CO OEDIT - AI-POC - Single Use Robotic Endoscope to Enable Complete Deep Enteroscopy

Anonymous — Sat, 23 Jan 2021 22:31:44 +0000

CO OEDIT - AI-POC - Single Use Robotic Endoscope to Enable Complete Deep Enteroscopy Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 01/23/2021 - 15:31

Summer 2021 - Summer 2023. The objective of this Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) - Advanced Industries Proof of Concept Grant is a pre-clinical assessment of a novel single-use robotic endoscope to improve gastroenterology outcome for both patient and physician.

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NSF - S&AS: INT: COLLAB: An Intelligence-Driven Patient Care Approach to Reduce Medical Errors (I-CARE)

Anonymous — Sun, 14 Apr 2019 16:23:31 +0000

NSF - S&AS: INT: COLLAB: An Intelligence-Driven Patient Care Approach to Reduce Medical Errors (I-CARE) Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 04/14/2019 - 10:23

Spring 2019 - Spring 2023. Imagine that in the near future a patient needing surgery will swallow a small mobile robot that can autonomously perform the procedure without any external incisions or pain. Such robots have the potential to make state-of-the-art surgical concepts a reality by providing an unconstrained mobile platform to visualize, manipulate and surgically treat tissue. The project's strategy will also harness the excitement surrounding robotics and computer science, and leverage it with the investigators' exceptional infrastructure for education innovation and outreach to provide new, inspirational educational experiences for students. Finally, the project outcomes can broadly impact a number of other areas that would benefit from the developed novel methodologies, including search and rescue, construction and maintenance, and remote imaging, where the environment is dynamic or changes upon repeated inspection.

The goal of this project is to gain a fundamental understanding of the cognition and adaptation needs of an intelligence-driven patient care approach to reduce medical errors. Realizing such an intelligent physical system would allow for augmenting physician capabilities. If one considers an operating room of the future, one can imagine scenarios where data is collected from, and shared with, all medical personnel including the surgeon, the supporting medical technicians, and anesthesiologists. In addition, artificial intelligence could be harnessed to look for unseen patterns in patient care. This operating room of the future will only be possible by establishing a new paradigm that includes medical devices with embedded smart and autonomous features. Such an intelligent physical system would gather knowledge from support personnel, sensors and diagnostics, and interpret physician intent and provide suggestions and diagnostic feedback in real-time. To provide real-world evaluation of this approach, the project will focus on robotic capsule endoscopy, with an intent to have immediate impact in conventional gastroenterology procedures. In pursuit of this goal, this project addresses three research objectives: the first objective focuses on robotic capsule endoscopy perception and control; the second objective formulates the perception and diagnostic support requirements to augment physician performance; and the third objective integrates multimodal, multi-label, temporal data analytics for intelligent physician support.

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NSF - PFI-TT: Micro-Structured Balloon Surfaces for More Effective Endoscopy

Anonymous — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 17:56:55 +0000

NSF - PFI-TT: Micro-Structured Balloon Surfaces for More Effective Endoscopy Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/06/2019 - 10:56

Fall 2018 - Spring 2020. The broader impact/commercial potential of this PFI project includes establishing a crucial body of knowledge needed for the design of micro-textured medical balloons, to further advance the health of the American public. Gastrointestinal diseases affect an estimated 60-70 million Americans annually, with an estimated 4-5 million hospitalizations, 70 million ambulatory care visits and over 200,000 deaths attributable to gastrointestinal disease. Spending on gastrointestinal diseases in the U.S. has been estimated at over $140 billion per year in direct and indirect costs. There are over 18 million gastrointestinal endoscopies performed annually in the U.S. with a total cost for outpatient gastrointestinal endoscopy of over $32B. The objective of this proposal is an assessment of a novel micro-textured balloon design to improve endoscopy outcomes. The research project will also increase the economic competitiveness of the United States by training graduate and undergraduate students in innovation, customer discovery, market assessment, intellectual property protection, technology translation, business development and commercialization. Partnerships between academia and industry will be strengthened through collaboration with manufacturing industry in pursuit of novel extrusion micro-texturing methods, and bringing industry standards and materials processing knowledge back to the classroom.

