Medgear

With the advent of internet and advancement in Science, things are really becoming easier and at doorstep! You would be amazed to know in a recent research bypassing of our own vestibular nervous signals is becoming possible by implanting microchip. This would certainly help in curing a few balance disorders. This process of implanting is available on internet for the new scientist subscribers. If you are a non subscriber then just wait and watch!

Often we lost our sense of balances during prolonged illness or accidents. This implantable chip helps people in restoring their senses. In order to balance, we mainly depend on vestibular system. It is a set of fluid filled canals in our inner ear. While any movement, disturbances are being picked up by the tiny hairs. Nerves that are being attached to the canals starts transmitting signals to brain. Simultaneously, brain passes this information to muscles, so that it will control eyes and posture. This intense system often gets damaged with a loud blast, age, infection. This would result in physical disability, such as dizziness and unable to walk.

Earlier by blocking vestibular systems and usage of prosthesis researchers have restored balance in animals. In case, gyroscopes have detected rotation of head then prosthesis helps in transmitting electrical signal to vestibular nerve.

Do you know the smallest gyroscope measures around 1 centimeter long? Thus, if you want to implant the entire system is too big!
Image:weblogsinc

Via:medgadget

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) are nowadays using a new device to study the behavior of patients who are suffering with mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

This behavioral-pattern monitoring device includes computerized vest that is worn by
the patient and a video camera, embedded in the ceiling and by monitoring the patient by using this latest innovation facilitates researchers to get more accurate diagnose of disorders and to test the effectiveness of treatment.

According to William Perry, a professor of psychiatry at UCSD and the lead investigator in the study, whose beginning results tell very distinctive blueprints of activity among patients within these two patient groups, says:

When patients with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are very symptomatic and psychotic, they often look very similar, and this makes it hard to discern one population from the other,

This behavioral-pattern monitoring study is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and by analyzing patient’s unique signature patterns researchers hope to learn more about the brain functioning of psychotic individuals in effective manner that current observation method cannot offer.

This vest called LifeShirt, developed by Vivometrics, a company based in Ventura, CA. To monitor patients behavioral-patterns, this obliging vest comes embedded with sensors that measure the physiological responses of patients. It also comes equipped with an accelerometer that measures the G forces applied to it. This accelerometer is an important equipment for UCSD researchers because it helps them to measure how patients intermingle with their environment to record are they walking, moving quickly, standing still, or fidgeting? And it also helps to generate a signature of their activity.

But Perry’s ultimate goal aims something else, according to its statement:

We want someone to come into a room and spend 15 minutes, and based on the analysis, we can say the probability of this person having an attentional disorder or schizophrenia is quite high.

The device will surely help physicians to get more accurate ways of diagnosing psychiatric disorders and any other device that can improve this process will always be welcomed and appreciated.

Via: Medgadget

Now no more ordinary cleaning for your teeth, Redmond based Ultreo, Inc, today announced the launch of a revolutionary power toothbrush that combines ultrasound wave guide technology with precisely tuned sonic bristle action for a deep, gentle, long-lasting feeling of clean.

Ultreo’s use ultrasound energy to transform normally inactive bubbles into pulsating bubbles that can remove plaque bacteria. Clinical studies prove that Ultreo can remove up to 95 percent of plaque from hard-to-reach areas in the first minute of brushing. While Ultreo, Inc. recommends that you still brush for a full two minutes, these results should be excellent news for people who are in a hurry to get out of the house in the morning.

According to Dr. Christopher McInnes, principal scientist for Ultreo Inc.,

‘The combined effect of ultrasound wave guide technology and precisely tuned sonic bristle action takes power brushing to new heights,’

He also told that during a recent survey, nine out of ten people who used Ultreo toothbrush, thought their teeth felt smooth and clean after brushing and seven out of ten said they preferred Ultreo to the power toothbrush they were currently using.

This revolutionary idea of Ultrasound Toothbrush originated at the University of Washington, in an unusual interdisciplinary collaboration between the Applied Physics Laboratory and the Departments of Neurological Surgery and Pediatric Dentistry.
The Ultreo toothbrush has a user-friendly design and a sleek look and product have number of features including, ultrasound wave guide, sonic bristles with power tip, ultra-slim neck, brushing interval signal, brush head replacement indicator, battery charge status indicator and ultra-compact charger base and snap-on brush head with auto shut-off timer.

Ultreo is now available at online at www.ultreo.com and also in participating dental offices. It will be available at selected retail locations later in the year. Ultreo’s retail price is $149.00.

