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A minimally invasive method of delivering stem cells directly into and around damaged cardiac tissue is needed. A new injection catheter, which can speed up the process of stem cell injection will be of critical importance to successful delivery of stem cells to the heart. A method is needed to improve precision of needle penetration and lessen the time to complete the procedure. This could be done by having multiple injections into the heart without adjusting the catheter and employing a corkscrew needle or other designs to securely anchor the needle in the tissue and control the depth of penetration.
From left to right: Adam Goon, Mike Conrardy, Andrew Bertram, Joel Webb.
Our final design consists of three components: an outer component that is placed in the apex of the heart, an inner component that slides up and down a track within the outer component, and an injection portion that is guided by the inner component to the appropriate hole where it exits the catheter and makes an injection.
This is a SolidWorks picture of our proposed final design. The outer component can be seen on the left, and the inner component is on the right (injection component not shown).
We have constructed an enlarged prototype and tested it for accuracy and consistency. We have done our final poster presentation and are currently finishing our final report.
| Week | Reporting Period Beginning | Activities |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | September 4 | Assigned team roles, scheduled client meeting, preliminary research. |
| 2 | September 11 | Met with client, developed PDS, continued researching, brainstormed designs for probe cooling device.. |
| 3 | September 18 | Discussed switching project to injection catheter, researched cooling devices and injection catheters. |
| 4 | September 25 | Met with client, switched to injection catheter project, researched, brainstormed designs. |
| 5 | October 2 | Met with advisor, refined and finalized our three designs, started researching materials and methods to construct catheters. |
| 6 | October 9 | Chose a design to pursue, made midsemester powerpoint presentation, and prepared for presentation. |
| 7 | October 16 | Midsemester presentations, contacted client about design specifics, contacted companies regarding the manufacturing of catheters. |
| 8 | October 23 | Met with client to go over final design idea, found that our design could definitely help client although some aspects might need to be changed slightly, got catheters from client to experiment with. |
| 9 | October 30 | Began working with actual catheters trying to create a guide for an injection catheter, found out that this will be much more difficult than originally anticipated due to the small scale, found a patent for a flexible needle catheter that could be useful for us. |
| 10 | November 6 | Obtained materials to develop enlarged prototype, discussed plans for building enlarged prototype, built two enlarged prototypes (one with a curved track and one with an angled straight track), discussed miniaturizing our prototypes |
| 11 | November 13 | Showed client our enlarged prototypes, learned a few more specifics about our design (incorporate a corkscrew needle if possible, do not want plastic to penetrate tissue), discussed materials to use to make smaller prototype, discussed preliminary poster plans. |
| 12 | November 20 | Obtained materials to build smaller prototype, built smaller prototype (1 inch diameter) out of PVC tubing and silicone, developed testing ideas for consistency and accuracy, began planning final poster. |
| 13 | November 27 | Finished constructing new prototype, found material to use for outer component, tested our prototype for consistency and accuracy, finished our poster, practiced and prepared for poster presentation. |
| 14 | December 4 | Worked on final report, contacted client about our final report and prototype. |
| 15 | December 11 | Finished final report, final meetings with client and advisor |
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Midsemester Presentation (Oct 15 2009, 3422 kb) |
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Final Poster (Dec 9 2009, 3381 kb) |
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Final Report (Dec 10 2009, 566 kb) |
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Product Design Specifications (12-2-09) (Dec 11 2009, 105 kb) |
