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Pre-conference Workshops

IMPORTANT NOTE! To attend any workshop, you must complete an extra registration online using PaperCept Registration website.

Biological Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (BioMEMS): Fundamentals and Applications

August 31, 2010

Please inform your colleagues and students about this workshop.

This workshop will provide an overview on how to apply Biological MicroElectroMechanical Systems (BioMEMS) technologies to obtain new insights into biological processes that encompass processes at the molecular, cellular and tissue scales including chemotaxis and cellular forces; cell metabolism, electrophysiology and signaling; angiogenesis and metastasis; and differentiation and development. This workshop will begin with a series of lectures and invited talks outlining key aspects of the micro and nanofabrication technologies and applications of BioMEMS technologies to life sciences, and will also allow participants to have a hands on experience fabricating and operating BioMEMS devices and learn specific details regarding the practical aspects of BioMEMS and sensor design, fabrication, and use for specific applications. The workshop will include a number of renowned speakers, and is geared towards graduate students, research scientists, faculty and industrial participants who are interested in gaining experience in the exciting field of BioMEMS.

Half Day Course:

Morning Session (8-12 pm)

Involved instructors:

Practical lessons learned from medical devices and systems development

Moderators:
Dr. Dorin Panescu and Dr. Nick Chbat

Dr. Nick Chbat, Philips Research North America
Lessons learned from cardiopulmonary decision support development
We will briefly look at some challenging points in infusing advanced engineering methodologies to clinical medicine. Specifically, we will visit lessons that we have learned and are still learning in terms of clinical decision support, algorithm development, metrics, and mathematical modeling targeted for clinical applications, like the ICU environment.

Dr. Xuan Kong, Neurometrix, Inc.
Lessons learned from the development of peripheral nerve diagnostic systems
In this talk we will reflect on lessons learned from our effort of developing a computer-assisted nerve conduction system. The peripheral nerve diagnostic system enables physicians to perform nerve conduction studies at the point of care.

A brief overview of procedural steps in performing a nerve conduction study will be given first. Clinical challenges and potential engineering solutions will be identified and discussed. We will discuss three primary objectives in medical diagnostic device research and development: enable clinicians to be more efficient and effective in performing routine diagnostics; leverage innovative technologies to expand clinician’s ability to diagnose diseases and disorders; facilitate clinical diagnostic advances with new concepts and tools. One or more examples will be used to illustrate each of the three objectives outlined above.

Dr. Dorin Panescu, NewCardio, Inc.
Lessons learned from cardiac electrophysiology systems development
This section of the workshop focuses on engineering knowledge learned from developing cardiac ablation systems.

The discussion will provide a brief overview of cardiac ablation and of cardiac conditions that can be treated by ablation followed by a review of radiofrequency (RF) ablation systems. Engineering aspects related to the design of RF generators for cardiac ablation will be discussed. Lessons learned from the design of the following items will be analyzed:

Also, a brief review of engineering standards required for regulatory compliance will be provided.

Dr. Mark Kroll, University of Minnesota
Lessons learned from the development of implantable cardiac devices

A surprising fact about the development of implantable cardiac devices is that capital punishment provided some of the most inspirational human experimental data. In 1791 the French legislature formed a committee under a surgeon which included the anatomy professor, Guillotin, to develop a more human method of execution. This led to the guillotine that provided about 20k fresh bodies with partially perfused tissues during the French revolution. Numerous experiments were performed which demonstrated the ability to transcutaneously stimulate skeletal muscle and eventually led to cardiac pacing.

After accidental electrocutions from AC power, and bribes from wealthy inventor Thomas Edison, the New York State (USA) legislature mandated electrocution as the only allowable means of execution. This led to a flurry of animal studies on the induction of VF and later the observation that sometimes a 2nd shock would restore a normal sinus rhythm.

The 1st implantable pacemaker was designed and built — not by an engineer — but by the brilliant Swedish cardiologist Elmquist who went on to invent the ink-jet printer. The only engineer involved was the patient.

