Blog specialised in technology advances for disabilities
Össur Introduces First Mind-Controlled Bionic Prosthetic Lower Limbs For Amputees
New prosthetic foot to help tackle tough terrain
Video of joyful Afghan boy dancing on new prosthetic leg goes viral
Posted on June 25, 2019 by Son of Zeus	in Legs, Neurological, Recent Posts and tagged amputees, lower limbs, mind control, new, ossur, technology.
Source of the Article: ossur.com, go to the website to see the video on the technology of these new prosthetics.
Össur Technology Adapts To User's Subconscious, Intuitive Actions
Two amputees are the first people in the world able to control their Bionic prosthetic legs with their thoughts, thanks to tiny implanted myoelectric sensors (IMES) that have been surgically placed in their residual muscle tissue. The IMES, which was provided by the Alfred Mann Foundation, instantaneously triggers the desired movement, via a receiver located inside the prosthesis. This process occurs subconsciously, continuously and in real-time.
The announcement was made today by Jon Sigurdsson, President & CEO of Össur, the global innovator credited with creating the world's first Bionic prostheses for amputees.
"Mind-controlled Bionic prosthetic legs are a remarkable clinical breakthrough in next-generation Bionic technology," Sigurdsson said, speaking at the company's Capital Markets Day in Copenhagen. "By adapting not only to the individual's intentional movements but to intuitive actions, we are closer than ever to creating prosthetics that are truly integrated with their user."
How Mind-Controlled Bionic Prosthetics Work
Össur's commercially available Bionic prostheses are smart limbs capable of real-time learning and automatically adjusting to their user's walking style (gait), speed and terrain. Walking with a Bionic prosthesis, however, still typically requires some conscious, intentional thought from the user.
According to Dr. Thorvaldur Ingvarsson, M.D., Ph.D, the orthopaedic surgeon who leads Össur's research and development efforts and spearheaded the mind-controlled prosthetics project, movement in able-bodied individuals generally begins subconsciously, which triggers electrical impulses inside the body that catalyze the appropriate muscles into action. Össur's new technology replicates that process in an amputee: that electronic impulse from the brain is received by an IMES that was surgically placed by Dr. Ingvarsson into muscles in the amputee's residual limb.
"The technology allows the user's experience with their prosthesis to become more intuitive and integrative," Dr. Ingvarsson said. "The result is the instantaneous physical movement of the prosthesis however the amputee intended. They no longer need to think about their movements because their unconscious reflexes are automatically converted into myoelectric impulses that control their Bionic prosthesis."
Promising First-In-Man Results
According to Dr. Ingvarsson, the mind-controlled technology works with all current commercially available Össur Bionic prostheses, including the company's POWER KNEE, RHEO KNEE, PROPRIO FOOT and SYMBIONIC LEG.
Two amputees have participated in the company's initial First-in-Man research. Both were implanted with the IMES and have been living with Össur's mind-controlled Bionic prostheses for more than one year. Dr. Ingvarsson notes that feedback from both users has been very positive, and that clinical trials to further assess the technology will continue.
"As a global leader in prosthetics and orthopaedics, we at Össur never stop innovating. We are resolute in our commitment to expand the boundaries of possibility, so that we may help even more people enjoy a life without limitations," Sigurdsson concluded.
About Össur
Össur (NASDAQ: OSSR) is a global leader in non-invasive orthopaedics that help people live a life without limitations. Its business is focused on improving people's mobility through the delivery of innovative technologies within the fields of Prosthetic, Osteoarthritis and Injury Solutions.
A recognized "Technology Pioneer," Össur invests significantly in research and product development—its award-winning designs ensuring a consistently strong position in the market. Successful patient and clinical outcomes are further empowered via Össur's educational programs and business solutions. Headquartered in Iceland, Össur has major operations in the Americas, Europe and Asia, with additional distributors worldwide. www.ossur.com
Posted on May 31, 2019 by Son of Zeus	in Feet, Recent Posts, Research and tagged bionic, feet, new, prosthetics, technology.
Stanford scientists have developed a more stable prosthetic foot which they say could make challenging terrain more manageable for people who have lost a lower leg.
