Designing a Respiration Detector for Image Guided
Biopsy
In this company
case, a project that is performed at Demcon will be investigated. Students are
invited to tackle a problem in small teams, as they would at Demcon. The
different stages of a design process are visited:
- What are the customer
requirements?
- What are the system
requirements?
- What are the candidate design
concepts?
- How can we evaluate different
concepts?
- How to build a proof of
principle?
Project
Description
One of Demcon’s
areas of focus is medical robotics. In recent years, biopsy procedures have
been under extensive attention, as they are usually exhaustive for individuals
under the test. Needle Positioning System (NPS), is a robotic arm developed by
Demcon in collaboration with University of Twente, that tackles this problem in
a CT guided biopsy procedure.
In the Demcon
case, first the conventional biopsy procedure is explained. Then it is
elaborated how NPS can contribute to a faster and more precise biopsy. This
device is clinically proved to be useful for totally sedated patients. As a
further development of the NPS system, solutions for non-sedated patients are
investigated. In particular, students are challenged to design a device to
detect the respiration of the patient. To achieve this, students will be
encouraged to think of solutions in the broadest sense possible, and exchange ideas
to get the best out of everybody’s knowledge and expertise in the team. This
closely resembles the way of working at Demcon, where we work in diverse and
multidisciplinary teams to achieve the best possible solution, while not being
afraid of diving into new/unknown subjects.
The different
solutions and challenges that participants come up with will be shared and
discussed, after which the Demcon solutions – the results of the actual project
– will be shared. Engineers from Demcon will present the case, answer questions,
and discuss alternative solutions.