Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 10-55
Claudia Mitchell with
her prosthetic arm.
(Courtesy of
Rehabilitation
Institute of Chicago,
with permission.)
the left side of her chest was touched it felt as if her hand were being touched. A total of
6 months after the procedure, she was fitted with a prosthesis, as shown in Figure 10-55,
and began physical therapy.
Doctors at RIC are now able to map sensitive spots on the chest to specific parts of
the missing fingers and hands and have discovered that the reinnervation process allows
the patients to feel heat and cold as well as pain (Adee, 2007).
When RIC presented her as the first bionic woman in 2006, she received a great deal
of media attention, but for her the focus has always been on the research. “Whether it's an
engineer or a senator, the more people realize what we are doing and the need that exists,
the better,” she says (Young, 2007).
DARPA wants amputees to have all this capability, especially those who have lost
limbs while serving in the military. In 2006 it launched the Revolutionizing Prosthetics
2007 and 2009 initiatives. To date it has given a combined $50 million in grant funding to
the Johns Hopkins University APL and DEKA Research and Development Corp. to bring
the “complexities of biology into the world of engineering” (Young, 2007).
10.9.4.6 Injectable Myoelectric Sensors
Driven by the requirement to improve the quality of signals coming from the residual
muscles, Richard Wier has been working on an injectable myoelectric sensor (IMES).
The IMES are encapsulated cylinders about 2 mm in diameter and 12 mm long that, when