The new design has a kind of tripod foot that responds to rough terrain by actively shifting pressure between three different contact points.
"Prosthetic emulators allow us to try lots of different designs without the overhead of new hardware," said Steven Collins, an associate professor at Stanford University in the US.
"Basically, we can try any kind of crazy design ideas we might have and see how people respond to them," he said, without having to build each idea separately, an effort that can take months or years for each different design.
People with a leg amputation are five times more likely to fall in the course of a year, which may contribute to why they are also less socially engaged.
A better prosthetic limb could improve not just mobility but overall quality of life as well, according to the study published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.
One area of particular interest is making prosthetic limbs that can better handle rough ground.
The solution, researchers thought, might be a tripod with a rear-facing heel and two forward-facing toes.
Outfitted with position sensors and motors, the foot could adjust its orientation to respond to varying terrain, much as someone with an intact foot could move their toes and flex their ankles to compensate while walking over rough ground.
Rather than building a prosthetic limb someone could test in the real world, the team, including graduate student Vincent Chiu and postdoctoral researcher Alexandra Voloshina, instead built a basic tripod foot.
They then hooked it up to powerful off-board motors and computer systems that control how the foot responds as a user moves over all kinds of terrain.
The team can put their design focus on how the prosthesis should function without having to worry about how to make the device lightweight and inexpensive at the same time.
The team reported results from work with a 60-year-old man who lost his leg below the knee due to diabetes.
The early results are promising — making the team hopeful they can take those results and turn them into more capable prosthetics.
"One of the things we are excited to do is translate what we find in the lab into lightweight and low power and therefore inexpensive devices that can be tested outside the lab," Collins said.
"And if that goes well, we'd like to help make this a product that people can use in everyday life," he said.
Source of the Article: business-standard.com
Posted on May 30, 2019 by Son of Zeus	in Children, Recent Posts, Success Stories and tagged amputee, care, child, ispirational, joy, legs, love, prosthetics, success.
Ahmad Rahman had to have his leg amputated after he was shot as a baby in Logar province
Beaming young Afghan amputee dances on new prosthetic leg – video
When Ahmad Rahman was eight months old he and his sister, Salima, were injured when fighting broke out between Afghan government forces and the Taliban in their village in Logar province. Rahman was shot in the leg, which was later amputated.
His story is one of tens of thousands in Afghanistan, of people losing limbs due to war, but a video of him testing out his new prosthetic leg has provided a moment of joy.
The footage – filmed by physiotherapist Mulkara Rahimi at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) orthopaedic clinic in Kabul – has gone viral, showing a smiling young boy dancing after being fitted with his new leg – his fourth because they need to be replaced as he grows up. It gained more than 12,000 views in the first 12 hours.
The video of Rahman was also shared on social media by the ICRC's Roya Musawi, and has been viewed more than 980,000 times in her tweet alone.
'When I get tired of it all, I escape into poetry': book clubs bloom in Afghanistan
The ICRC's clinic has registered almost 178,000 patients with disabilities in Afghanistan, including more than 46,100 amputees, since it started logging the injuries in 1988.
More than a million people in Afghanistan suffer some form of disability, many through injuries from four decades of war.
Of the ICRC patients who have lost limbs, almost two-thirds are due to landmines, improvised explosive devices, and other war remnants.
The video has brought global attention to the centre, its director, Alberto Cairo, told the Washington Post.
Source of the Article: TheGuardian.com
3-year-old Gets New Legs, Learns To Walk For First Time
Posted on May 30, 2019 by Son of Zeus	in Children, Recent Posts, Success Stories and tagged amazing, amputee, Children, girl, legs, love, miracle, mother, prosthetics, success.
After living most of her life without legs, a 3-year-old Cuban girl took a big first step toward a normal life Monday. Doctors amputated both of Alexa Prieto's legs when she was just 3-months-old.
Her mother had taken her to the hospital in Havana for intestinal issues, but the infant contracted gangrene and Alexa had to lose her legs to save her life. Because she was so young at the time, Alexa has never walked in her life.
After undergoing surgery last fall to prepare for the prosthetics, Shriners Hospital for Children in Tampa fitted the toddler with a pair of temporary legs, allowing her to stand for the first time. It was a moment her mother Jacqueline Vidal, called "very emotional."
