2006 TRECC Accelerator Researchers

ImmersiveTouch Medical Procedure Simulator | Self-Healing Anti-Corrosion Paints & Coatings | Large Scale Arrays of Microcavity Plasma Devices | High-Performance Parallel-Kinematics Nanopositioning Stages | Extraction of Fetal ECG from Maternal ECG for Early Detection of Fetal Cardiac Disorders

ImmersiveTouch Medical Procedure Simulator
(Enhancing ImmersiveTouch Technology for Procedure-based Medical Simulations) By Pat Banerjee, PhD
Professor of Mechanical, Industrial, Bioengineering, and Computer Science; 2039 ERF, M/C 251, University of Illinois at Chicago

With increased cost, increased risk, and with ever increasing patient safety issues, hospitals are faced with developing new approaches for training. ImmersiveTouch technology is a procedure based medical simulator prototype ideally suited for this challenge. It is being commercialized through ImmersiveTouch, Inc.

ImmersiveTouch™ is the next generation of augmented virtual reality technology recently patented by the University of Illinois, being the first system that integrates a haptic (sense of touch) device, with a head and hand tracking system, and a high-resolution and high-pixel-density stereoscopic display. .

The ergonomic design of ImmersiveTouch provides a comfortable working volume in the space of a standard desktop.  The haptic device is  co-located with the 3D graphics, giving the user a more realistic and natural means to manipulate and modify 3D data in real time.

The high-performance, multi-sensorial computer interface allows easy development of medical, dental, engineering or scientific virtual reality simulation and training applications that appeal to many stimuli: audio, visual, tactile and kinesthetic.
ImmersiveTouch is being currently used for surgical education and training. As an example MRI/CT scans of human brain regions (e.g. ventricles) is being used to demonstrate procedures such as ventriculostomy.

Self-Healing Anti-Corrosion Paints & Coatings
Paul V. Braun (PI), Associate Professor & Willett Faculty Scholar, Materials Science and Eng.
Scott White (co-PI), Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering, Aerospace Engineering; Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Corrosion costs the U.S.A. in excess of $276 Billion per year, and over $100 Billion per year is spent on corrosion control (NACE International).  Over the last few years, we have developed a self-healing coating, which may significantly reduce enhance the lifetime of coatings (“Self-Healing Polymers”, U.S. Patent Application 11/123,859, and “Self-Healing Coating System”, U.S. Patent (Provisional) Application 60/756,841).  This technology has been demonstrated in the laboratory to completely stop rusting on steel substrates after damage; in essence, the self-healing coating autonomically repairs the damage, protecting the damaged region from the environment, stopping rust formation (see quad chart figure).  Self-repair of coatings is especially valuable for coatings which are exposed to aggressive environments or are expensive to repair.  According to the researcher’s contacts at Northrop Grumman Ship Systems (a major U.S. Navy contractor), repainting of naval vessels is extraordinarily expensive, and must be performed every 3-5 years.  An increase in coating lifetime would thus yield very significant benefits.

Our current self-healing technology has reached a high level of development, and we have demonstrated that it is a general drop-in solution which can be added to a wide range of polymer coating materials, however several key steps remain for commercial development.  We have performed proof-of-principle experiments, demonstrating self-healing in both epoxy and vinyl ester based coatings, two major classes of coatings used by the U.S. Navy, but we have not performed ASTM standardized tests on our technology.  ASTM tests are the gold-standard by which most engineering technologies are evaluated, and are the tests by which all major engineering companies evaluate products and technologies.  Because our coatings technology is a drop-in technology, through TRECC ACCELERATOR funding, we intend to study self-healing coatings based on commercially available materials, following ASTM testing procedures.

Large Scale Arrays of Microcavity Plasma Devices for Medical, Display, and Photochemical Processing Applications
J. G. Eden, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This project is focused on development of a new light emitting technology based on microcavity discharge devices.

Arrays of microplasmas as large as 1 megapixel have been fabricated in flexible, plastic-based structures and Si or ceramics.  The critical, final step to commercialization is to demonstrate arrays that are sealed and lifetime-tested.  The “baseline” replica-molded (plastic-based) array would be sealed and have a radiating area ≥125 cm2.

Arrays as large as 250,000 pixels, comprising 50 µm square devices, have been fabricated in Si and up to 1 Mpixel in flexible structures, but the critical next step is to demonstrate self-contained arrays that are sealed and lifetime-tested.  The funding sought here would provide the student and postdoctoral scientist time necessary to produce and characterize sealed Si-based arrays with emitting areas of 25 cm2 and flexible arrays having 125 cm2 of active area.  The primary applications being pursued, the patent portfolio in place, and our partners in industry and medicine will be described briefly.

High-Performance Parallel-Kinematics Nanopositioning Stages
P. M. Ferreira, Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The overarching goal of the Nano-CEMMS research program is to create a viable manufacturing technology and science base that can fabricate ultrahigh-density, complex nanostructures.

This project is focused on positioning and manipulation at the Nanoscale to enable critical capabilities for nanotechnology. We seek to develop dimensionally-scalable, high-performance positioning capabilities to address a wide variety of needs in nanoscale fabrication and instrumentation.

Extraction of Fetal ECG from Maternal ECG for Early Detection of Fetal Cardiac Disorders
Daniel Graupe, PhD
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Bioengineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Illinois at Chicago

The present project aims at automatically extracting the fetal ECG (fECG) signal from a signal recorded at the abdomen of pregnant patients by surface ECG (electrocardiogram) electrodes, as early as 12th week of gestation.  The fECG is embedded in maternal ECG (mECG) that is ten times or more stronger than the fECG and in abdominal noises that are also much stronger in the 20th- 26th weeks of gestation, which is the period over which early diagnosis of fetal cardiac defects from the fECG can allow treatment to the mother in an attempt to correct the defect.  Furthermore, the sections of the fECG of the greatest importance as of week 20 of gestation (P an T waves) are still far weaker.

Past approaches, based on Blind Signal Separation, were unable to extract the fECG and even more so, to do it automatically (as is essential for routine office tests), due to mathematical requirements of source independence. These led to unsatisfactory approximations that are not needed in our Blind Adaptive Filtering (BAF) approach.  BAF is based on feature-vector optimization  (in 2 stages, noting the need to remove both mECG and abdominal noise from the raw data).  BAF facilitated automatic extraction (from real-patient data) to yield all required fECG parameters, including P and T waves, within ranges that fully agree with the literature for the corresponding gestation ages.

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