Biomedical Engineering Design Project Ideas – Biomedical engineering students (from left) Anna Rodriguez, Maria Fernanda Larraga Martinez, Ashten Sherman and Genevieve Goels created the GAMA Bra, a compression garment for breast cancer, as part of their design major.
When biomedical engineering students Genevieve Goels, María Fernanda Larraga Martínez, Anna Rodriguez, and Ashten Sherman joined their senior design course in September 2017 to find a solution to lymphedema in breast cancer patients, they didn’t talk much about themselves. Medical condition related to the study.
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But within eight months of taking on the challenge of making a garment to prevent lymphedema, the painful swelling that appears on the arms or body after mastectomy surgery, the young women learned to believe in themselves. They sought input from medical professionals, breast cancer patients, physical therapists and engineers. They shared personal triumphs and heartbreaks.
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Each year, biomedical engineering students take an “unmet need” and design and test a solution that may take the form of a prototype or software program.
“They all knew each other before, but we weren’t all friends,” says Goels, a biomedical engineering major and mathematics minor from Algonquin, Illinois. “We created a great team bond from the beginning of the project. We even designed our own team sweatshirts.
The camaraderie between the young women grew during group meetings in the Iowa College of Engineering student commons and evenings spent poring over design magazines, prototype mockups, and a plastic mannequin named Jess for the requirements of a senior design course. , the team’s model and emblem.
While most of their time together was focused on work, they also enjoyed moments of pure fun, like laughing at Team McDonald’s burgers after visiting a mastectomy fitter or using bolt cutters to cut one of their mannequins. Plastic breasts to simulate unilateral mastectomy.
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“Working with these women was one of the best experiences of my college career,” says Ashten Sherman, a biomedical engineering major and psychology minor from LeClaire, Iowa. “I feel so blessed to call them friends.
The senior design project should be challenging. It is a one-year course that represents the culmination of four years of engineering training. The course syllabus includes several requirements (six design review meetings; two to four design journal entries per week); As well as warnings against “blank stares” (“In real life this puts you at the top of the layoff/replace/outsource list”), meetings with advisors (“Don’t wait until the instructors tell you to meet with your advisor”) and common pitfalls (“Don’t expect everything to be perfect”).
The course tries to simulate the real-world product development process, including the challenges that come with it. In small teams of three or four, students work with a mentor to prototype a medical device that addresses a real-world need or problem. In the final senior design presentation, teams will demonstrate their device and discuss its merits in front of a panel of experts and a lecture hall of family and friends. Mentors are often involved – people who provide ideas for the course.
Students must complete the course to graduate, but because of its all-encompassing nature, many consider it a final endorsement before entering employment or graduate school. This understanding adds another level of pressure, and successful teams typically go above and beyond the tasks outlined in the course syllabus.
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“Students who excel in this real-world setting are the ones who take the initiative to begin physical prototyping early in the project and adhere to sound engineering principles,” says lecturer Colin Bringman, one of four engineering professors overseeing the senior design. Course in Biomedical Engineering.
The idea for Team 15’s senior design project came from Amy Kimball, an associate in the Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences, part of the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine. Kimball works with breast cancer patients in the immediate post-mastectomy period to determine how susceptible they are to lymphedema, a condition that affects the arms and trunk. If left untreated, the condition can lead to loss of function and physical disability.
Although many breast cancer patients have both breasts removed, a procedure called a bilateral mastectomy, some (about 32,000 a year, according to BreastCancer.org) choose a unilateral mastectomy to preserve their healthy breast. The medical device industry has been slow to come up with post-surgical solutions for this group of patients, and in some cases physical therapists have improvised by filling bras with thick foam to apply pressure to the mastectomy, which reduces inflammation.
“When I was a physical therapist, I saw patients who couldn’t find a garment that provided enough compression on one side of the chest and enough support on the other,” says Kimball, who is studying for a doctorate. In the UI. “Many of these patients are in a kind of morbid state.” Solving this problem has the potential to affect thousands of breast cancer patients.
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Kimball says he was excited about the prospect of working with biomedical engineering students to solve this problem.
“It was fun working with young women who wanted to be engineers and scientists,” says Kimball, who met the team during the year-long process. “When I brought the issue to the table, they didn’t know much about healthcare, so I told them what breast cancer patients were going through, and then the issue became very real to them. They really worked with this project and took a very personal approach to their engineering design because they see it as a product that can help real people.
Trunk lymphedema: Team 15 project work began by meeting with people most likely to be affected by breast cancer.
All four women on the team knew someone with breast cancer, but Goels had the closest connection: Her 78-year-old grandmother, Geri Goels, died in February after a third recurrence. Goyals took time to mourn his grandmother, but he did not allow himself to grieve. Immediately after her grandmother’s funeral, she returned to work for GAMA Bra, partly prompted by her grandmother’s interest in the project.
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As the team began researching the issues faced by post-mastectomy breast cancer patients, Gerry Goels guided them through surgeries, drug treatments, insurance issues, and breast implants. From his armchair in his home in Elmhurst, Illinois, Gerry Goels helped the young women on the other end of the phone line understand the psychological and physical trauma he had experienced. Her honesty and sense of humor impressed everyone.
“It actually helped that I was working on this project at the time of her death,” Goels says. “It reminded me why I got into engineering in the first place. As biomedical engineers, we create solutions for people facing life-and-death situations. I don’t think there is a better way to honor your grandmother’s memory.
In addition to Goelsin’s grandmother, the team also interviewed 15 physical therapists, oncologists and plastic surgeons. They began to think about the amount of compression needed to prevent swelling and the materials that could provide this. In their design journals, the women took extensive notes on the compression properties of rayon, nylon, and spandex and drew rough sketches of various garment designs. Will their clothing be like a bra or a vest? How big should the armholes be? Which is easier for patients, a zipper or Velcro?
Rodriguez, a biomedical engineering and premedicine major from Bettendorf, Iowa, says: “The biggest challenge with this garment was getting everything we needed to consider into a prototype. “We had a lot of trouble figuring out what material was best, then patiently considering comfort and designing the garment from an aesthetic point of view, because we wanted people to wear it, and if it felt bad, they wouldn’t. A T-shirt.”
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During the discovery phase of a project, biomedical engineering students perform several tests to ensure their prototype is viable. The team measured the material properties of 15 different fabric samples. Using a wood clamp and a paper grid, they measured how the samples stretched and how their shape changed as the fabric stretched. They wanted to make sure that the fabric chosen for their garment would be tight enough to provide the right amount of pressure, but not so tight as to stop circulation or restrict breathing.
Another challenge of the project is thinking outside the box. For example, when the members of Team 15 realized that they were not seamstresses, they asked for help to sew the final lymphedema prototype.