Via: home.businesswire.com

Ultrasound in not only confined to hospitals with bulky equipments and reliable power supplies. Now, to perform an ultrasound test a new system has been emerged that is a machine miniaturized to the size of a laptop computer.

This compact design of machine that offers more accurate image quality enables physicians to carry this body-imaging technology to rural U.S and for other developing countries where masses face difficulties to reach hospitals at the time of pregnancy or in the cases of other dangerous disease in which ultrasound is required.

Portable ultrasound units have grown rapidly in the past two years and it’s expected that it will soon become an integral part of the ultrasound market. This portable system is subjugated by SonoSite Inc. of Bothell, Wash., and GE Healthcare, based in the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa whereas SonoSite pioneered the technology of hand-carried units in 1999.

Ultrasound is important because it produces synchronized images of a beating heart or developing fetus by interpreting sound waves bounced off solid internal objects. However there are many other techniques to explore inside the body without surgery that include - magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) - systems that yield vivid results but its scans require the patient to lay still for minutes and X-rays that is mainly used to produce images of bones, but it also generates harmful radiations.

Ultrasound also has its own shortcomings because its effectiveness depends on operators to position patients accurately to reveal the best views and for doctors image quality is the main criteria.

According to Dr.Craig Sable of the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.:

The newer compact units can now produce images comparable to those of the higher-end console units about 90 percent of the time

Though these portable battery-operated machines, are not anticipated to swap standard console-sized units but these compact machines are proving more popular among doctors outside the traditional areas of radiology, cardiology and prenatal care to get more accurate results of the patient’s condition.

Via: Yahoo

Hmm...a portable brain scanner from Hitachi! Looks like the guys at the company have taken a break from manufacturing LCDs and Plasmas. Anyway, they have developed a prototype lightweight, portable brain scanner that allows users to keep tabs on their mental activity, thanks to the optical topography technology that stores the real-time brain activity in flash memory for examination.

The personal mind reader system features a 400 gram headset and a 630 gram controller, which is worn on the waist. A single PC can maintain up to 24 mind readers simultaneously thereby enabling many users to monitor brain activity during group activities. The technology could be used in areas such as health, psychology, education, marketing, and mind gaming.

Hitachi hasn’t commented anything on the personalization of the personal mind reader.

Via: Pinktentacle

If you ever visit a psychiatrist’s clinic, don’t mistake that helmet-shaped device as something other than its having a good and considerable relation to your patient. Weird though it may look, with all those crawling electrodes in it, the newly developed transcranial magnetic stimulation device can help treat clinical depression.

By placing the device on a patient’s head, the doctor can deliver a pulse to the gray matter. Hence, it can prove effective in treating tough and complicated cases. Once its FDA review is cleared, it could be in the market by this year’s end.

The device does not leave an impact on a patient after its use, with the patients being able to go back home or even to work afterwards. It is simply because, transcranial magnetic stimulation works by creating an electromagnetic pulse without disturbing the skull or scalp.

Amazingly, without affecting it, the device can reach two to three centimeters into the brain to stimulate the prefrontal cortex and paralimbic blood flow. This can safely help increase the serotonin output as well the dopamine and norepinephrine functions.

So, next time you visit your psychiatrist, don’t be put down by the bizzare-looking device that can be used on you.

Via: scifi
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Now, experts can study patients suffering from bipolar affective disorder and schizophrenia by using a novel and amazing device - ‘LifeShirt.’ It is a computerized vest that if the patient is made to wear, can continuously monitor his movements.

At times, it is difficult for physicians to diagnose if an individual is exhibiting signs of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, especially when patients are highly symptomatic. So, this new gadget can be a breakthrough as an answer to such problems.

Hats off to the Psychiatric researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine for designing this amazing vest. The vest is sensitive enough to show even the differing movements patterns of patients with the two disorders.

This VivoMetrics device can help monitor hyperactive and repetitive movements, and can also collect data on respiration, heart rate and other physiological measures!

Leading a five-year study of bipolar disorder, Perry, Ph.D., UC San Diego professor of psychiatry, said

In our first report from the study, we find that patients in the two groups show different patterns of exploration in new environments.

The study is funded by the National Institutes of Mental Health William.

Once the prototype proved successful, physicians can easily monitor behavioral patterns of their high symptomatic patients.