"Everybody's waiting for this moment," Vidal said through the help of a translator. "They've been waiting for a long time to see her walk."
Armando Quirantes, a Cuban-born prosthesis specialist, saw Alexa's story on television and decided to sponsor the little girl, bringing her to Florida for treatment.
"She brought her little girl to the hospital for a simple intestinal problem, and she returned with a little girl with no legs," Quirantes said, referring to Vidal.
Dr. Bryan Sinnott, a senior prosthetist at Shriners, explained that Alexa's temporary prosthetics are clear, allowing them to see and adjust should the toddler encounter any issues while learning how to use them.
"Because she's a child she's going to learn very well, very fast," he said. "I think she's going to do really good."
While he called it amazing to see Alexa stand for the first time, Sinnott says watching Vidal in that moment was truly the vision.
"You watch how a mom takes in the fact her child is standing, it's a wonderful thing," he said. "I'm just lucky to be a part of all this."
Contact Teter Orthotics & Prosthetics for any prosthetic or orthotic care questions or needs. We've been providing expert prosthetic and orthotic services in Michigan since 1955 and have grown to 22 locations, including Traverse City, Alma, Kalamazoo, Marquette, and Gaylord!
Source of the Article: teterop.com
The magic touch: bringing sensory feedback to brain-controlled prosthetics
Posted on May 28, 2019 by Son of Zeus	in Nervous System, Neurological, Recent Posts and tagged neuroorthotics, new, prosthetics, research, sensory, technology, touch.
Researchers at the University of Chicago are leading a project to introduce the sense of touch to the latest brain-controlled prosthetic arms. Adding sensory feedback to already-complex neuroprosthetics is a towering task, but offers the chance to radically transform the lives of amputees and people living with paralysis.
Translating sensory data using an artificial limb is an immense scientific challenge. Credit: Pete Souza/White House
University of Chicago associate professor and neuroprosthetics researcher Dr Sliman Bensmaia. Credit: Jason Smith, University of Chicago
Paraplegic patient Nathan Copeland controls a prosthetic hand at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Credit: Pitt/UPMC
For centuries prosthetics have been limited to basic attachments replacing missing limbs or extremities, but in the last 20 years, artificial limbs have moved forward at an electric pace.
Today's technologies incorporate more advanced ranges of movement and, with the advent of neuroprosthetics, researchers have brought about the rise of sophisticated brain-controlled prosthetic limbs. These are combined with electrode arrays – placed in the brain, nerves or muscles – to decode the messages between the brain and the limb that control movement, allowing users' brains to power basic movement in, say, a prosthetic arm.
As University of Chicago (UChicago) associate professor and neuroprosthetics researcher Dr Sliman Bensmaia notes, brain-controlled prosthetics have become a vibrant field of research.
"The idea is to put electrodes in [the motor cortex] so when [a tetraplegic patient] tries to move their arm, or imagines moving their arm, there is a characteristic pattern of activation in this motor part of the brain," he says. "We can take the signals from this part of the brain and infer what the patient or the subject wanted to do, and then you make the robotic arm do that. There's a cottage industry of developing different ways of doing that, and they're all slight variants of one another."
Neuroprosthetics have unlocked advances that amputees and paralysed patients previously wouldn't have dreamed of, but as with any rapidly emerging area of research, there's still a long way to go before the field meets its full potential. One of the major limiting factors for the dexterity of neuroprosthetics relates to a sense that most humans take for granted: touch.
"When you grasp an object, you have all this information about the object – its size, its shape, its texture, if it's moving across the skin," Bensmaia says. "It turns out that these sensory signals coming back from the hand are critical to our ability to use the hand. Even if your motor system was completely intact, if you don't have the sense of touch, your hands become useless. That was a realisation that came about after they had made the robotic arms, made the decoding algorithms for the motor cortex. And now we really need to take the sensory stuff seriously, or these things will never have any kind of dexterity. So that's where I came in."
