineering considerations, design concepts discussed, design concepts chosen, safety considerations, prototype development, manufacturing, testing protocols, and testing results, etc.

Plga Scaffold Device, Tyler D. Tackabery, Bryce Powada, Tate Morell

Biomedical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Parkinson's Freezing Of Gait Device Attachment, Reagan Burns, Sidney Collin, Hadley Rose

Biomedical Engineering

The Freezing of Gait Project aims to design and develop an attachment mechanism for a medical device to help Parkinson’s patients overcome freezing of gait (FOG). The mechanism will allow the device to attach to a variety of canes or walkers, while being easy for Parkinson’s patients to use. It will interface with a device produced by De Oro Devices. The project includes an analysis of current competitive devices, a summary of customer needs, design of experiments to test significant features of the attachment, and project plan. The customer needs are translated to engineering metrics. Failures and mitigation of risks …

Pressure Cylinder Controlled Release Valve, Alexa Dominique Balbuena

Biomedical Engineering

This project aims to integrate an automatic gas release system in a pre-existing scaffold fabrication process for tissue engineering applications.

To form the proper scaffold structure, the fabrication process is heavily influenced by the change in its surrounding pressure. The current production involves a pressure transducer and electric valve that is managed manually to create a suitable pressure environment for the scaffold. This method, although functional, proves to be ineffective when creating several batches; the user needs to constantly monitor the developing pressure profile and alter voltage parameters accordingly to create a linear gas release under a predetermined slope.

To …

Heat Stress Identification, Nathanial Nyberg, Christina Santini, Zachary Miller

Biomedical Engineering

This document contains all information pertinent to the creation of the desired product and how the desired product fulfills the problem statement. This document clearly defines the customer requirements and how they relate to engineering specifications, metrics that will define the boundaries that the desired product must lie within. This document will then reveal all concepts that were considered during the design phase of this project and how those concepts were compared. This includes all quantitative parameters that provided a clear front-runner concept and the rationale for those parameters and the values and weight assigned to them.

Then this document …

Esophageal Mapping And Temperature Regulation For Catheter Ablation, Madison J. Keith, Morgan A. Jawitz, Sarah L. Sanders

Biomedical Engineering

The purpose of this document is to provide a development summary for a proposed esophageal temperature mapping device used during catheter ablation. Catheter ablation therapy is performed in the left atria with hot or cold materials to create scar tissue to treat atrial fibrillation. However, utilized temperatures and absorbed energies from the catheter can cause undesired esophageal damage. Therefore, this medical device is designed to monitor esophageal temperature and map its location during catheter ablation. If dangerous temperatures are reached, the device will alarm the surgeon.

This document provides an in-depth overview of the esophageal temperaturemapping device’s development and contains …

Accelerated Wear Reactor Testing, Tristan Frisella, Daniel Alanis, Kian Ashoubi

Biomedical Engineering

Carbon dioxide accounts for a large amount of global greenhouse gases released into the environment. Because plastic degradation emits carbon dioxide, there has been interest to investigate how much carbon dioxide various plastics generate as they degrade. We have been tasked to create a dehumidifier and carbon dioxide sensor assembly for an accelerated wear testing apparatus that degrades plastic. Several products and literature currently exist that share similarity with our assembly but have not been manufactured to achieve the same combination of measurements we are expecting of our accelerated wear testing device. The following report shall introduce these products and …

Foot Support Taping Device For Off-Loading Wounds, Andres Fojaco Gomez, Mikaela Williams, Josh Pelegrin

Biomedical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Slit Lamp Ophthalmoscope Redesign, Michael Hostetler, Austin Mattmiller, Alexis Brewer

Biomedical Engineering

The slit lamp ophthalmoscope is used by ophthalmologists for diagnosis of pathologies in the eye. The device is used for identifying ocular diseases or indications of other possible systemic diseases to treat them before the diseases progress. Redesign of the ergonomics and adjustment mechanisms of the slit lamp ophthalmoscope will attempt to improve the compatibility of the device across a greater variety of patients. The wider headrest tower of 12.75 inches, the wider table cutout of 12 inches, and the 12 inches of extension of the headrest tower creates a better ergonomic fit for the patient and doctor. The wider …

Quantifying Proliferative And Surface Marker Heterogeneity In Colony‐Founding Connective Tissue Progenitors And Their Progeny Using Time‐Lapse Microscopy, Edward Kwee, Gerald M. Saidel, Kimerly Powell, Christopher M. Heylman, Cynthia A. Boehm, George F. Muschler

Biomedical Engineering

Connective tissue progenitors (CTPs) are defined as the heterogeneous population of tissue‐resident stem and progenitor cells that are capable of proliferating and differentiating into connective tissue phenotypes. The prevalence and variation in clonal progeny of CTPs can be characterized using a colony formation assay. However, colony assays do not directly assess the characteristics of the colony‐founding CTP. We performed large, field‐of‐view, time‐lapse microscopy to manually track colonies back to the founding cells. Image processing and analysis was used to characterize the colonies and their founding cells. We found that the traditional colony‐forming unit (CFU) assay underestimates the number of founding …

Upright Sleep Device For Patients Required To Sleep Upright Post Surgery/Medical Procedure, Kristin J. Abele, Madeleine H. Hummel, Tayler R. Kastlunger

Biomedical Engineering

No abstract provided.