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Canadian researchers has claimed that they have developed the most detailed movable ‘4D’ image of human model that will enable doctors to plan complex surgeries or to exhibit patients that how illness looks like inside their bodies.

This movable human model called CAVEman, the larger-than-life computer image includes more than 3,000 distinct body parts those can be viewed in a booth and gives the image height, width and depth.

This new innovation enables scientists to layer on inimitable visuals of patients, such as magnetic resonance images, CAT scans and X-Rays and also facilitates to get high-resolution views of the inner functioning of the body while it appears to float within arm’s reach.

Christoph Sensen, director of the medical school’s Sun Center of Excellence for Visual Genomics asserted:

Today, this kind of a model is unique in the world. It’s the only one that is complete,” said “We have components of models. We could make this thing with 50 different brains because everybody makes their own brain model. What we didn’t have was a whole, complete body.

According to the officials of the University Of Calgary Faculty Of Medicine, who has worked on the development of this system for six years this new advancement will also assist physicians to study the genetics of diseases such as cancer, diabetes, muscular sclerosis and Alzheimer’s.

The CAVEman can be visualized through 3-D glasses in a booth to facilitate controller to operate and to focus it on body parts like skin, bones, muscles, organs, veins and to get more intricate picture of muscles and bones this innovation is initiated on a desire expressed by massage therapy teachers at a company in the central Alberta city of Red Deer.

Sensen further said:

The medical community will benefit by being able to merge patients’ diagnostic results - such as computerized internal images and blood tests - in one place, allowing specialists to work together more closely.

CAVEman is an outcome of a 3-D virtual reality “Cave”, a $5.5 million lab called the Sun Center which was opened in 2002 in collaboration with Sun Microsystems Inc and the estimated development cost of this avant-garde innovation lies between $460,000 and $1.8 million.

Via: Reuters

After undergoing detailed analysis on VNS(vagus nerve stimulator) technique, researchers have proved that by delivering an electrical charge into the brain through the vagus or pneumogastric nerve can chiefly help to eradicate depression but they are still not assured that why VNS works.

This vagus nerve stimulator power pack is only two-inch in diameter whose .25 inch thick disk can be surgically rooted under the skin near the left collarbone to connect it upwards with the vagus nerve in the neck. Its battery lasts till eight to twelve months and it is equipped with an off-switch so that patients can suspend the unit by placing a magnet over it.

The implanted disc can be easily programmed and reprogrammed via baton over the skin and to record patient’s data about the intensity and frequency of the pulse with device settings an individual memory cards are slotted into a handheld computer allied to the wand. The system then transports intermittent, rhythmic pulses to the nerve whose Latin name means ‘wandering’.

Dr. Mitchel Kling of the National Institutes for Health asserted:

We asked (epilepsy) patients who weren’t being helped if we could remove the device and by and large, the patients said, ‘No, no, don’t take this away. In some cases where there wasn’t good seizure control, patients’ mood problems stabilized.

Physicians are using VNS from last 10 years to treat epilepsy to (a brain disorder that causes people to have recurring seizures)slash seizures till upto 40 percent from some patients and, from then doctors began to identify its absolute prospective for treating severe depression even when it wasn’t helping their epilepsy.

After getting FDA approval of VNS as a depression treatment tool in July 2005, October 2005 study revealed that after using this VNS technique by severely depressed patients ninety-one percent retained their recovery in nine months and others who did not reported instantaneous benefits they showed improvement and even remission later on.

According to Dr. Darin Dougherty of Massachusetts General Hospital this technique reach almost half dozen areas of the brain to prove itself as an effective medication to treat severe depression.

Via: Kethar.livejournal

You know, I know, even the smokers know that smoking kills. But yet they smoke on and on and do not stop. Not even those anti-smoking warnings written on the front of the packets are able to have any effect on a few hard-edged puffers that in reality, that extra ciggie is not such a great idea, so designer Fiona Carswell has come up with the creation of an anti-smoking jacket which he hopes could do the job in its place.

The Smoking Jacket, by Fiona Carswell, is included with an integrated pair of lungs on the front that function as an iconographic “warning system”. The polite smoker can puff out the smoke into a “container” at the collar, to pass up blowing it in the faces of people around them. The smoke after that filters into a set of translucent lungs at the front of the jacket. Over time, the lungs turn yellow and stain and if you don’t smoke, the stain and smoke will finally fritter away.

The whole design makes use of visceral communique to remind smokers what they’re doing to their bodies, a substitute to utilizing patches, pills and chewing gum.

Really a great idea!

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