Sensory feedback: the next frontier in neural prosthetics
Bensmaia and his lab, as well as other UChicago colleagues, is collaborating with the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to advance the understanding and implementation of prosthetics controlled via brain-computer interfaces. The UChicago research team's portion of the project, which was recently awarded a $3.4m grant from the National Institutes of Health, covers the somatosensory aspects – the system that transmits sensory information from the body's nerve fibres to the brain's somatosensory cortex, which sits next to the movement-oriented motor cortex.
"What I've spent most of my time in my lab doing is trying to understand how is it that the nervous system encodes this information about objects we touch," Bensmaia says. "What we're trying to do in these neural prosthetics applications is leverage what we've learned about how the intact nervous system does that and try to reproduce that by electrically stimulating different structures."
For patients who have lost an arm and are living with a prosthetic, the team's method would be to electrically stimulate the nerve with electrodes, while for tetraplegic patients, the electrode array would be implanted in the somatosensory cortex. In either case, sensors on a bionic hand – disembodied, in the case of tetraplegic users – generate information that complex algorithms can convert into patterns of electrical stimulation to the nerve or brain in real-time to convey sensory feedback or elicit sensations.
"We developed a model last year, which was published in PNAS [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America], that allows us to reproduce with striking precision how the nerve would respond to any kind of object interacted with," Bensmaia says.
Indeed, in 2016 Bensmaia and colleagues from Chicago and Pittsburgh demonstrated a version of the system in a 28-year-old tetraplegic subject, Nathan Copeland, who was able to distinguish touches on different fingers of a robotic arm based on the stimulated sensations he felt in his own non-functional hand. "Sometimes it feels electrical and sometimes it's pressure, but for the most part I can tell most of the fingers with definite precision," said Copeland in 2016. "It feels like my fingers are getting touched or pushed."
"Without thinking, he can tell which part of the prosthetic hand is touching the object. That's super-useful," Bensmaia says. "The more pressure he exerts on an object, the stronger the evoked sensation is. So he has a pretty good idea of where he's touching the object and how much force he's exerting on it."
The language of touch: questions to answer
The progress on sensory feedback is encouraging but limited, and there are a host of questions for Bensmaia and other researchers to answer before the true technological revolution can begin. In terms of the nerve, Bensmaia says the challenge is a purely technological bottleneck.
"If we had perfect technology that allowed us to individually stimulate each nerve fibre selectively, we could restore the sense of touch perfectly. But of course, the technology doesn't allow us to do that. You have this array with up to a couple of hundred electrodes, and with this relatively small channel count, we're trying to stimulate 10,000-15,000 fibres, which each have their own idiosyncratic response in an intact organism.
"We're not going to be able to do each of these 12,000 or 15,000 fibres individually. What we're able to stimulate is tens or hundreds of them at a time. How do tens or hundreds of fibres respond? That we can use our model to figure out, then we use the electrical stimulus to try and reproduce that, or evoke that to the extent that we can."
The brain, of course, is considerably more complex. Understanding of how the brain operates is improving every year, but gaps in knowledge are still present and need to be unpicked to improve the decoding algorithms that translate the brain's language of touch. Given that the hand and fingers primarily used to exert force rather than move in a space, leveraging sensory feedback to improve dexterity will be a knotty problem to unravel. The naturalism of evoked sensation will need to be refined, too.
"I don't think we're going to be able to tell the difference between good silk and cheap silk with a prosthetic hand anytime soon," says Bensmaia. "But being able to, for instance, convey more precisely exactly when contact is established with an object, about how much force is exerted on it, in a much more realistic and naturalistic way are our more short-term goals."
As well as advances in wireless and making the most sophisticated bionic hands rugged enough to serve outside of a lab environment, improvements to the underlying brain-computer interface that powers brain-controlled movement for tetraplegics will also be necessary. The most important leap, Bensmaia contends, will be on the biocompatibility and physical flexibility of the implanted electrode arrays.
"These neural implants, you're basically sticking a bed of nails in the brain – and the brain isn't happy," he says. "It fights the device, and long story short, these devices don't last long enough. They last a few years, and you don't want to be doing a craniotomy every few years to put a fresh one in. So I think the main challenge is to create implants that are going to last forever."
