BioENGINE brings together diverse resources at UCI, including the School of Medicine, Samueli School of Engineering, Bren School of Information and Computer Science, Beckman Laser Institute, UCI Athletics, and UCI Beall Applied Innovation, along with industry leaders and other key stakeholders to collectively define and develop real-world, near-term solutions to some of the greatest high-tech and med-tech challenges. Through rigorous coursework and interdisciplinary, team-based experiential learning, BioENGINE trainees will become the high impact healthcare innovators of tomorrow.
The BME/MSE Senior Design Project Program at UCI is a critical component of the BioENGINE program, as it is designed to bridge academic learnings with real-world design challenges in the engineering industry. The benefits on industry involvement include:
Many of the BME/MSE Senior Design Projects have corporate mentors. See our library of current and past projects: http://www.projects.uci.design/
If you have a project idea, would like to be a mentor, and/or would like to sponsor a project, please contact:
Dr. Christine King
Assistant Professor of Teaching
Department of Biomedical Engineering
kingce@uci.edu
The objective of the FUSION Engineering Project is to design and create a functional autonomous vacuum cleaner. Each team must adhere to certain design specifications set by the Project Directors and will compete with each other at FUSIONCon in May 2023. Each team’s goal is to create a cost-effective robot while maintaining functionality.
The FUSION Autonomous Vaccum project aims to provide members with the opportunity to work with a diverse range of other engineering majors while aquiring hands-on experience with Arduinos and CAD modeling.Although we share the same objective as the other project teams within FUSION, we will differentiate ourselves with our unique design and approach to problem-solving in order to be a competitive oponent in the end-of-the-year competition.
This project will introduce us to the intricate world of robotics, allowing our members to explore their interests and curiosities in programming and modeling. This will allow us to better understand the complexity of automation and its potential to better our own lives.
We have received our first purchase order on Janurary 31st, 2023, and have began to work on initial construction of our robot. We have created designs for the major mechanical components of the system and have collaborated towards...
Background
When a fracture in a bone occurs, bone plates are used to facilitate the healing of the bone. Orthopedic surgeons attach these plates directly onto the bones of the patients. However, there have been a number of documented cases where the bone plate ends up failing, causing damage and requiring additional surgeries for the patient. When bone plates shift, there is micromotion and shearing between the bone and the metal plate, which compromises the stability of the plate. With the assistance of Professor McCarthy and Hoag Orthopedics, testing of the new re-designed textured metal plates will be conducted to analyze the improvement in the interface between the bone and the plate.
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Goal and Objectives
The ultimate goal of our project is to physically prove that a textured bone plate has a significantly greater coefficient of friction with the surface of a bone than a smooth bone plate. We aim to achieve this goal...
The Hoag Bone Plate Fixation Project is a design project sponsored by Hoag Orthopedics consisting of MAE/BME/MSE students. The purpose of the project is to improve the overall design of the current bone plate which is an smooth metal plate implant held together by surgical screws used to immobilize fractured bone segments. A textured bone plate should provide more friction between the bone and the plate. The screws in both the smooth bone plate and the textured bone plate are compared which will be used to determine if increased friction between the plate and the bone reduces failure of the screws. The re-designed plates hope to reduce failure in the screws which will decrease the number of failed fixations in patients.
In this project, we are utilizing a reciprocating compact microfluidics disk to separate plasma from whole blood. Doing so will allow for the plasma to then be tested for antibodies using an adaption of immunoassay technology. An important application of this technology is that it is able to help test blood samples for COVID-19 samples quickly and accurately.
The Hoag Bone Plate Fixation Project is a design project sponsored by Hoag Orthopedics consisting of MAE/BME/MSE students that are tasked to identify geometry and material for orthopedic plates that provides imporved fracture fixation. By improving the frictional interface of the bone-plate surface, the re-designed plates hope to reduce shearing and micromotion of plates, and in term decrease the cases of failed fracture fixations in patients.
This device serves multiple clinical needs: A. People need help practicing breathing/meditation in order to reduce stress and have good mental health but meditating is difficult and not fun. B. Cigarettes and other smoking devices such as Juul are harmful to people’s health. C. Attempts at solving these problems have not integrated behavior change science fundamentals effectively. The objective of this project is to build a device to help people meditate. The device would be designed for general population. The solution must have a sleek design, be small, and allow for meditative breathing. Project Mentor: Engineering Mentor: Michelle Khine, PhD, Department of Biomedical Engineering, UC Irvine, mkhine@uci.edu Physician Mentor: Sean Young, PhD, Departments of Emergency Medicine (SOM) and Informatics (ICS), UC Irvine syoung5@uci.edu
| Member Last Name | Member First Name | Lead? | Email (@uci.edu) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bhandari | Aditya Anil | Yes | aabhanda |
| Chu | Jiyuan |
A way to portably detect bone fracture for senior healthcare professionals to increase ease of use and efficiency of care.
