Where Engineering Meets Medicine
Medical research at an engineering school? You bet! Professors at VCU’s Engineering School are engaged in cutting-edge research that could improve the health and quality of life of millions.
Mention the word “engineer,” and most people think of guys in white shirts and geeky glasses building skyscrapers, configuring factory equipment or, occasionally, doing something exotic like designing NASA spacecraft. In the popular imagination, engineers work with “things” like machines and computers, not with “people.” But the stereotype is startlingly out of date: Some of the most exciting applications of the engineering discipline today are in the life sciences.
Nowhere is the contribution of engineering to medicine more evident than at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Engineering, which shares VCU’s broader commitment to inter-disciplinary study of the life sciences. Working at the crossroads between different departmental disciplines, VCU professors are pursuing exciting research that could improve the lives of millions.
Take, for example, the work of Gary L. Bowlin, an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. In a process similar to that used for spinning cotton candy, he uses electro-spinning technology to fabricate nano-scale fibers for tissue engineering. As the microscopic fibers agglomerate, they create a visible fabric, much like cotton candy but not as sticky. By spinning the material onto a mandrel, he can create any shape he wants.
Bowlin has found that by generating certain compounds found naturally in the body – collagen, fibrinogen and elastin – he can create materials that interact with human tissues in ways that synthetic materials cannot. Fibrinogen, found in the blood stream, forms clots in cuts and wounds. He can spin the material into sheets like a bandage that can not only help stop bleeding but create a cellular-level superstructure that accelerates the regeneration and healing of tissue.
The fibrinogen research is closest to commercialization, Bowlin says. It may not be long before medics are packing fibrinogen bandages in their emergency kits. Meanwhile, he’s electro-spinning collagen “fabric” that he hopes will bind to damaged knee cartilage or spinal discs and repair tissue that physicians have no other option now but to surgically remove. Success at generating cartilage tissue would change the lives of millions of Americans with sore knees and aching backs.
Thirdly, Bowlin is electro-spinning collagen with the aim of repairing blood vessels. Blood vessels are more complex in structure and function than the other tissues because they must be flexible yet accommodate high pressures. “To date we’ve built structures that look like blood vessels,” he says, “but we need to determine if they act like blood vessels.” The ultimate goal, which could change the lives of millions of Americans with heart disease: “We’re after the holy grail of coronary bypass grafts.”
Faculty at the VCU School of Engineering enjoy a tremendous advantage over their peers at other schools by virtue of their opportunity to interact with a nationally recognized medical school and the nation’s fourth-largest, university-based medical center, says Engineering Dean Robert Mattauch. It’s rare for engineering and medical schools to enjoy such close ties, he says, even when they’re part of the same university. But VCU’s leadership, from President Eugene Trani and the board of visitors on down, sees the future of research for the next 20 to 30 years being oriented to the life sciences, he says.
Another mark of a forward-thinking research institution is its encouragement of inter-disciplinary study. The academic world is built around classical “departments,” like chemistry, physics and engineering. Those disciplines have been heavily mined, and breakthroughs are getting harder to come by. Dramatic discoveries are more likely now to occur at the intersections of traditional disciplines, where novel tools and perspectives create fresh ways of approaching problems.
As Cisco Systems Chairman John Morgridge observed during a speech at the engineering school several months ago, higher education in the 20th century devoted its energies to “digging very deep holes” -- boring deeply into the traditional disciplines. “In the 21 st century,” he said, “higher ed needs to spend more time connecting the holes.”
That message resonates at VCU’s engineering school, one of the youngest engineering institutions in the country, where the founding philosophy was to build collaborative ties with other schools and disciplines from the start.
Mattauch recalls vividly what it was like working 30 years at another university where he, an engineer, developed a fruitful research collaboration with a physicist. Everyone regarded the two of them a bit suspiciously, he recalls: “The engineering faculty members said, ‘Beware of Bob Mattauch, he’s really a physicist,’ while the physicists said, ‘Watch out, my partner acts suspiciously like an engineer.’”
At VCU the opposite is true. The university celebrates scholars who reach across traditional divides. Says Mattauch: “The greatest contributions are made at the interstices of traditional, well-defined disciplines.”
VCU engineers are doing creative work in a variety of fields from polymer chemistry to nanotechnology, information technology to signal processing. But the area where the engineering school seems destined to make its greatest contributions is the intersection of engineering and medicine.