A revolution on the horizon
Bensmaia and colleagues at UChicago are now gearing up for more human trials of the sensory feedback system. UChicago Medicine neurosurgeon Peter Warnke has been brought onboard to implant the devices, and Bensmaia says the team is "actively searching for subjects", although a small pool of eligible patients and the early-stage nature of the research could make this process slow going.
Looking to the future, Bensmaia is hopeful that more sophisticated prosthetic devices are on the way, especially with greater private sector involvement, as seen with Elon Musk's brain-computer interface firm Neuralink and Deka's impressive LUKE Arm.
"Scientists are just interested in science," Bensmaia says. "Once they've made a device sort of work, they get bored with it and work on something else. Whereas in the private sector, people invest to make money and therefore they really want to bring it to market. So that's promising."
It's the beginning of a long and winding road towards brain-controlled prosthetic hands that can leverage sensory feedback to approximate the hand's natural dexterity. But the unmet needs of amputees, and tetraplegics especially, are many, and restoring a sense of touch and movement to those who have had to live without them is a powerful motivating force.
"If you talk to amputees who now have bionic hands that they can feel through, that almost makes them feel whole again," says Bensmaia. "Because they now feel the bionic hand, they sometimes describe the bionic hand as 'their' hand; it's endowed with a sense of touch, and when they see the hand touching something they can feel it."
Source of the Article: medicaldevice-network.com
Logan students spend year building special prosthetic leg
Posted on May 24, 2019 by Son of Zeus	in Legs, Recent Posts, Success Stories and tagged MIT, new, project, prosthetics, research, science, students.
A group of Logan High School students spent the entire year creating a prosthetic limb, which simultaneously charges while the person walks.
The InvenTeam talked with members in the industry, who told stories of patients not being able to enjoy long trips outdoors for fear of losing power.
Logan teacher Steve Johnston said the class provides a unique opportunity.
"I try to always emphasize with the kids that we want to give them a unique engineering experience," Johnston said. "We also want to make sure the item can help people in everyday life."
The project faced several obstacles that the students had to overcome, including starting from scratch.
"We can't test this on a human subject," Johnston said. "We had to spend more time creating a tester to simulate the heel strike and foot motion to harvest energy from it."
A bluetooth device in the leg allows a user to view the power remaining on their cellphone. The battery is charged by a person's heel striking the ground.
A pair of engineers were brought in during the year to help students with the project.
The group will now give a presentation on their invention at the EurekaFest at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), as well as tour the area.
Source of the Article: wizmnews.com
Project Circleg uses recycled plastic to build low-cost prosthetics in Kenya
Posted on May 23, 2019 by Son of Zeus	in Legs, Recent Posts and tagged africa, care, enviromnt, helping, kenya, new, plastic, prosthetics, recycle.
Two Zurich-based graduates have created a low cost lower-limb prosthetic made of recycled plastic waste that is collected and processed in local factories in Kenya. Project Circleg was founded by industrial design undergraduates Fabian Engel and Simon Oschwald at Zurich University of the Arts in March 2018 as a degree project. The two designers wanted to find a way to help the millions of people in less developed countries who need a prosthesis because of traffic accidents, poor medical care or armed conflict.
Most prosthetic limbs that are currently available tend to be lacking in functionality or are unaffordable to many who need them. Without access to them, many individuals are confined to their homes, are dependent on others for help and live fairly excluded lives.
Alongside this need for prosthetic limbs, Oschwald and Engel wanted to address the issue of plastic pollution in less developed countries, where it is particularly high due to lack of recycling resources. "As industrial designers, we see plastic waste as a valuable resource for meaningful products. So we came up with the idea to combine the topics of plastic pollution with the high demand for low-cost prosthetics in developing countries," said Engel.
They chose to use this post-consumer plastic to fabricate the Circleg, reducing the material cost by half and utilising locally available plastic waste for production. The recycled plastic is reinforced with glass fibre to increase the stability.
Oschwald and Engel went on a trip to Kenya during the prototyping phase to research the current recycling processes and to observe the lifestyle requirements of their potential users.
"This user-centred approach enabled us to integrate the needs and requirements of those affected into the design process," said the designers. "Subsequently, we designed and developed a prosthetic solution tailored to the Kenyan context."