The proposed project will enable micro-texturing of endoscopy balloons by formulating the preliminary techniques required to manufacture micro-textured at scale. This project will also demonstrate prototype micro-textured balloon performance on the benchtop and in vivo as compared to conventional endoscopy methods. Endoscopy performed with micro-textured balloons will save time, save money, and improve patient outcomes compared to current balloon endoscopy. Micro-texturing balloons dramatically increases friction and balloon anchoring, thereby allowing more effective use balloon endoscope technologies. The goals of the proposed research are two-fold. First, evaluating efficacy of the micro-textured balloons through a tiered approach coupling benchtop testing with in vivo animal procedure testing. Second, novel manufacturing methods for cost-effective fabrication will be explored, both in the laboratory and by working closely with industry partners. The intellectual merit of this research lies in 1) experimentally measuring the anchoring forces of micro-textured balloons as a function of balloon geometries and micro-texture geometries, 2) quantitatively measuring the effectiveness in vivo as compared to conventional endoscopy methods, and 3) enabling innovative manufacturing methods to micro-texture extruded materials.

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CO OEDIT - AI-POC - Micro-Textured Balloons for Effective Small Bowel Endoscopy

Anonymous — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 21:17:56 +0000

CO OEDIT - AI-POC - Micro-Textured Balloons for Effective Small Bowel Endoscopy Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 08/10/2018 - 15:17

Summer 2018 - Summer 2020. The objective of this Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) - Advanced Industries Accelerator (AIA) Proof of Concept grant is a pre-clinical assessment of a novel micro-textured balloon (MTB) design to improve balloon endoscope outcomes for both patient and physician.

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NSF - CPS: TTP Option: Medium: Synthetic, Distributed Sensing, Soft and Modular Tissue (sTISSUE)

Anonymous — Sat, 11 Nov 2017 02:56:12 +0000

NSF - CPS: TTP Option: Medium: Synthetic, Distributed Sensing, Soft and Modular Tissue (sTISSUE) Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/10/2017 - 19:56

Fall 2017 - Fall 2021. The goal of this research is to gain a fundamental understanding of the integrated actuation, embedded sensing, reactive control, and distributed control needs of a cyber-physical, synthetic, distributed sensing, soft and modular tissue (sTISSUE). Realizing this cyber-physical, physiological testbed will enable surgically relevant tasks, procedures, and devices to be much more refined ahead of animal testing, which can be dramatically reduced with such high-fidelity simulators. Furthermore, such simulators could open an entirely new approach to medical resident training that could not only improve surgical performance skills, but also establish a new paradigm in patient-specific surgical practice before the actual procedure. The proposed strategy will also harness the excitement surrounding autonomous systems, robotic control, and embedded sensing, and leverage it with the investigators' infrastructure for education innovation and outreach to provide new, inspirational educational experiences for students.

This research program will formulate the techniques required for a synthetic tissue to autonomously sense and react to external stimuli, thereby replicating smooth muscle's sense and actuation capability. In essence, an autonomous tissue will be created that simulates in vivo behavior, while maintaining scalability and modularity. The intellectual merit of this research lies in 1) addressing current shortcomings in embedded sensing and actuation that ensure modularity and distributed control, 2) modeling the dynamics of, and creating global and distributed control strategies that account for, the unconventional in vivo environment requirements, and 3) enabling a paradigm-altering platform that will allow technology developers to both quickly and reliably apply this sTISSUE to numerous applications. More broadly, this research will establish a crucial body of knowledge needed for the design of synthetic tissue materials that integrate sensing, actuation, computation, and control. While the proposed approach includes the goal to transition the fundamental research into a gastrointestinal simulator, numerous other applications in the field of medicine and co-robotics exist. Finally, the proposed research in modularity and scalability design can broadly impact a number of other areas that would benefit from the developed novel methodologies in integrated sensing, actuation, computation and control.

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NSF - Three-dimensional Micromechanics of Adhesion and Friction between Micro-pillar Arrays and Soft Gel Substrates

Anonymous — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 22:30:07 +0000

NSF - Three-dimensional Micromechanics of Adhesion and Friction between Micro-pillar Arrays and Soft Gel Substrates Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/17/2017 - 16:30

Fall 2016 - Fall 2019. This award investigates the mechanics of how synthetic surfaces with micrometer-sized pillars adhere to and slide on soft and wet substrates. Micro-pillar arrays have been introduced on the wheel treads of robotic devices to improve their mobility on soft tissues, but the underlying mechanism is yet to be understood. Most existing theoretical models on the contact mechanics of micro-structured surfaces assume stiff substrates, and thus are not directly transferable to the case of soft substrates which can deform significantly during adhesive and frictional contact. Results of this research will improve the design of in vivo robotic devices for the next generation technology of non-invasive medical diagnosis and surgery. More broadly, new knowledge in soft material contact mechanics can also enable robotic handling of food, medical transplants and implants, thus benefiting the food and healthcare industries. Education and outreach programs will be developed to engage high school though graduate school students, exposing them to the fundamental concepts and exciting forefront of mechanics. Activities include course development, undergraduate student research program, and outreach lessons.

