10:10 am
322 Fryklund Hall

Abstract

Surgical robots enjoy widespread adoption. This provides opportunities to augment the art of surgery with more rigorous, quantitative science, giving rise to the field of computational surgery. Such opportunities may help tackle long-standing challenges in healthcare like the prevalence of human error. This talk will focus on two related research problems. First, how do we quantify and improve the existing technical skills of a surgeon? This requires a method whose scores correlate with patient outcomes, that can scale to cope with 51 million annual surgeries in the United States, and that can generalize across the diversity surgical procedures or specialties. One solution comes from an unexpected source: crowds of non-expert raters. Second, how can robotic tools render surgical tasks fundamentally easier, perhaps making errors unlikely or impossible in the first place? This will briefly survey topics like policy-blended human-robot shared control to ensure safety in robotic tissue grasping; novel patient-specific catheter robots that safely remove plaque via inverse design of soft robots and a theranostic excimer laser; and robotic 3D bioprinting directly onto moving human anatomy to explore new reconstructive procedures.

Bio

Dr. Kowalewski completed his PhD in electrical engineering at the University of Washington’s Biorobotics Lab. Based on his surgical skill evaluation research, he co-founded CSATS Inc. which was acquired by Johnson & Johnson in April 2018. Dr. Kowalewski is currently an assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota where he runs the Medical Robotics and Devices Lab.

Lecture archive

10:10 am
322 Fryklund Hall

Abstract

“Why You Can Stand on the Floor” is in large part due to the mechanics of your musculo-skeletal system, and is the primary research focus of the Bone and Joint Biomechanics (BJB) Laboratory. Osteoporosis (OP) is a debilitating disease of the musculo-skeletal system and a major health concern in an aging population. Currently, OP affects 10 million Americans, that is 1 in 2 elderly women and 1 in 4 elderly men. According to the Administration on Aging: “People 65+ represented 12.4% of the population in the year 2000 but are expected to grow to be 20% of the population by 2030.” The projected costs of OP are therefore $45 billion by 2025 an increase of $10 billion from 2004. Contributing factors to OP are loss of skeletal integrity, inactivity and the development of sarcopenia in the aged. Conversely, exercise has been shown to reduce both sarcopenia and retard bone loss in the aged. In animal models, exercise has been shown to increase skeletal integrity by 10 to 14% for the same mineral density. Solving the mysteries of how human tissue adapts to mechanical stimuli with increased strength will permit new and improved innovations in bone and joint health, disease prevention and treatment. The research goal of the BJB Lab is to develop accurate physical and virtual models of the human musculo-skeletal system for the planning and assessment of orthopaedic and rehabilitative procedures for:

• Disease prevention
• Designing biomedical devices
• Planning surgical intervention
• Enhancing computer aided surgery

Bio

Heidi-Lynn Ploeg is an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Including 10 years at Zimmer, she has 30 years of experience in research and analysis of orthopaedic devices. Over the last 15 years, 47 graduate students have graduated from her lab. Her research interests include studying the nature of bone, bone growth and joint biomechanics.

Lecture archive

10:10 am
322 Fryklund Hall

Abstract

Over a lifespan of approximately 70 years, bone withstands millions of loading cycles from muscle forces with incredible resilience to fatigue. However, the mechanisms driving bone formation, organization, and strength are yet to be fully resolved. What is known is (1) the mechanical cues for bone development in mammals are a result of the dynamic muscle and joint forces experienced during locomotion, and less influenced by static gravitational forces and (2) the adaptation of bone to accommodate increased external forces occurs in a specific manner. That is – it doesn’t just get bigger - it has a specific preferential distribution of material in order to maintain efficient mechanical competency.

In this talk, I will present our recent efforts to understand the three-dimensional mechanics of bone during growth and aging. First, using a murine model of growth, we investigated the determinants of spatially heterogeneous strain within the tibia using longitudinal imaging and multi-scale computational models. We also investigated these allometric relationships in equine bone to determine if these hold true for larger animals. Next, I will present a computational assessment of bone strain energy in older human bone samples. Here we aim to identify whether increased strain energy is characterized by morphological features and associated with specific phases of cellular activity during bone remodeling. We present evidence to suggest that an uncoupling in osteoclast to osteoblast activity exists that may be related to strain-mediated cell dynamics.

Bio

Mariana Kersh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Director of the Tissue Biomechanics Laboratory. She holds degrees in English, Mechanical Engineering and Material Science. Her research focus is on the structure-mechanical function of orthopedic tissues during development as well as the progression of musculoskeletal diseases.

Lecture archive