Source of the Article: Dezeen.com
Prosthetic leg for Amputees designed by Jae-Hyun An to encourage new genre of ballet
Posted on May 23, 2019 by Son of Zeus	in Legs, Recent Posts, Research and tagged amazing, ballet, legs, new, orthotics, prosthetics, research.
Pratt Institute graduate Jae-Hyun An has created a prosthetic leg that allows amputees to perform ballet like never before. Unlike regular artificial limbs, which are designed to mimic the human body, the Marie-T enables amputee ballet dancers to enhance their performance. Made up of three components, Marie-T features a weighty foam-injected rotational moulded foot, with a stainless-steel toe and rubber grip that help provide the dancer with balance and momentum during rotations.
In mainstream ballet, dancers typically move in and out of the pointe position – when all body weight is supported by the tips of fully extended feet within pointe shoes. However, because of the immense strain on the foot and ankle of a performer, it is impossible for a ballet dancer to constantly perform in this position. Jae-Hyun An, who studied on the Pratt's Industrial Design programme, designed the carbon-fibre Marie-T to enable amputees to dance on pointe throughout a performance.
New York-based An said the design, which is named after 19th-century Swedish ballet dancer Marie Taglioni, could encourage amputees to develop a new choreography that has never been achieved by mainstream ballerinas. "I wanted to explore what would happen if you could allow a person to perform on pointe 100 per cent of the time," said An, who developed Marie-T over the course of four months. "How would ballet change? I wanted to create a tool for someone to take and let their imagination define the capabilities of the product."
During research, An realised that a weak ankle can twist and cause a ballerina in pointe position to wobble. In response, An designed a strong and stable ankle area that helps the ballerina stay in balance. The ankle connects to a slightly curved carbon-fibre limb which helps absorb the shock from the impact of the ballet dancer stepping forward. The limb is topped by a 3D-printed socket with steel round head screws. Ill-fitting prosthetic limbs can cause blisters and rashes on dancers, so An designed the Marie-T so that the parts can be easily switched out when they become well worn or need to be resized. The designer told Dezeen: "Prosthetics by itself is such a powerful and inspirational design. Any form of it is really amazing! Whether it is Hugh Herr's bionic legs from the Biomechatronics Group in MIT, or the Flex-Foot Cheetah Leg from Ossur, or even a peg leg from… whenever."
"It is inspiring because the technology is incredible but even more so because of the immense struggle an amputee has to overcome to use these products. Some argue that some of these prostheses give amputees a certain advantage in specific tasks, but I am not sure they would say the same if they ever saw how much training and care it takes to handle a prosthesis," he continued.
"In my research I came across Viktoria Modesta and she re-interpreted performance with her prosthetics. It was visually so powerful and opened a completely new area of prosthetics for me. I fell in love with the idea of designing something that could expand the artistic and cultural scene of a community with prosthetic users."
To continue developing this project in the future, An hopes to collaborate with an amputee dancer who has their own vision for prosthetic ballet.
"The design of the prosthesis will change to fit the dancer, but also to match the specific movements of the newly developed choreography," he explained. "However, until I meet this dancer, I will continue to develop as a designer.
"Other developments in prosthetics this year have included a newly developed electronic skin that is able to mimic the function and properties of human skin. Scientists believe that the skin could help to create prosthetics capable of providing sensory feedback.
Endolite Invests in Expanded US Sales Organization
Posted on May 20, 2019 by Son of Zeus	in Recent Posts, Research, Success Stories.
Following continued growth in its US prosthetics business, Endolite is pleased to announce the expansion of its sales organization in order to better service its US customers.
John Braddock has been appointed Vice President of Sales and Marketing, effective April 1, 2019. John will be responsible for overseeing all commercial aspects of the US business, including the sales team, customer services, field-based clinical education and marketing. John has been with Endolite for over 5 years and was most recently the National Sales Manager for Endolite and before that, the West Regional Sales Manager.
Brad Mattear (LO, CPA, CFo) joins Endolite as National Account Manager. Brad previously worked for Cascade Orthopedic Supply, Inc. as the Central US & National Strategic Account Manager and most recently as the Vice President of Orthotics and Business Development for Nabtesco Proteor USA.
