New and Emerging Technologies in Medical Devices

The information presented in this article has been gathered by Sofian Zeina and Abram Shihata and was presented in the Biomedical Engineering meeting on November 2017.  The article is posted by Nikhil Kanamala. Ultrasound waves are acoustic waves which are mechanical vibrations inducing alternating refraction and compression of the medium through which they pass.   Ultrasound waves have frequencies higher than the limit of the human hearing typically between 1 – 20 MHz (generally humans can hear between 20 Hz and 20 KHz). Acoustic waves contain the following properties: ·         Frequency ·         Wavelength ·         Amplitude ·         Propagation Velocity Ultrasound waves interact with organs and tissues in the human body with the following phenomenon (Figure 1): ·         Reflection ·         Scattering ·         Refraction ·         Attenuation Figure 1: Ultrasound waves interaction with organs. Ultrasound imaging contain the

This article is posted by Nikhil Kanamala based on the presentation by Sofian Zeina in the Biomedical Engineering meeting on October 2017 to educate staff on new and emerging technologies.  The information presented in this blog is based on the ECRI recommendations. Biphasic waveforms are generally considered the gold standard for defibrillators and are preferred over their monophasic counterpart mainly because monophasic waveforms due to their higher energy and current levels are more likely to cause burns.   Other contributing factors such as decrease in availability and confusion caused in hospitals between choosing monophasic or biphasic has seen a decline in the demand for purchasing and using monophasic waveform defibrillators. The monophasic and biphasic waveforms are represented below in Figure 1: Figure 1:  Monophasic vs Biphasic waveform.  Current flows in one direction in monophasic, whereas in two phases in biphasic. Amongst the biphasic defibrillators, the