UC Davis Biomedical Engineering

Non-wetting fabric drains sweat

Holly Ober — Mon, 20 May 2013 21:51:57 +0000

Graduate students Siyuan Xing and Jia Jiang, along with Prof. Tingrui Pan, developed a new textile microfluidic platform using hydrophilic (water-attracting) threads stitched into a highly water-repellent fabric. They were able to create patterns of threads that suck droplets of water from one side of the fabric, propel them along the threads and expel them from the other side.

Distinguished Seminar Series: Norbert Pelc, Professor of Bioengineering and Associate Chair, Stanford University School of Medicine – Radiology, Stanford University

Holly Ober — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:27:20 +0000

BME Startup Wins Big Bang! Business Plan Competition

Holly Ober — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:06:52 +0000

photo credit: UC Davis Graduate School of Management

: From left: Dr. Leigh Griffiths, Jeni Lee, Gina MacBarb, Maelene Wong

ViVita Technologies, a startup founded by Veterinary Medicine Professor and Athanasiou Lab collaborator Leigh Griffiths and BME Ph.D. students Regina MacBarb, Jeni Lee, and Maelene Wong, won the Big Bang! Business Plan Competition. Big Bang! is the annual UC Davis Business Plan Competition organized by MBA students of the Graduate School of Management. The goal of the contest is to promote entrepreneurship at UC Davis and the region supported by the University. The winner receives funds to invest in their business.

ViVita Technologies plans to circumvent the major flaws in current animal-derived heart valve replacements by implementing a new approach to tissue preparation. They have developed a patent-pending process that removes the major components of the material responsible for stimulating the recipients’ immune response while preserving the tissue’s structural integrity and functional properties. Following application of this process, recipient cells are able to repopulate the material, thus creating living replacement tissues capable of integration and growth. ViVita’s tissue preparation process, therefore, creates tissue replacements that last the lifetime of our patients. Learn more about ViVita here: http://istart.org/startup-idea/business/vivita-technologies-inc/12444

ViVita is one of the resident companies of the Engineering Translational Technology Center (ETTC), the technology incubator at the College of Engineering at UC Davis.

Two BME Finalists in Big Bang! Business Plan Competition

Holly Ober — Thu, 16 May 2013 22:42:03 +0000

BME has TWO finalists in this year’s Big Bang! Business Plan Competition:

ViVita Technologies, Inc. (founded by Dr. Leigh Griffiths and BME graduate students Maelene Wong, Jeni Lee, and Gina MacBarb)

AmberCycle Industries (including BME Assistant Professor Marc Facciotti and UC Davis undergraduate students)

Please come show your support at the
Big Bang! Final Awards Ceremony
Thursday, May 16, 2013 from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM

UC Davis Conference Center

College of Engineering Design Showcase

Holly Ober — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:57:55 +0000

The 2013 Engineering Design Showcase will take place 2:00-4:30PM on June 6, 2013 in the Pavilion at the UC Davis ARC. Admission is free.The Engineering Design Showcase is the culminating experience for graduating seniors. A senior design experience is required for all students in an engineering major. Teams complete a capstone project in which they design and prototype a product, device, or software system.

This event will bring together project teams from all departments for an opportunity to share student designs with the public. Also attending the event will be invited guests from industry partners and donors. These guests will serve as reviewers who will provide feedback to student teams on their exhibits and project demonstrations.

For a little preview of what you’ll be seeing, here’s a video of a biomedical engineering team talking about the biomimetic prosthetic eye they designed: http://youtu.be/IeLcKwHYkcM

Distinguished Seminar Series: Andrew Laine, Professor and Chair, Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University

Holly Ober — Fri, 10 May 2013 01:00:28 +0000

Andrew Laine, Ph.D.
Percy K. and Vida L. W. Hudson Professor
Chair, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Professor of Radiology (Physics), Department of Radiology
Director, Heffner Biomedical Imaging Laboratory
Columbia University, New York, NY

“Advances in Quantitative Analysis of Medical Images: Functional Imaging and Modeling of the Heart, Brain and Vasculature”

Dynamic cardiac metrics, including strains and displacements, can provide a quantitative approach to evaluate cardiac function. However, in current clinical diagnosis, strain measures in 2D are used despite the fact that cardiac motions are complex changes in 4D. Recent advances in 4D ultrasound enable the capability to capture such complex motion in real time. In our previous work, a 4D optical flow based motion tracking algorithm was developed to extract full 4D dynamic cardiac metrics from such 4D ultrasound data. In order to quantitatively evaluate this method, coronary artery occlusion experiments at various locations were performed on five canine hearts with 4D ultrasound and sonomicrometry data acquired during the occlusion. Optical flow displacement was then mapped onto a finite element field fitted model. Corresponding 4D ultrasound data from these experiments were then analyzed. Estimated principal strains were directly compared to those recorded by sonomicrometry showing strong agreement. This was the first validation study of optical flow based strain estimation for 4D cardiac ultrasound including a direct comparison with sonomicrometry on in vivo data. Finally, a clinical study is presented to validate the performance of 4D cardiac ultrasound strain measures to cardiac MRI using 3D DENSE and 3D CSPAMM as gold standards of myocardial strain.