Roxanne Owens joins Endolite as Regional Manager – West. Roxanne will be responsible for overseeing a team of 8 Territory Managers, covering the west region. Roxanne previously worked for Ossur as a Clinical Account Manager, Senior Area Manager, Regional Sales Manager and most recently as the Sr. Vice President of Sales and Marketing for CKI Locker LLC dba American Locker.
Finally Bryce Mathews joins Endolite as Territory Manager, responsible for sales in southern Illinois and Indiana. Bryce previously worked as Territory Sales Manager and Senior Territory Manager for Thuasne USA.
John Braddock commented, "Endolite's US business continues to grow and it's important we are able to maintain a high level of customer service, both personally in the field and from our base in Ohio. We are excited about adding to our team in key locations and look forward to continuing to build valuable partnerships with our customers across the country."
About Endolite and Blatchford:
Endolite is part of the Blatchford Group, a UK-based, world-leading rehabilitation provider with clinical expertise in prosthetics, orthotics, special seating and wheelchairs. With offices in the UK, USA, France, Germany, Norway and India, Blatchford designs and manufactures the multi award-winning Endolite range of lower limb prostheses and provides clinical services to civilian, military and international patients. With 128 years of expertise in innovation, it produces the world's most advanced microprocessor-controlled artificial limbs.­­­­­
Source of the Article: Endolite.com
Breakthrough implant brings dexterity and sense of touch to prosthetic hand
Posted on May 17, 2019 by Son of Zeus	in Hands, Recent Posts, Research.
There have been significant technological developments in prosthetics in recent years. However, artificial replacements provide limited value in performing everyday tasks where their sensory feedback offers poor functionality. Thanks to the EU-funded DeTOP project, scientists have developed a new implant system enabling the use of a clinically viable, dexterous and sentient prosthetic hand in real life.
As summarised in a news item on the project website after trailblazing surgery a female Swedish patient became the first recipient of titanium implants "in the two forearm bones (radius and ulnar) from which electrodes to nerves and muscle were extended to extract signals to control a robotic hand and to provide tactile sensations."
The same item emphasises that traditional "prosthetic hands rely on electrodes placed over the skin to extract control signals from the underlying stump muscles. These superficial electrodes deliver limited and unreliable signals that only allow control of a couple of gross movements (opening and closing the hand)." It also notes that current artificial hands "do not provide tactile or kinesthetic sensation, so the user can only rely on vision while using the prosthesis." This limits the ability of the user to understand the strength of his or her grip. "Richer and more reliable information can be obtained by implanting electrodes in all remaining muscle in the stump instead." In the Swedish patient, a total of 16 electrodes were connected to nerves that would have led to the missing hand.
When electrodes are implanted using this technique, "researchers can electrically stimulate these nerves in a similar manner as information conveyed by the biological hand." Thus, the patient can feel "sensations originating in the new prosthetic hand" with the help of "sensors that drive the stimulation of the nerve to deliver such sensations."
From laboratory to everyday life
Project partner Integrum AB and Chalmers University of Technology have previously shown that control of a similar prosthesis in daily life was possible in above-elbow amputees as demonstrated in a video. The DeTOP news item points to the challenges involved with the process: "This was not possible in below-elbow amputees where there are two smaller bones rather than a single larger one as in the upper arm. This posed several challenges on the development of the implant system. On the other hand it also presents an opportunity to achieve a more dexterous control of an artificial replacement. This is because many more muscles are available to extract neural commands in below-elbow amputations."
According to the news item, the patient is currently undergoing a rehabilitation programme to strengthen her forearm bones. She's also relearning how to control her missing hand, employing virtual reality prior to fully using the actual prosthetic hand. Two more patients in Italy and Sweden are lined up for such implant surgery.
The ongoing DeTOP (Dexterous Transradial Osseointegrated Prosthesis with neural control and sensory feedback) project "targets people with reduced or absent hand sensorimotor capabilities due to an amputation" as stated on CORDIS. It adds: "Core of the system is an osseointegrated human-machine gateway (OHMG) able to create bidirectional links between a human and a robotic prosthesis."
Source of the Article: medicalexpress.com
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