A significant lesson learned in the development of implantable cardiac devices is the innovation drag of regulations and sales training. For feature flexibility, these devices must be built with microcontrollers and firmware. However, because a software error, in a cancer radiation therapy device, killed 2 patients the software in medical devices must have extensive testing and paperwork. This results in almost ½ of the engineers being assigned to testing and documentation efforts. Physician training also provides a delay in new feature implementations. After board certification, implanting physicians receive a large portion of their training — on drugs or devices — from the industry sales representatives for those same items. This implies that the sales representatives must be heavily trained in advance which, in turn, limits the number of material modifications and improvements that can be implemented to about 1 for every 2 years.

In the past these devices were largely designed around existing electronic components. For example, the implantable defibrillator was essentially a land-mine battery charging camera photo-flash capacitors to then give the shock. This began to change in the 1990s. Now, the batteries and capacitors are custom developed and far exceed the performance of land-mine batteries and photo-flash capacitors.

It has been possible, for about 20 years, to make pacemakers with 20 year battery lifetimes. However, such devices are not sold and the standard lifetime is 7-10 years. The improvements in battery technology and electronic current drains have been instead directed towards making smaller devices. More advanced pacemaker features (from more frequent implants) may also benefit the patient but the economic benefits for manufacturers and implanting physicians are also clear.

Despite some high-profile lawsuits, the reliability of these devices (the generators themselves) is extremely high. The primary complications with pacemakers are infections and failures of the leads and their connections. With continuing improvements in lead and connection technology the overall system reliability is beginning to approach that of the generators. With implantable defibrillators, the main complication is now psychiatric from the shock pain. The solution to this primary complication will require significant research.

Dr. Dieter Haemmerich, Medical University of South Carolina
Lessons learned from hepatic ablation systems development

Tumor ablation is a image-guided cancer treatment modality performed by interventional radiologists or by surgeons during open surgery or laparoscopy. During the procedure, an ablation catheter is introduced into the tumor using typically computed tomography or ultrasound as imaging modality for guidance. Once placed at the target location, the tumor is heated by radiofrequency electric current or microwaves and destroyed once sufficient temperature above ~ 50 ºC are obtained.

This presentation will demonstrate how the combination of computer simulations, in-vitro experiments and animal studies can be employed in the design, development and testing of novel and improved devices. Examples of new tumor ablation device designs and the different steps in their development will be presented, where initial validation of a new design is by computer simulations of the tissue heating process. In subsequent steps, device prototypes are tested in tissue studies to confirm computer simulations towards preclinical testing in animals.

Global Health Information Workshop

Tuesday, 31 August 2010, 8:00– 17:00

Announcing a full day Workshop on “Global Health Information” held in conjunction with the annual convention of EMBS in Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 31, 2010. The workshop is organized by EMBS in association with IEEE FDC (Future Directions Committee), and ICEO and is designed to integrate engineering and medical biology technologies. The agenda will bring together leaders from government, academia, industry, and operational agencies to describe their respective programs to build a smarter, more accessible world. The workshop has four technical sessions:

Session 1 is devoted to a variety of perspectives (EMBS, ICSU, WHO, PAHO, and the environmental links to health and well-being). The intention is to provide engineers and medical professionals with a common, but broad understanding of what is important to the health and well-being sectors.

Session 2 focuses on engineering aspects of global health information such as integrating medical devices, emerging new capabilities like nanotechnology, integrating all these devices with data from environmental sensors, and telemedicine. The aim is to provide medical communities of practice with new and emerging technologies for health information, early warning, interventions, and treatment.

Session 3 aims to provide health-oriented attendees on the one hand, and engineering technology attendees on the other, with information about how practices are currently being transferred between these communities. Topics focus specifically on tracking patient syndromes, public health early warning systems, and emerging social networking systems.

Session 4 is a summary of key points from the technical presentations, followed by an open discussion aimed at providing insights to future EMBS endeavors and how these might be employed for global benefit?