Paul A. Wetzel, an associate professor of biomedical engineering, exemplifies the VCU faculty members who team with researchers at the medical college to work on areas of common interest – in his case, Parkinson’s Disease. Utilizing advanced techniques for measuring movements of the eyes and head, he can detect tiny instabilities in patient’s eye movements -- so minute that the patients themselves don’t even sense them. These micro tremors, he’s found, are one of the earliest indicators of the onset of Parkinson’s. By taking periodic eye measurements, Wetzel can track the progress of the debilitating neurological disorder.
An estimated 60,000 people each year are diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a disease for which there is no known cure. Scientists and researchers are still struggling to understand its causes and the full range of its insidious effects. The disease marches so slowly and its outward manifestations can be so subtle that it’s difficult to measure which treatments work and which ones don’t.
Collaborating with a neurosurgeon and neurologists on VCU’s medical campus, Wetzel uses his eye-measurement tools to track the progress of the disease in patients. “We can create a baseline measure,” he says. “When the patient returns in three months or six months, we can see what the difference is.” He can quantify, for example, whether a particular type of surgery made an impact, or whether the patient is responding to a particular medication. “It gives us an objective method for evaluating treatment.”
Wetzel’s eye-measuring technology is not a treatment, nor a cure, but it’s a tool that might help others find a cure. “What I’m hoping,” he says, “is that the experiments might help us with respect to early diagnosis. If you can intervene earlier, you can make a big difference” – treating the symptoms more effectively.
Research conducted by VCU Engineering faculty holds out the promise of touching literally millions of lives… from robotic surgery to human-machine interfaces for the handicapped… from repairing cartilage to creating biocidal materials for everyday objects… from improved MRI scanners to biosensors that can be implanted under the skin….
Here follow capsule descriptions of research at the VCU School of Engineering with implications for medicine and health care.
James E. Ames IV
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science
Medical applications of computer science
Dr. Ames applies computer science to health care systems, with a special emphasis on the performance of algorithms and/or data systems. Applications of his work include building databases on chronic myocardiac infarction, simulating emergency medical delivery systems and analyzing the performance of large health information systems. Although data is often captured in real time, analysis and retrieval is typically slower. Efficient algorithms, combined with optimized data storage and retrieval, can make critical information more readily available.
Gary L. Bowlin
Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Spinal Cord Tissue Engineering and Regeneration
Dr. Bowlin’s Tissue Engineering Laboratory creates natural polymers such as collagens, elastin, and fibrinogen for use in engineering human tissues such as skin, blood vessels and cartilage. Bowlin employs an electrospinning process – analogous to a cotton candy spinner – to create nano-scale fabrics in various shapes that can be used as cellular-level scaffolding for the regeneration of specialized tissues. In contrast to other scientists who have tried unsuccessfully to use synthetic fibers, the Tissue Engineering Lab builds employs substances found naturally in the body, which tissue cells evolved to interact with chemically.
One obvious application of Bowlin’s research is to create collagen fabric that can be used to bind wounds, accelerating blood clotting and tissue healing. Bowlin sees potential for healing knee cartilage and spinal discs and, ultimately, the grafting of coronary arteries.
Alen Docef
Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Medical Image Processing
Dr. Docef is conducting research into medical image processing with the goal of enhancing the performance of CT, MRI and ultrasound images. Working in collaboration with the VCU medical campus, he is designing a miniaturized, portable CT scanner for use in emergency and operating rooms, as well as in remote care applications.
In another project, Docef is developing algorithms that offset the effect of artifacts, such as fillings and prostheses, upon radiation images used in the treatment of cancer. The foreign bodies cause streaking that can interfere with the picture of tumors. The algorithms attempt to remove these artifacts by using a model-based approach that optimally preserves the tumor contours.
Ding-Yu Fei
Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Medical Imaging
Dr. Fei oversees a laboratory that develops improvements to medical imaging technologies such as ultrasonic scanning and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In one recent project, he prototyped home monitors to communicate with health care providers using Internet and Bluetooth wireless technologies.
Anthony Guiseppi-Elie
Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering
Bioelectronics, Biosensors and Biochips
Dr. Guiseppi-Elie is developing biochips and biosensors in the service of human health and medicine. His innovations have implications for cancer diagnosis, battlefield surgery and emergency response. Exploring the interface between biological compounds and electronic signaling, he is developing “smart” materials that detect the presence of specific chemicals.
In one of his current projects, Guiseppi-Elie is developing tiny chips that can be implanted – in soldiers following combat casualty, or trauma victims on the way to the hospital -- under the skin. These sensors communicate levels of glucose and lactate within the tissues. The ability to monitor these metabolites will provide battlefield or emergency-room surgeons a valuable heads-up on the severity of trauma experienced by the victims, which then will allow the surgeons to prepare an appropriate response.