The objective of this project is to design and build an EEG driven device to use event-related potentials to translate into inputs for electronic “smart” devices. The following design requirements and deliverables must be considered:
• Cheap, portable EEG system with Bluetooth, Wifi, and USB connectivity to interface with computers, smartphones, IoT assistant devices
• Software designed to optimize user-specific signal analysis
Project Mentor: Engineering Mentor: Christine King, PhD, Department of Biomedical Engineering, UC Irvine, kingce@uci.edu
Physician Mentor: Dr. Filippo Capolino, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Irvine, f.capolino@uci.edu.
Team: Member Chin Brandon Alexander, Lim Jeremy Joshua, Ranario Evan Leander, Sabino Robert Christopher, Valisharifabad Ninaz
Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a serious and often fatal event in the perioperative period in patients undergoing major surgery. While patients may receive anticoagulation to prevent PE, many surgical patients are not candidates for anticoagulation due to risk of bleeding. There is a clinical need to design an intracardiac device that can be placed in the right atrium of the heart. Such device should have the feature of abilities to catch blood clots without hindrance of blood flow in the cardiac chamber. The conception of this device is born out of the current use of a pulmonary catheter; such catheter is introduced into the heart via an introducer catheter. Such catheter has its tip sit in the pulmonary arterial trunk and can be placed inside the heart with minimal risk of arrythmia, prothrombic state or bleeding. Such device is typically only left in the heart for the duration of need;...
Aesthetics Biomedical (ABM) is developing a fat melting pod coined the AdiPod to revolutionize the body-contouring market. Currently the only solution to melt fat, adipose tissue, is to go body part by body part which is time consuming and takes several trips to your local clinic. The typical treatment is 30 minutes a body part spaced a week apart for 4 weeks. The fat melting pod would be able to treat several body parts at once and therefore save the client time and trips to the clinic. The pod would be composed of a camera system and radio-frequency (RF) system. The idea is that the camera system would be a thermal imager where it will assess how much heat and how long to apply the heat to the area of fat to have a therapeutic effect on the adipose tissue. The radio-frequency (RF) system would be then optimized to apply...
To alleviate knee pain from OA, current Knee OA bracing is designed to deliver 3 point loading to the leg to "unload" the medial/lateral knee condyles. Figure 1 demonstrates the knee compartment unloading via 3 point loading delivered from the Unloader One® knee brace:
In order to characterize the unloading effects from in-house and competitor bracing, a reliable benchtop knee surrogate fixture is needed. The objective of this project is to design a simple, robust, and reliable benchtop knee surrogate which measures the medial and lateral knee condyle forces between the femur and tibia. Project Scope: Design benchtop Knee/leg surrogate which meets the following requirements: o Contains load measurement system which measures load in both medial and lateral compartments simultaneously. o Leg surrogate must have approximate anatomical exterior and tissue shore density of an average person. o Does not need to be anatomically accurate in terms...
The Biorobotics Laboratory at the University of California, Irvine introduces prospective and incoming students to the marriage between biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering, specifically through robotics. Our project’s proposal is to create a humanoid robot that could potentially be used as a socially assistive robot.
Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) have great potential to augment health care providers’ activities in physical, cognitive, and social activities [1] . SARs can be used in many fun and interactive aspects (exercise assistance for the elderly, task completion for the disabled). We will be applying bioengineering principles to programming and mechanical systems. The team plans to use technology from Dr. Reinkensmeyer’s lab to create an interactive humanoid robot based on the open-source InMoov robot. We hope to accomplish this project with a camera, motion sensors, microprocessor(s), and facial tracking concepts.
Our deliverables for Fall 2019 will consist of moving the head, arm and...
Hyperbilirubinemia affects up to 60% of term newborns and 80% of preterm newborns each year. Treatment for more severe hyperbilirubinemia involves phototherapy, the use of blue-to-green LED, fluorescent or halogen light to eliminate the excess bilirubin in the blood. Infants traditionally wear masks or covers over the eyes to protect them against retinal damage during phototherapy. Several products currently exist to meet this need; However, they become dislodged when the infant moves or fall off, and fail to protect the infant’s eyes. The downstream impacts of this include retinal damage, disturbance to the infant through repositioning, and poor family rapport/satisfaction scores.
