Bryan Hartley, M.D., Instructor in Clinical Radiology and Radiological Sciences, sponsored and mentored a group of mechanical engineering students for their senior design project presented last week at Design Day 2017.
Hosted by the Vanderbilt School of Engineering, Design Day challenges senior engineering students to design, build and test a prototype for a “real world” problem provided by their faculty sponsor.
“The challenge was to expand on a tiny mechanical wrist that originated in Dr. Robert Webster's engineering lab, which was previously evaluated through the NSF I-Corps project I completed over the summer,” said Dr. Hartley. “Through customer validation experiments in I-Corps, we found a strong unmet clinical need in the small spaces of the paranasal sinuses where the mechanical wrist could improve patient care and the diagnosis of chronic sinusitis.”
Dr. Hartley, who was also recently accepted to the Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellowship, challenged the students to build a functional prototype including the mechanical wrist, handle and actuator. Ultimately, the mechanical wrist would act as a delivery vehicle for a tiny camera that could be advanced into the sinuses for direct visualization of the sinus mucosa by the clinician – something that was previously impossible.
Over the course of the school year, the team of five students, branded as the “Think Small Design Team,” spent nearly 1,200 collective hours on the project, 3D printed nearly 50 prototypes with different tip materials, including nitinol, nylon and PEEK, and made several iterations of the handle and actuator mechanism. In addition, they segmented sinus CT images to build a 3D printed sinus model to test the device.
“The culmination of the work was successfully using our final prototype in an ENT training lab to see inside the frontal sinus, a very challenging if not impossible view with current technology,” said Dr. Hartley. “In the end, it was a very rewarding interdepartmental collaboration and we loved using the Department of Radiology’s Rad Studio to help generate ideas."
A progression of the device from the beginning of the project to the final prototype of the device presented at Design Day 2017 in April.
Dr. Hartley uses the final prototype of the device in the ENT training lab.
Dr. Hartley supports senior engineering students at Design Day 2017.
