MIT 2.75 Engineering Medical Devices Overview

With the goal of engaging graduate students and accelerating ideas into prototypes, teams of MIT graduate engineering students spend a semester collaborating with clinicians in CIMIT-affiliated hospitals to develop innovative medical devices. Clinicians (physicians, nurses, and scientists) present clinical problems and initial ideas. Students form teams to work with the clinicians to turn these ideas into reality. The goal is for the students to deliver a working prototype and a journal-quality article in one semester. In its fifth year, the course has been a great opportunity for clinicians to test out new ideas and to stimulate new collaborations. For example, Robopsy, a robotic device to assist radiologists performing tumor biopsies was invented by an MIT team led by Rajiv Gupta, MD, in 2004. The team was awarded the 2007 MIT $100K prize, the world's leading entrepreneurship competition and the 2008 ASME Innovation Showcase. Join us to hear from the teams of 2008.

Forum Summary

Over the last decade, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of spinal fusion surgeries performed in the United States.  A major problem with spinal fusion as it is currently performed is that the procedure results in significant soft tissue disruption.  Surgeons would like to accomplish spinal fusion endoscopically, but at the moment, there is no endoscope-compatible device capable of maintaining inter-vertebral space while the spine heals.  Such a spacer would need to fit through a 6.9-mm portal and then expand into an 18- to 20-mm space, and it would also need to withstand 500 newtons of force for months without failing.

A team of students from MIT worked with Kevin McGuire, MD, MS, to design a spacer capable of meeting the functional requirements mentioned above.  They created a system that maintains the inter-vertebral space using two balloons.  Initially, the balloons are filled with pressurized saline to prop open the space, and then one balloon, which forms a ring around the other balloon, is filled with a radio-opaque fluid so that the position of the balloons can be visualized.  Next, the radio-opaque fluid is removed, and the outer balloon is filled with bone cement, which polymerizes within minutes.  After the bone cement solidifies, the inner balloon is removed, and the resulting cavity is filled with a bone graft.                  

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