The goal of this project is to develop a safe and comfortable way to cover and protect the eyes of neonates undergoing phototherapy.
Design requirements
Protect the eyes from light Is Stable, does not become dislodged or slip above and below the eyes due...
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), musculoskeletal conditions comprise more than 150 diagnoses that affect the locomotor system – that is, muscles, bones, joints and associated tissues such as tendons and ligaments, as listed in the International Classification of Diseases [1]. They range from those that arise suddenly and are short-lived, such as fractures, sprains and strains; to lifelong conditions associated with ongoing pain and disability. Musculoskeletal conditions affect people across the life-course in all regions of the world and were the leading cause of disability in four of the six WHO regions in 2017. A recent study in the US indicated that one in two adult Americans live with some form of musculoskeletal conditions, which account for the greatest proportion of lost productivity in the workplace at US$213 billion – 1.4% of Gross Domestic Product (GPD) [2].
Musculoskeletal rehabilitation programs are often prescribed by doctors to improve...
Asthma is a chronic condition, and it is characterized by inflammation of the airways and over-production of mucus. This makes breathing difficult, and it can produce shortness of breath, wheezing, and coughing. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 25 million Americans have asthma; which is 1 in every 13 people. Asthma is the leading chronic disease in children, and many times, it can be deadly. Each day, ten Americans die from asthma, and most of these deaths can be prevented with the proper treatment and care. In hospitals, the main way to detect an asthma attack is to look for the symptoms, such as listening to the lungs for wheezing, and looking at oxygen saturation levels. However, asthma is not a disease of the alveoli; rather, it is the inflammation of the airways. Therefore, many patients present almost perfect oxygen saturation levels while having...
Two unrelated Transit Portals: 1. Cervix, 2. Pyloric Valve
A competent cervix is necessary for maintaining viable pregnancies and preventing intrauterine death from prolapsed cord. Current solutions are either highly invasive or too simplistic to guarantee long term efficacy. Standard of care is to suture the cervix closed until time of delivery. The mother and baby are subjected to risks of surgery under anesthesia. The other option is a “one size fits all” flexible ring placed around the neck of the cervix.
An incompetent pyloric valve does not permit completing the digestive stage of the stomach via enzymes and acid and peristaltic mixing. Sugar digestion begins with enzymes in saliva and continues to simple sugars in the stomach. When poorly digested sugary food transits to the duodenum past the portal system, an insulin surge occurs which results in an often severe hypoglycemic event for the individual.
The...
There are 3.7 million visits in the U.S. annually for acute sinusitis, whereas there are ~75 million visits annually for the common cold. Many patients with the common cold receive antibiotic prescriptions for a presumed sinusitis where none was needed. It has been estimated that two-thirds of the prescriptions are unnecessary given that physicians cannot differentiate the common cold from acute sinusitis most of the time. The gold standard for diagnosis of acute sinusitis is placement of a needle into the sinus and obtaining a culture, which is an invasive, painful procedure and cannot be performed in a primary care setting. There is a clinical need for an easy, rapid method of detecting bacterial infection in the nose/sinuses.
The objective of the project is to develop a rapid assay for the 3 most common bacteria that cause sinusitis that can be used in an office setting. The team...
With the rise of the baby boomer population, innovation of geriatric devices are becoming necessary. This project will develop innovative accessory solutions and a complete redesign of the walker and other mobility devices. Design considerations such as center of gravity, terrain, foldability, wheels, and ergonomics, as well as manufacturability and materials selection will be incorporated into the novel design. Students will get an opportunity to build the device for a particular end user who requires these novel solutions.
Project Mentor:
Engineering Mentor: Christine E. King, PhD, Department of Biomedical Engineering, UC Irvine, kingce@uci.edu
Industry Mentor: Robert A. Kleist, Founder and Chairman, Printronix, Inc.
| Member Last Name | Member First Name | Lead? | Email (@uci.edu) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bankson | Jade Victoria | jbankson | |
| Gomez | Cesar |
Visibility is paramount during an operation, a surgeon’s mantra includes “Do not cut what you cannot see.” Disposable plastic vacuum suction wands are common and inexpensive devices used in nearly all surgical interventions to evacuate fluids and tissues from the surgical field to improve visibility. The device is held and maneuvered by an assistant through the surgical field to collect pooled fluids. However, the assistants’ body or the wand itself can obscure the overhead illumination and reduce the surgeons’ visibility. This disruption wastes time by slowing the procedure, can result in unnecessary tissue penetration, or requires the surgeon to adopt an uncomfortable body position.
