On this page, you can find updates on what our team is up to as it designs its model, including component design and new changes in device creation.

Progress Report #1 (11/2/17)

Our team was initially assigned to the Lumasil project on match day. The Lumasil project was our third choice out of the three projects we submitted a needs assessment for, however, we were grateful to be assigned one of our top three. We set up a meeting with the project advisors, John Mendoza and Siegfried Schlunk. At the first meeting, we discussed the most pressing issues that needed to be addressed on the project, formed a plan of action, and met the computer engineer (Ben Perlin) who was assigned to the project.

Soon after, we realized that the team who was assigned to our first project choice (direct aspiration thrombectomy) had the Lumasil project as their third choice and the thrombectomy project as their third choice. We brought this situation to Dr. Walker and everybody agreed to allow our teams to switch projects.

Upon switching to the thrombectomy project, we contacted Dr. Froehler and set up an initial meeting. At the first meeting, we overviewed the project and set up a weekly meeting time (8 am Wednesday morning). At the weekly meetings, we have been discussing how to create a model that accurately mimics the pressures inside of the cranial cavity and allows us to fine-tune these pressures with pumps and pressure gauges.

This model will allow us to assess our ability to increase the efficacy of direct aspiration thrombectomy by adjusting the pressures inside of the cranial cavity. We have hypothesized that increasing the intracranial pressure (ICP) will increase the efficacy of aspiration thrombectomy due to two different phenomena. First, an increase in pressure at the location of the clot will allow us to maximize our vacuum pressure, and in turn, maximize the suction force at the tip of the catheter. Secondly, we theorized that decreasing the pressure gradient across the clot will allow the clot to be dislodged easier.

In order to quantitatively characterize these hypotheses, we have formulated an initial plan for a simple model, with plans to iteratively improve the model to increase the accuracy of our model. Our first design consists of a 1.5 liter Nalgene water bottle (representing the cranial cavity) with silicone tubing flowing through the water bottle and representing the vasculature inside the skull. The intracranial pressure will be adjusted by changing the volume of water inside a closed plastic bag within the model with a syringe. The intracranial pressure and pressure in the vessels on either side of the clot will be measured with pressure gauges.

We have submitted our orders for parts, but have not received the parts yet. We submitted an order for rubber gaskets, two types of silicone tubing, and the water bottle. Once we receive these parts, we will put together our first prototype with which we can improve upon throughout the course of the year.

We have additionally received confirmation from a biomedical device company that we may use their silicone flow model with accurate dimensions of the cranial vasculature and that they will additionally loan us a pump to push fluid through this model. We have begun planning how to create a second prototype with a container that will accommodate the shape of this flow model.

As part of the senior design seminar, we have completed weekly assignments relating our project to the guest speaker presentations.

• Created a plan for Intellectual Property Rights (Dr. Philip Swaney)
  • As a team, we learned about intellectual property rights that we will own regarding our project as well as which rights are the property of either our mentor or Vanderbilt University. Our plan included potential factors that would be worth copyrighting or patenting and how we could use the CTTC to formally protect the rights and possibly market the intellectual property after the Capstone presentation.
• Found ways to maximize Sustainability (Dr. Ralph Bruce)
  • After learning about ways to maximize sustainability, our team brainstormed several ways in which our model could be best created without causing damage to the environment. Features included using non-toxic fluids for simulations, reusable materials, and ways to improve the longevity of the model overall.

• Assessed personality traits of team members and how to maximize each of our strengths (Dr. David Owens and Dr. Ben Jordan)
  • We each took the DISC Personality test and the Radical/Adaptive Innovator test to determine relevant personality traits to our project. We then analyzed personality traits such as our relative dominance and compliance and used the fact that we have two radical innovators, one adaptive innovator, and one balanced innovator in our design team to see where we can use the most guidance from Dr. Froehler and outside mentors.