GOALI: MEMS Based Sensors and Actuators for Medical and Biological Applications

University Of Texas At Arlington, Arlington TX

Investigators

Abstract

0201773 Lewis Mechanical ventilators play critical roles in saving lives of patients with pulmonary dysfunction. Emergency manual resuscitators are used daily by paramedics to revive trauma patients. For life support these devices must sense respiratory pressures. Size and electric power requirements of current pressure transducers restrict sensing of pressures to points within the machine and distal to patient airways. This can severely degrade the efficacy of the ventilator or even create patient trauma, as the natural airway anatomical variability creates unpredictable pressure losses. Moreover, chronic pulmonary illnesses due to air pollution and asthma are increasing. To understand and quantify the effects on respiration, better sensors are needed. This GOALI proposal focuses on designing, fabricating and testing in vivo novel microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) pressure and flow sensors based purely on optics that can be deployed into the airways, e.g. into endotracheal tubes, nasal masks, ventilators and resuscitators. The research team, which includes collaborations between three academic units and three industrial partners, will perform fundamental research in detecting sensor activation effects using purely optical techniques and will develop new design, analysis, testing, calibration, and production practices for optical MEMS biosensors. New digital signal processing approaches will be developed to obtain required accuracies and ranges of measurement. . As part of the outreach plan, the GOALI team will 1) develop a new design course on MEMS sensor and actuator analysis, design, prototyping, and applications, including biomedical, 2) develop courseware that can be used over the internet for training of industry engineers and students and 3) offer two industrial seminars on-site at industrial partners.