The aim of this project is to embed or affix an LED and battery unit into the surgical suction device. Electrical engineering and knowledge of plastic molding will be beneficial.
Project Mentor:
Engineering Mentor: Christian Moseley M.D., M.S., Founder, Moseley Enterprises, Vice President, Atlantic...
"My surgeon left a tool in me" otherwise known as retained foreign object (RFO). How many times have you heard this story in the news? My goal is to develop technologies to combat this problem in which the Joint Commission considered it to be a never sentinel event. The current state requires nurses/scrub tech to count hundreds of tools which is an imperfect science and costly because it is time intensive and when the count is off, you started to question if your original count was correct. Yes, this is 2019 with powerful hand held computer such as the iPhone but in surgery to prevent a major mistake, we rely on human "counting"??? We need a better and more accurate system that does not rely so much on counting which has been shown to lead to errors. The proposed device should provide an objective account of all surgical instruments, sponges...
Current clinical immersion courses require a very limited number of students to be able to enter a hospital or clinical settings and attend Grand Rounds. These classes typically have students reverse engineer medical devices, attend Grand Rounds or surgeries, and interview physicians and hospital staff to identify unmet clinical needs that biomedical engineers could improve upon in the future and develop medical devices in the industry to meet these unmet needs. However, given the increasing class sizes of our institutions, and the availability of hospitals and clinics in other institutions with undergraduate biomedical engineering programs, this has become increasingly difficult and impossible to provide all students with these opportunities.
The goal of this project is to develop virtual reality videos and environments for students to be able to immerse themselves in a hospital or clinical setting remotely. Through virtual reality and video interviews with physicians and hospital staff, these...
Brain damage in contact sports –– namely Football and Hockey, is a quickly growing concern in the context of sports equipment, especially as more studies find the prevalence of brain damage/CTE in retired athletes. As more companies and researchers strive to create safer helmets, we are seeking to design a new method for minimizing head trauma upon impact in these high risk sports.
The objective of the project is to develop technology with the goal of preventing brain injuries in contact sports. The project will have the following design requirements: Compressible impact protection padding, and deliverables: Impact minimization technology to be implemented in one of the X layers of the helmet. This will serve as the primary padding for impact reduction.
Project Mentor:
Engineering Mentor: Chris M. Hoo, PhD, Department of Materials Science, UC Irvine, cmhoo@uci.edu
Physician Mentor: TBD
Project Mentor:
Engineering/Inventor Mentor: Michelle Khine, PhD, Department of Biomedical Engineering, UC Irvine, mkhine@uci.edu...
Under the guidance and industry sponsored project from Medtronic Neurovascular, the objective of this project is to develop the Test Methods to characterize the implantable neurovascular device performance and produce the device specifications. The design requirements and deliverables will be to understand the clinical conditions and user needs to develop Test Methods. Developed Test Methods shall accurately measure the device performance and repeatedly collect the data at its testing conditions.
Special Note: this project will have a maximum of 4 students to support the development.
Project Mentor:
Engineering Mentor: Richard Rhee, Sr. Manager, Research and Development, Medtronic Neurovascular Richard.s.rhee@medtronic.com
Other Mentor: John Wainwright, PhD, Director, Research and Development, Medtronic Neurovascular john.wainwright@medtronic.com
| Member Last Name | Member First Name | Lead? | Email (@uci.edu) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arias | Rioneil Gapasin |
Every 15 seconds, someone in the US suffers from a brain injury; as a result, every 15 seconds, someone in the US is failed by the lack of any substantive advancement in the treatment of traumatic brain injuries in the past several decades. Our objective is to design and build a prototype of the BrainDOMETM, which is a neurosurgical device that is in very early development at NTX (Neurotheraputics, pre-Series A startup, see http://www.ntx.ai/ the device is intended to allow for early large decompressive craniectomy and fundamentally change the standard of care.
In the video here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ie4e0b66qy8k47v/Craniotomy%20decompressive.mov... you can see a craniectomy being performed. The brain swells outside the margins and the success of the surgery is variable. The device replaces current surgical techniques and the MVP will require biocompatible antimicrobial penetration resistant materials and design that allows for tight seal ideally for at least 7-10 days...
