Week Two: Tracking Tops

               Last week I wrote about MRI/US Fusion Guided Biopsy, but one thing I did not go into detail was the equipment used during the biopsy. In general, the equipment involved are the biopsy needle, the ultrasound probe, and the fusion biopsy device itself. The first two pieces of equipment are well known, but the fusion biopsy device is not always recognizable. A fusion biopsy device, in general terms, is the centerpiece of the procedure. Overall, it is responsible for tracking the position of the ultrasound probe, displaying the segmented MRI and US images, and recording the location of the biopsies. All these functions make it more impressive the number of different approaches companies have employed to execute these demands, specifically in tracking the US probe position. Currently, there are three methods to achieve this: i) mechanical systems, ii) electromagnetic tracking, and iii) image-based tracking (examples shown below). Here, I have observed biopsies with mechanical systems, which use encoders on mechanical arms to track the probe position.

Figure 1. An example of a type of mechanical system used in a fusion biopsy device using an attached mechanical arm to track the ultrasound probe position.
 Image source: https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/

This week I met the CEO of one of the fusion biopsy device companies to learn more about their fusion biopsy device, and see the differences between it and their competitor during biopsy sessions. The main differences I noticed between the two devices was the degrees of freedom for movement and the software utilized by each device. In the session, it was clear how these factors change the workflow of the biopsy that can influence a clinician’s decision in equipment. Seeing these differences and talking to the CEO about the development and considerations underlying the device excited my engineering mindset. Combining this with the observations I have made in the clinic reminded me of how important biomedical engineers are to the hospital and the communication required between all parties involved to address patient concerns.


Beyond the hospital, I have continued to explore New York, but needed to put a small pause on my mission to find the best coffee and chai. Instead, I have been exploring New York and seeing both new and old sites. With respect to new I finally visited Times Square. However, while there I came across an old sight I thought I would not see again. I’m talking about (what I consider) the silliest chairs I have ever sat on in what I call the red top chair. These chairs as shown below, you can sit and swivel around due to the point at its base like that of a top. I first saw and sat in these back in Utah during my undergraduate studies, and hated them then. My feelings have not changed and I still consider them very silly. Yea I used to play with tops growing up, but I have never felt that this would be a good chair design. The novelty of the chair is fine, but I digress. With that I’ll end this post and continue my search for coffee and chai.

Figure 2: The red top chair.
Image source: http://www.hermanmiller.com/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week7

With the end of our summer immersion approaching, I feel sad to say goodbye to all the persons I've met in the hospital during this summer. The past 7 weeks has been very fulfilling and exciting to me, and I will never forget my experience here. As a student will electrical engineering background, I never thought that I can be able to go to a real operation room in the hospital and observe doctors operating on surgeries. But in the past 7 weeks, I was able to go to OR every week, and there's always surgery techniques that are impressing to me. Beside clinical experience, I also had a research project, automatic segmentation of zebra fish neuron images. As I have presented in my previous bloggers, for my project, I have tried several different algorithms. The first is simple thresholding. It is usually used as a preprocessing step in image analysis. The second method is watershed algorithm. It works pretty well, but, it's very sensitive to noise, resulting in over segmenta
Read more

Week 5: Spine Surgeries and Excel Files

Image
On the context of my clinical research project, I continue extracting the different demographic and skeletal specific factors for the patients of our study. I was also able to attend an additional spinal fusion surgery under the supervision of Dr. Kim at HSS. During this week, I was particularly interested in the surgical equipment that he uses for the procedure. Dr. Kim uses the Zimmer Biomet Vitality Spinal Fixation System for his spine surgeries. The components of the system are made from medical grade titanium alloy and medical grade cobalt chromium alloy. In summary, these were the main steps of the process for installing the screws into the patient spine which, personally, was the most interesting part of the procedure.  Initially, the pedicle area of the vertebrae is localized, and an insertion is made in the cortical shell. Then, a probe, included with the system, creates a pathway for the polyaxial pedicle screw to be inserted into the pedicle and the vertebral body. It i
Read more

Week 6 (Jason Chang)

Image
With only a week of immersion left, I have been focusing all my time on developing a preliminary proof-of-concept protocol for automating EEG artifact removal in MATLAB. Admittedly, it has been very challenging at times, especially given my limited neurology and programming experience, but I have made significant progress as of recently with the assistance of Dr. Mangat and Dr. Forgács. Last week, I began using EEGLAB, an interactive EEG analysis toolbox in MATLAB, to perform independent component analysis (ICA) on selected datasets from the subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) study. After ICA is applied, EEGLAB has different built-in signals processing functions to mark and remove components containing any artifacts. With several methods to choose from, I consulted with Dr. Forgács on Thursday to seek his clinical expertise. Figure 1 . Individual component analysis (ICA) to reject artifacts by visual inspection of continuous EEG signals  Figure 2. Removing ICA components using
Read more