MIT 2.75 Engineering Medical Devices Overview

With the goal of engaging graduate students and accelerating ideas into prototypes, teams of MIT graduate engineering students spend a semester collaborating with clinicians in CIMIT-affiliated hospitals to develop innovative medical devices. Clinicians (physicians, nurses, and scientists) present clinical problems and initial ideas. Students form teams to work with the clinicians to turn these ideas into reality. The goal is for the students to deliver a working prototype and a journal-quality article in one semester. In its fifth year, the course has been a great opportunity for clinicians to test out new ideas and to stimulate new collaborations. For example, Robopsy, a robotic device to assist radiologists performing tumor biopsies was invented by an MIT team led by Rajiv Gupta, MD, in 2004. The team was awarded the 2007 MIT $100K prize, the world's leading entrepreneurship competition and the 2008 ASME Innovation Showcase. Join us to hear from the teams of 2008.

Forum Summary

Running is a popular pastime in the United States, and despite the fancy running shoes that many runners wear, eighty percent of runners are injured every year.  This statistic suggests that today’s running shoes are not adequately protecting runners from injury.  As of now, the effectiveness of running shoes is measured by testing the cushioning in the heel, but this method does not simulate the forces applied to a runner’s foot.  With this shortcoming in mind, shoe manufacturers are currently seeking a more realistic way of testing running shoes.

A team of students from MIT worked with Danny Abshire of Newton Running, a local running shoe company, and created a new machine for testing running shoes.  Their device mimics foot kinematics and dynamics in multiple dimensions in order to simulate a natural running motion.  The running shoe being tested is mounted on a phantom foot that simulates the passive properties of a human foot, and the phantom foot is mounted on a rotary motor so that it travels in a circle at a constant speed.  Every time the shoe completes one rotation, it strikes an actuated base that is manipulated to impose the appropriate kinematics on the shoe.  Sensors in the shoe provide dynamic information about the forces and displacements acting on different parts of the phantom foot.  Adjusting the motion of the base allows one to simulate diverse running motions.  In the future, the students from MIT hope to make the phantom foot more realistic, and they hope to explore how one’s running motion affects the forces exerted on his or her shoe.       

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