<div class="page photo" style=""> <article> <header style=" background-image:url(/imageLibrary/keyboard-338507_1326.jpg); "> <div class="box"> <div class="intro" style="color: #000;"> <h1 style="color: #000 !important;">What's New</h1> <p class="summary"></p> </div> </div> </header> <div class="main"> <div class="container"> <p class="byline"> </p> <p><img src="/uploads/548a3e5560b12_1326.JPG" unselectable="on"></p><h4></h4><h4></h4><h4><a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-08-near-infrared-tech-vein-access-procedures.html" target="_blank">Near-infrared light tech supports vein access procedurese</a></h4><p>August 9, 2015 by Nancy Owano</p><p><img src="/uploads/55c9b8aba15d5.jpg" unselectable="on"></p><p>Credit: Christie Medical Holdings</p><p>For a patient who is always jittery about holding out an arm for a needle, VeinViewer is a product that projects the image of veins on the person's arm, to help medical workers know where to put the needle.</p><p>VeinViewer uses near-infrared light to create a digital image of patient&nbsp;<a href="http://phys.org/tags/vasculature/">vasculature</a> in realtime. The formal explanation of the product has been as a vascular access imaging device that assists clinicians in finding the optimal venipuncture site, avoiding potential stick complications. </p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gR1Zve3tRpw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><p>VeinViewer is from the Memphis-based <a href="http://phys.org/tags/company/">company</a>, Christie Medical Holdings. The company said VeinViewer has been proven to increase first-stick success by up to 100 percent and decrease medically unnecessary PICC lines by greater than 30 percent.</p><p><a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-08-near-infrared-tech-vein-access-procedures.html" target="_blank">Read more</a></p><p><img src="/uploads/54ad19735dcd3_1326.jpg" unselectable="on"></p><h4></h4><h4></h4><h4></h4><h4></h4><h4></h4><h4></h4><h4><a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/medical-robots/inside-an-mri-a-nonmetallic-robot-performs-prostate-surgery" target="_blank">Inside an MRI, a Non-Metallic Robot Performs Prostate Surgery</a></h4><p> By Eliza Strickland posted&nbsp;8 July 2015</p><p><img src="/uploads/55c9ba527f2ae.jpg" unselectable="on"></p><p>Photo: Gregory Fischer/WPI</p><p>Inside an MRI scanner, a plastic and piezoelectric robot goes to work on a prostate</p><p>One of the holy grails of robotic surgery is the ability to perform minimally invasive procedures guided by real-time scans from a magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, machine. The problem is the space inside MRI scanners is tight for a person, let alone a person <em>and</em> a robot. What’s more, these machines use very strong magnetic fields, so <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BBx8BwLhqg">metal is not a good thing to place inside of them</a>, a restriction that is certainly a problem for robots.</p><p>Now researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) are developing a MRI-compatible robotic surgery tool that can overcome those limitations. Their system isn’t made of metal, but instead has plastic parts and ceramic piezoelectric motors that allow it to work safely inside an MRI.</p><p>The tool is now being tested on human patients undergoing prostate biopsies at Boston’s <a href="http://www.brighamandwomens.org/">Brigham and Women’s Hospital</a>. The radiologists can use real-time MRI images to guide the movement of their robotic assistant, which they believe will provide unprecedented accuracy. (If you’re wondering how it works, here’s a descriptive line from a <a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6948371&url=http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel7/3516/4785241/06948371.pdf?arnumber=6948371">journal article</a> the researchers published last year: “The patient lies inside the MRI scanner . . . and the robot accesses the prostate through the perineal wall.”) </p><p><img src="/uploads/55c9bb04ce31d.jpg" unselectable="on"></p><p>The robot, developed by WPI in collaboration with Brigham and Johns Hopkins University, also boasts a low-noise control system that doesn’t cause electrical interference. “Essentially, we made a device that can move around the MRI bore without affecting image quality,” says<a href="http://www.wpi.edu/academics/facultydir/gsf.html">Gregory Fischer</a>, a professor of mechanical engineering at WPI whose <a href="http://aimlab.wpi.edu/">Automation and Interventional Medicine Robotics Lab</a> led the research. </p><p><a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/medical-robots/inside-an-mri-a-nonmetallic-robot-performs-prostate-surgery" target="_blank">Read more</a></p><h4></h4><h4></h4> </div> </div> </article> </div><!-- /page-->