We are pleased to welcome Albert Shih, Professor at University of Michigan and for an ME seminar. 

Seminar title: Machining Inside the Blood Vessels for Enabling Innovations of Minimally Invasive Medical Devices

About the talk:

The blockage of a blood vessel due to plaque or clot is a major threat to human health. Machining-based atherectomy and thrombectomy devices, two minimally invasive treatment procedures to remove hardened plaque and clots, respectively, inside the blood vessel to restore the blood flow are presented.

Atherectomy is the internal grinding of hardened calcified plaque in the heart’s coronary or knee’s popliteal arteries using the diamond grinding wheel rotating up to 230,000 rpm. The experimental discovery of the orbital motion of the grinding wheel, the computational fluid dynamic modeling to analyze the orbital motion, smooth particle hydrodynamic modeling of material removal in grinding, innovations in medical devices to integrate the miniature grinding wheel at the tip of the driveshaft are presented.

Thrombectomy is the physical removal of blood clots in blood vessels. Current catheter-based thrombectomy devices have difficulty to “completely” remove acute arterial clots. For chronic venous clots for pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis, such minimally invasive thrombectomy device is still lacking. A cutting-based thrombectomy device using a flexible driveshaft with cutting edges at the tip and the vacuum for suction to remove the chip is presented. Results for cutting of arterial clots are presented. Challenges and innovations for venous clots will be discussed.

There are still many unmet needs for innovations of minimally invasive medical devices. Three on-going research on minimally invasive ventricular assistive devices, intracerebral hemorrhage surgery, and discectomy for spinal fusion will be briefly touched. Manufacturing is an enabling technology for innovations. This talk will conclude by using two examples on team efforts to create a medical device manufacturing institute and quantum computer manufacturing.