Head of the development of the dynamic spine brace, Sunil Agrawal, a professor of mechanical engineering and rehabilitation and regenerative medicine, collaborated with Professor of Pediatric Orthopedic Surgery, David P. Roye and Mechanical Engineering professor, Charles Kim to invent the dynamic spine brace. Their project received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s National Robotics Initiative.
Sunil Agrawal, David P. Roye, Charles Kim, and their dynamic spine brace
They were able to develop the first parallel-actuated spine braces and compliant braces. The team now plans to create a new brace that integrates aspects of the parallel-actuated spine braces and the compliant braces in order to form a more durable brace.
These achievement made by Sunil Agrawal and his collaborators have attracted many robotic and pediatric orthopedic experts. Although such achievements made by Agrawal's team will greatly improve patient care by giving patients the ability to move when wearing the brace while still applying corrective forces, their project is still just beginning.
Dustin Tyler and the prosthetic hand that restores the sense of touch
Dustin Tyler is an associate professor of biomedical engineering at CWRU and director of the research for the prosthetic hand. He is also associate director of the Advanced Platform Technology Center at the Cleveland VA.
In his research, his patient, Igor Spetic, successfully used the prosthetic hand for two and a half years. The prosthetic works to reactivate areas of the brain that produce the sense of touch through stimulation by contact points on cuffs that encircle major nerve bundles in the arm. The cuffs are implemented by Surgeons Michael W. Keith and J. Robert Anderson, who implanted three electrode cuffs in Spetic’s forearm.
The prosthetic hand is unfortunately unavailable to clinics at the moment since it is still under development and requires to be connected to a computer. This prosthetic hand devised by Tyler gives rise to other professionals to develop similar inventions, possibly a prosthetic leg that also restores the sense of touch, another idea that Tyler believes is feasible.
Grégoire Courtine, who is a professor of neuroprosthetics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), has been well known for helping paralyzed rats to walk again. Courtine has even applied the treatment that he used in helping the rats walk again to monkeys.
Grégoire Courtine and his innovation of restoring the ability to walk after paralysis
Now, Grégoire Courtine has recently applied his method of curing paralysis to humans, where the first human clinical trial of the spinal implant system has occured at the Lausanne University Hospital. During the process on humans, the patient uses a rigging similar to the harness used on rats, which supports them while they try to walk forward after they have had their spinal implant. This innovation is still under development, but Courtine has brought up a new method of solving paralysis with spinal implants and brain implants.