Developers
A. Schwartz, G. Clark,
Description of the technology
One of the areas of the modern medicine’s focus is a development of bionic prostheses and implants. The main peculiarity of the bionic prostheses is their ability to take the functions of the lost organs and limbs up. Bionic prostheses differ from the simple ones in their ability to copy functions of the organ very accurately or even exceed them.
This technology is already on the market.
Practical application
Up to date, considerable success is achieved in the development of the following bionic prosthesis and implants:
Bionic hand.
Projects developing a bionic hand succeed nowadays. Up to date, myoelectrically controlled prostheses:
In the end of 2012, a bionic hand prosthesis was created which was partly myoelectrically controlled, and partly — controlled by the nervous system (
The next stage in the development of the bionic hand prosthesis is creation of such a prosthesis that allows to receive natural tactile sensations when a hand touch some surfaces, and that allows to feel their temperature. Nowadays, several laboratories work in this area.
Bionic leg
Scientists have been developing and testing a bionic leg prosthesis, having an engine in the knee and beside the foot, for several years. The bionic leg itself is an autonomous device equipped with a powerful computer and corresponding software. Also, studies are carried out aimed at creation of the bionic leg prosthesis that will be connected to the nervous fibers in the leg so that this artificial leg will be
Bionic heart
Nowadays, cardioprostheses, i.e. devices implanted into the human organism and intended to replace the cardiac muscle completely, are just experimental; they are at the stage of clinical trials.
The latest generation of «heart substitutes» — such as
It is intended that the patient will get a donor heart at the end, and that donor heart will replace an artificial device. Up to date, only two artificial hearts are
One of the unusual products among bionic hearts is BiVACOR. It is a beatless artificial heart created in 2015.
Bionic ear
A prototype of the bionic ear can be also named ‘cochlear implant’. It consists of:
- microphone, audio processor and transmitter, which are settled outside the body, on the patient’s hair or skin,
- receiving sensor that is implanted subcutaneously,
- electrode chain implanted into the cochlea through surgical operation.
The function of the cochlear implant is stimulation of auditory nerve fibers with electric impulses. This apparatus is developed for people with severe hearing loss. By the end of 2000s, cochlear implants have partially restored hearing ability in more that hundred thousand people of all ages (up to
Further works are led in the area of combining biological and electric components within the whole living tissue. Thus, in 2013 a unique construction of the bionic ear was developed. Its shape was reconstructed using 3D printing technology, and an electronic hearing device was placed inside it. Electric signals produced by the bionic ear will be transmitted to the nerve endings responsible for hearing ability — this process is similar to that occurring when the cochlear implant works.
Bionic eye implants
Nowadays, certain success is achieved in the creation of bionic «eyes». They are electronic implants which help blind people to see external environment to a certain degree. One of such implants is Argus II. It consists of a special antenna which is set up on the eyeball (or beside it), and special glasses equipped with a camera which are used for sending signals to the antenna. The antenna is connected to the eye retina through about 60 electrodes and creates an equivalent ofLaboratories
- Touch Bionics, Mansfield, Massachusetts (USA)
- SynCardia, Tucson, Arizona (USA)
- Prinston University, New Jersey (USA)
- Nano Retina, Herzliya (Israel)
Links
http://www.computerra.ru/56032/bionic/http://naiu.org.ua/novye-bionicheskie-protezy-budut-
http://www.jhuapl.edu/prosthetics/scientists/mpl.asp
http://techdigest.jhuapl.edu/TD/td3003/
http://bivacor.com/
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%98%D1%81%D0%BA%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B5_%D1%81%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B4%D1%86%D0%B5
http://pikabu.ru/story/uspeshno_peresazheno_pervoe_v_mire_bionicheskoe_nepulsiruyushchee_serdtse_3163611
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_heart
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/business/international/
http://www.syncardia.com/
http://igiuv.ru/
http://www.shema.ru/news/view/780/
http://dpa.kharkov.ua/bionicheskii-glaz-pozvoliaet-slepym-obresti-cherno-beloe-zrenie-
Publications
- Riso, Ronald Raymond. «Strategies for providing upper extremity amputees with tactile and hand position
feedback-moving closer to the bionic arm." Technology and Health Care 7.6 (1999): 401–409. - Saridis, G. N., and
H. E. Stephanou . «Hierarchically intelligent control of a bionic arm." Decision and Control including the 14th Symposium on Adaptive Processes, 1975 IEEE Conference on. IEEE, 1975. - Wang, Fei, Shiguag Wen, and Chengdong Wu. «Gait pattern estimation for intelligent bionic leg." Control and Decision Conference, 2008. CCDC 2008. Chinese. IEEE, 2008.
- Slepian, Marvin J., et al. «The Syncardia™ total artificial heart: in vivo, in vitro, and computational modeling studies." Journal of biomechanics 46.2 (2013): 266–275.
- Suaning, Gregg J., et al. «The bionic eye (electronic visual prosthesis): a review." Australian and New Zealand journal of ophthalmology 26.3 (1998): 195–202.
- Sarpeshkar, Rahul, et al. «An
ultra-low-power programmable analog bionic ear processor." Biomedical Engineering, IEEE Transactions on 52.4 (2005): 711–727.