The goal is to leverage the collective, cross-disciplinary expertise of conference contributors and to enhance technology integration for better future health practices. A written workshop summary will be prepared for posting on the IEEE workshop series.

Please visit the EMBS conference web site at embc2010.embs.org, or contact for additional information.

Trends in High Angular Resolution Diffusion Imaging and Clinical Applications

The processing and analysis of diffusion weighted imaging data is a task considered to be very challenging due to the complex underlying properties of the data, but is becoming more mature owing to major new research contributions from various fields like physics, mathematics, statistics, computing and visualization. Prompted by its growing contribution to disease investigation, there has been an increased interest in addressing the mathematical and technical issues associated with the analysis of such data, by development of sophisticated techniques for the same – a trend that is evident in recent research. There is also an increase in DWI being added to clinical studies, leading to large amounts of data being acquired, needing analysis. This underlines the crucial need for a common protocol in handling processing, analysis and quality control of data. The tutorial proposes to address the challenging issues of standardization and comparability in different aspects of diffusion imaging: reconstruction, quality analysis of acquired data, registration, statistics/regression and tracking, across different research groups. The talks and the subsequent panel discussion would present the state-of-the-art as well as build towards a "protocol" that can be directly applied, for any/several of these tasks. As this is the first time of this tutorial in EMBC 2010, the focus will be mainly on introductory material but without disregarding the latest developments in the area. More specifically we plan to cover the following material:

For detailed information, please visit the webpage of the workshop.

Organizers

Demian Wassermann, PhD
Laboratory of Mathematics in Imaging (LMI)
Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory (PNL)
Surgical Planning Laboratory (SPL)
Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA
Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, USA
demian(at)bwh.harvard.edu

Ragini Verma, PhD

Section of Biomedical Image Analysis, Dept. of Radiology
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
ragini.verma(at)uphs.upenn.edu

Speakers

Schedule

VPH/Physiome tools & demonstration

Organisers:

Speakers:

CellML, cmgui, and GIMIAS are core elements of the Virtual Physiological Human Toolkit. CellML (http://www.cellml.org/) is an XML-based language for description of quantitative mathematical models. The primary goal of the CellML project is to provide a lingua franca for such models to facilitate their distribution and reuse by the research community. cmgui (http://www.cmiss.org/cmgui) is a application for visualizing complex multidimensional data, for example, the kinds of detailed functional models of human organ systems developed within the Physiome Project. GIMIAS (http://cilab2.upf.edu/gimias2/) is a software platform designed to be an integrative tool for fast prototyping of medical applications. This is a combined tutorial that will consist of a 15 minute introductory talk on each tool, followed by 90 minutes of hands-on tutorial on one of the tools (according to the attendee's choice) supervised by members of the projects. The CellML tutorial will show attendees how to build and simulate a well known model in the OpenCell software, while the cmgui tutorial will give an introduction to cmgui, demonstrating how to create a custom visualisations of 3D organ models and data. The GIMIAS tutorial will show the basic features of GIMIAS for image visualization and quantification and show different medical tools already developed on top of this framework. Attendees should bring their own computers.

Electric Fields Effects in Tumors: Biophysical Foundations and Clinical Experiences

August 31, 2010

Please inform your colleagues and students about this workshop.

Organizers:

Local Committee:

Invitation to participate in a full-day workshop on August 31, 2010 in the context of the 32nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society “Merging Medical Humanism and Technology”, August 31-September 4, 2010, Buenos Aires, Argentina. After workshop meeting will continue during September 1 and 2 at the ITBA University site, visits to other universities and hospitals are planned too (agenda under construction).

The goal of the workshop is to bring together scientists studying electric field effects in tumors across disciplines and scales and those who are medical doctors involved in direct patient care and research. Across disciplines and scales implies working in vivo, in vitro, and in silico, and at the tissue, cellular, and cell membrane level. This is a unique opportunity to show the new advances of the field in Latin America. Workshop’s main topics (list not final):

Full Day Workshop: (tentative agenda)

Morning session

Afternoon session