The talk will also include recent research on other methods to quantify dynamic metrics in medical imaging such as hyper-spectral imaging of the retina for classification of dusen related to AMD, biomedical informatics and the integration of multimodal longitudinal data for diagnosis and treatment of chronic diseases.

When: Thursday, May 16, 2013 4:10 PM

Where: 1005 GBSF

Boone Lab Paper Wins Award for Breast CT Research

Holly Ober — Tue, 07 May 2013 20:45:56 +0000

John Boone, Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering, UC Davis

A paper published by UC Davis Biomedical Engineering and Radiology professor John Boone, his BME Ph.D. students Lin Chen and Anita Nosratieh, and colleagues Craig Abbey (UCSB) and Karen Lindfors (UCDMC) has received the Sylvia Sorkin Greenfield Award. The award honors the best paper published that year in the journal, Medical Physics, and includes a cash prize. The award will be presented by the President of the AAPM (American Association of Physicists in Medicine), the organization that produces Medical Physics, during an award ceremony in Indianapolis on August 5, 2013.

The paper, Anatomical complexity in breast parenchyma and its implications for optimal breast imaging strategies, showed that breast CT imaging yields a smaller amount of distortion due to normal tissue than mammography or tomosynthesis. Normal breast tissue, such as glands, can get in the way of detecting cancerous lesions. High levels of this anatomical noise make any imaging method less reliable at revealing cancerous tissue. Dr. Boone’s lab used all three imaging modalities on 23 volunteers who had been referred to the UC Davis Medical Center for imaging because of suspicious findings on routine breast exams.

They found that anatomical noise in breast imaging is only reduced when the thickness of the individual cross-sectional planes (known as “slices”) that are reconstructed to produce a whole image are less than 7mm thick. Significant reduction in noise only occurs when slice thickness is less than 1mm. Because of its intrinsically thin slices, breast CT had the least anatomical noise. The authors conclude that breast CT might be a better way to detect mass lesions than mammography or tomosynthesis.

BME Graduate Group Research Conference

Holly Ober — Mon, 06 May 2013 22:42:11 +0000

This past weekend the 2nd Annual BME Graduate Group Research Conference was held in the Buehler Alumni Center. Nicole De Jesus (Ripplinger lab) had the Outstanding Oral Presentation. Three students were recognized for the outstanding poster presentation: Josh Roth (Hull lab), Hussain Fatakdawala (Marcu lab), and Jennifer Lee (Athanasiou lab).

P.E.O. Scholar Award Winner Tissue Engineers Better TMJ Discs

Holly Ober — Mon, 06 May 2013 18:55:33 +0000

Gina MacBarb

UC Davis Biomedical Engineering graduate student Gina MacBarb is one of 66 doctoral students nationwide selected to receive a $15,000 2013-2014 Scholar Award from P.E.O. International. P.E.O. is a philanthropic educational organization that provides financial aid for the education of women.

An engineered TMJ disc. Photo credit: Gina MacBarb

As part of the Athanasiou Musculoskeletal Bioengineering Laboratory, Gina is pursuing a project that uses the Lab’s self-assembly process to tissue engineer a biomimetic temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disc clinical product to repair and/or replace discs damaged by injury or disease. Thus far, Gina has optimized a bioactive treatment regimen that increases the functional properties of the engineered tissue closer to those of native tissue. She has recently generated shape-specific constructs that capture the anatomical geometry of the native TMJ disc, and is pursuing the use of mechanical stimulation in combination with the bioactive agents to produce a tissue displaying the spectrum of mechanical properties recapitulative of native TMJ discs.

In addition to research and academics, Gina participates in educational outreach events with the Biomedical Engineering Student Association (BESA). Through BESA, Gina has established a mentorship program for undergraduate students to receive advice and guidance from BME graduate students in successfully navigating through college.

Gina’s long-term career goal is to drive the creation of critical life-saving technologies and help revolutionize regenerative medicine solutions. In line with this goal, she has recently co-founded a university-based startup, ViVita Technologies Inc., which is focused on generating a novel heart valve replacement that will last a patient’s lifetime.

Alumni Seminar Series: Andy Hamel, Director of R&D, Stryker Endoscopy

Holly Ober — Sat, 04 May 2013 00:05:34 +0000

Industry vs. Academia, and the Future of Heath Care

BME Alumni Seminar given by Dr. Andrew Hamel on Thursday, May 9 at 4:10pm in the GBSF Auditorium, 1005 GSBF for our final Alumni seminar of this academic year.

Dr. Hamel received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Materials Science, as well as his M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from UC Davis. He then completed his Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering at Penn State University in 2000. Dr. Hamel currently works in the Endoscopy Division of Stryker, which focuses on development, manufacturing and distribution of endoscopic medical devices used in minimally invasive surgery.