A soft substrate can undergo large deformation upon contact with a micro-pillar array, which is three-dimensional in nature and inherently nonlinear. The large substrate deformation is expected to lead to a strong coupling between the normal and shear loadings of the micro-pillars, as well as between neighboring pillars. Understanding this coupling will facilitate the search for optimal pillar arrangement to achieve desired adhesion and friction properties. The PIs will develop a new experimental apparatus to achieve in situ mapping of the three-dimensional deformation fields in soft hydrogel substrates under contact, adhesion and friction. The soft gel substrate serves as a model material to simulate biological tissue or other soft and wet materials. The in situ deformation mapping capability will be combined with adhesion and friction tests and finite element modeling. The finite element model will connect the local micromechanics at the level of individual pillars to the global adhesion and friction, through an experimentally validated pillar-surface interface model. Results will offer new theoretical insights on the contact mechanics between micro pillar arrays and soft substrates, and enable high-fidelity simulations to drive the design of micro-pillar structures for optimized adhesion and friction on soft substrates.

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CO OEDIT - AIA - Endoscopically Deliverable Overtube to Prevent Colonoscope Looping and Colon Distension

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 20:52:28 +0000

CO OEDIT - AIA - Endoscopically Deliverable Overtube to Prevent Colonoscope Looping and Colon Distension Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/10/2017 - 14:52

Summer 2016 - Summer 2018. The objective of this Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) - Advanced Industries Accelerator (AIA) Program proposal is a pre-clinical assessment of a novel Endoscopically Deliverable Overtube (EDO) design to improve colonoscopy outcomes for both patient and physician.

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Innovative Seed Grant - Enabling Interactive Control of In vivo Robots

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 20:43:09 +0000

Innovative Seed Grant - Enabling Interactive Control of In vivo Robots Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/05/2017 - 14:43

Summer 2016 - Fall 2017. The goal of this research is to enable closed-loop control of mobile in vivo robots in direct support of physicians so that physicians can focus on diagnosis/treatment and not primarily on guiding devices within the body. Realization of this co-robot system will enable control through tortuous paths and around corners (colonoscopy), tracking robot pose within the body (gastrointestinal exploration), and positional control to maintain an object of interest (tumor) within the field of view for detailed viewing, biopsy, or removal. In pursuit of this long-term goal, three research objectives need to be addressed. The first is to create a closed-loop control system for maintaining robot position and velocity. The expectation is that model-based control approaches will prove unfeasible due to highly irregular, and changing environmental factors. Thus, the research will focus on adaptive control approaches, with the second outcome being a set of new design rules formulated for gain scheduling at different in vivo junctures. The second long-term objective is to address the in vivo localization challenge in a deformable environment void of conventional global cues (e.g., GPS). In an in vivo scene (e.g., colon), surface edges are scarce and highly deformable; the environment also exhibits similar color and texture patterns. When combined, these difficulties create high computational complexities not currently addressed in conventional field robotics. The third long-term objective is to create a novel multi-modal user interface to minimize physician burden so that the physician can focus on the imaging. The proposed project’s short-term research aim is to demonstrate the feasibility of effectively modeling the RCE and in vivo environment dynamics. Accomplishing this, would enable development of control techniques to allow the RCE to maneuver with respect to important features in the colon (e.g., navigating tortuous curves, maintaining position against physiological processes such as breathing and peristalsis) so as to allow the user to easily select, interact and respond to important features in the environment (e.g., maintaining a polyp of interest in the camera frame), while preventing patient discomfort and minimizing tissue damage.

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CO CDPHE - A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Crossover Study Comparing the Analgesic Efficacy of Cannabis versus Oxycodone

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 20:59:23 +0000

CO CDPHE - A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Crossover Study Comparing the Analgesic Efficacy of Cannabis versus Oxycodone Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/20/2017 - 14:59

Summer 2015 - Summer 2017. Back and neck pain are highly prevalent and disabling musculoskeletal conditions that affect 70% to 85% of individuals at some point in their lives. In addition to the suffering and disability it can cause for patients, spine pain has a significant social and economic impact, both for patients and for society. When conservative care and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) fail to provide relief, narcotic pain medications (e.g. oxycodone) are often prescribed for patient with chronic back pain. However, narcotics are often ineffective at providing adequate relief and can result in frequent use of high doses that increase the potential for dependency and lethal overdose.