Rosalyn S. Hobson
Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Artificial Neural Networks, Chemoreception
Dr. Hobson is researching artificial neural networks and their application to control problems, intelligent systems, biological modeling and signal processing issues. A current project with medical implications involves chemoreception: an “electronic nose” that can detect and monitor the presence of trace quantities of VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds).
Martin L. Lendhardt
Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Animal Bioacoustics
As director of the Biomedical Engineering Bioacoustics Laboratory, Dr. Lendhardt researches bioengineering aspects of animal behavior/physiology including the effects of man-made noise on fish, reptiles, birds and mammals and the evolutionary biology of the sense of hearing. Over the last decade, research at the lab has emphasized development of aids for the deaf, blind and safety workers using audible ultrasound between 20,000 and 100,000 Hertz. Other activities range from developing devices to aid human disease recovery and reducing sea turtle collisions with dredges and birds with aircraft. Currently, Lenhardt is working on projects to help deaf babies.
Peter S. Lum
Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Robotically Assisted Surgery
Dr. Lum is developing new treatment methodologies for the neuro-rehabilitation of movement following stroke and other neurological disorders. Topics of investigation include studies into the mechanisms of motor impairment following brain injury, neuromuscular modeling, development of robotic devices to assist retraining movement, and clinical evaluation of the efficacy of new treatments and devices.
Dr. Gerald Miller
Chair, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Man-Machine Interface, Voice Recognition
As part of an academic and research thrust into man-machine interfacing, Dr. Miller is investigating the development of heart-assist devices and blood pumps. He’s also working on a voice recognition system for people with slurred or distorted speech. A speech processor with voice recognition capabilities would allow disabled individuals to control computer-based functions related to common tasks at home, in school or on the job. Other devices are designed to aid the disabled in physical therapy, occupational therapy and control of the home environment.
John E. Speich, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Robotic Surgery
Dr. Speich is concentrating his research in the field of robotic surgery and rehabilitation. Specifically, he is interested in robot manipulators, telemanipulation systems and haptic interfaces. Applications include robot-assisted surgery, surgical training simulators, robotic rehabilitation therapy, and devices to assist persons with disabilities. Speich has developed a force-feedback system that allows its operator to manipulate objects and “feel” them from remote locations. He has collaborated with NASA to study virtual reality surgical training in microgravity, and is part of a team developing a robotic device for Parkinson’s disease research. Additionally, he is supervising the development of a robot for delivering rehabilitation therapy to the hand and fingers.
Dr. Gary Tepper
Mechanical Engineering
Chemical and Biological Sensors
Dr. Tepper directs the Engineering Physics Laboratory, which investigates advanced optical, biological and nuclear sensor systems. Experimental research has the aim of developing new polymers with applications in sensor electronics, devises and systems. Some of Tepper’s work has implications for medical diagnostics, such as polymeric particles that emit a visible fluorescent signal in the presence of anthrax.
Jennifer S. Wayne
Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Tissue Engineering and Imaging of Cartilage
Dr. Wayne is working on ways to restore normal function to bone, cartilage, ligaments and tendons damaged through trauma, disease, or overuse. Her particular emphasis is examining the impact of arthritis on the articular cartilage -- a soft biological tissue that covers the ends of long bones in joints and helps joints to move with little friction – which lacks the ability to heal itself.
Wayne is attacking the problem from three directions. First, describe the biomechanical behavior of normal cartilage on joint surfaces to which the behavior of deteriorated or repairing joint surfaces can be compared. Second, create replacement cartilage through tissue engineering. And, third, use noninvasive imaging like MRI scans to give clinicians and scientists feedback on the quality of the cartilage.
Paul A. Wetzel
Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Human-Machine Interfaces
Dr. Wetzel is researching the measurement and analysis of eye and head movements, human-machine interfaces, and the coordination of feeding patterns in pre-term infants. By precisely measuring head and eye movements, he is trying to help quadriplegics interact with Microsoft Windows-based PCs to control various devices around them; his work represents an advance over previous efforts by allowing disabled people to work the controls from a greater variety of head positions. In related work, he is studying the progression of Parkinson’s disease by measuring tremors in eye movement; providing such measurements will help other researchers decide if their treatments and medications are halting the progress of the disease or not. In a different line of research, Wetzel is studying how premature infants learn to coordinate their breathing, swallowing and sucking.
Kenneth J. Wynne
Professor, Chemical Engineering
Biocidal Polymers
Dr. Wynne, an expert in polymer design, has developed highly effective biocidal polymer coatings. Recent research is directed toward creating nano-scale, polymer surfaces for every-day objects, such as grocery cart handles, capable of killing bacteria and viruses.