With the legalization of medical marijuana in Colorado, we anecdotally noted that an increasing number patients in our Spine Clinic reported the use of marijuana for their spine pain. Based on these findings, we conducted a pilot prospective study to assess cannabis usage patterns in patients presenting for spine surgery evaluation at our institution. In this study of 184 patients, 19% admitted utilization of cannabis, most commonly via inhalation of smoked plant material (>90%). Patients primarily used cannabis to treat their painful spinal condition, and 89% of these patients felt that cannabis moderately or greatly relieved their pain. Additionally, the large majority of respondents felt that cannabis was more effective at alleviating their pain than NSAIDs, narcotics, and nerve targeted medications.
Despite support from basic and preliminary clinical studies, the use of cannabis as an analgesic drug in the US remains controversial. Well-designed clinical trials demonstrating the therapeutic efficacy of cannabis for specific clinical indications are thus a critical factor in the social and medical debate over cannabis. However, only a small number of clinical trials have investigated the efficacy of cannabinoids for pain control, presumably due to the complex social and legal factors complicating its use in research. The majority of existing clinical trials have focused on cannabis use in patients with neuropathic pain; these trials have largely found positive analgesic results (as compared to placebo), with acceptable side effects.

Given the frequent use of cannabis by patients with chronic spine pain, there is a definite need for direct, high-quality scientific evidence regarding the clinical efficacy of cannabis in this patient population. Without such clinical trials, physicians cannot make clear, evidence-based recommendations to their patients on the use of cannabis.

The primary aim of this double-blind, within-subjects crossover trial is to determine the efficacy of cannabis in both spontaneous pain relief and experimental pain analgesia. Importantly, the analgesic effects of cannabis will be compared to both placebo and an active control (oxycodone). Given the complex nature of research on individuals with chronic spine pain (presence of comorbid conditions, tolerance to pain medications, etc.) this trial will not only include chronic spine pain patients, but will concurrently investigate the analgesic efficacy of cannabis on experimental pain in a control group of healthy individuals. Well-designed clinical trials with active controls, such as that proposed here, are critical in determining the clinical relevance of cannabis for pain control, and will present a significant contribution to the medical literature and to society.

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NSF - Surface Micro-Patterning and Material Design to Enable In vivo Mobility

Anonymous — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 22:40:51 +0000

NSF - Surface Micro-Patterning and Material Design to Enable In vivo Mobility Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/31/2016 - 16:40

Fall 2012 - Fall 2016. The research objective of this grant is to elucidate the fundamental mechanisms that are responsible for contact, adhesion, and friction interactions between micro-patterned surfaces and soft fluid-coated substrates. The goal is to understand the generation of tractions; its dependence of key design, environmental, and operational parameters; and its impact on the mechanical response of the substrate. A multi-scale modeling framework will be used to capture the interplay of large macro- and micro-scale deformation phenomena during the roll-over of a treaded wheel over a soft wet substrate, in dependence of material, geometric, and operational parameters. The mechanical behavior of tread and substrate will be described by large deformation theories and appropriate constitutive models. The tight integration of modeling and experiments will provide novel insight into the contact mechanics of soft, wet materials, in particular into the microscopic phenomena for generating friction and the interplay of macro- and micro-scale mechanics for generating traction.

If successful, this research will facilitate the discovery of new types of patterned architectures and concepts and establish a crucial body of knowledge needed for the design of in vivo robotic devices that can reduce patient trauma and expand robotic surgery. The proposed educational program will introduce students at all levels, including those from typically underrepresented groups, to the excitement inherent in research conducted at the intersection of micro-fabrication, biomechanics, and robotics in general, and to the promise inherent in the world of surgical robotics specifically. The proposed educational activities will be enhanced by our access to the University of Colorado's Award-winning Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory.

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Sponsors

CO OEDIT - AI-POC - Single Use Robotic Endoscope to Enable Complete Deep Enteroscopy

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NSF - S&AS: INT: COLLAB: An Intelligence-Driven Patient Care Approach to Reduce Medical Errors (I-CARE)

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NSF - PFI-TT: Micro-Structured Balloon Surfaces for More Effective Endoscopy

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CO OEDIT - AI-POC - Micro-Textured Balloons for Effective Small Bowel Endoscopy

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NSF - CPS: TTP Option: Medium: Synthetic, Distributed Sensing, Soft and Modular Tissue (sTISSUE)

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NSF - Three-dimensional Micromechanics of Adhesion and Friction between Micro-pillar Arrays and Soft Gel Substrates

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CO OEDIT - AIA - Endoscopically Deliverable Overtube to Prevent Colonoscope Looping and Colon Distension

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Innovative Seed Grant - Enabling Interactive Control of In vivo Robots

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CO CDPHE - A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Crossover Study Comparing the Analgesic Efficacy of Cannabis versus Oxycodone

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NSF - Surface Micro-Patterning and Material Design to Enable In vivo Mobility

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