A beating heart makes for a formidable surgical arena, but a new robotic catheter could someday equip surgeons to operate in the cardiac environment with greater ease.
What if a clinician could 3D print something through your skin, constructing an implant or replacement organ underneath layers of tissue? The world of medicine would be transformed: a host of surgical procedures, which come with a variety of risks, could be performed without ever lifting a scalpel.
The federal government has expanded the Home Test to Treat program, an entirely virtual community health program that offers free COVID-19 health services: at-home rapid tests, telehealth sessions and at-home treatments, to eligible participants nationwide.
Researchers have designed a lightweight helmet with tiny LEGO-size sensors that scan the brain while a person moves. The helmet is the first of its kind to accurately record magnetic fields generated by brain activity while people are in motion, reports a new research paper published in NeuroImage.
Artificially causing – or inducing – labor is becoming increasingly common, yet this practice comes with risks and its level of success is difficult to foresee. But now, new research may offer a way to help predict outcomes and improve the process.Researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) have devised a non-invasive method of accurately measuring the electrical activity of uterine muscles.
Introducing medical devices — commonly made of materials such as titanium, silicone, or collagen — into our bodies can elicit a host of different immune responses. While some responses can harm our bodies, others can help heal them. Researchers have not fully grasped the rhyme or reason behind the body’s reactions, but a new study fills in a critical piece of the puzzle.
Navigating the labyrinthine vasculature of the brain with standard surgical instruments can be incredibly challenging, even for the steadiest of hands. But with some robotic assistance, brain surgeons could potentially operate with far greater ease.
There is no cure or FDA-approved therapy for acute respiratory distress syndrome, which has a high rate of mortality. Inflammation plays a major role in developing ARDS. Researchers at Ohio State University developed therapeutic nanocarriers using mice skin cells, which reduced inflammation in their lungs.
Two participants in an NIBIB training program that aims to diversify the biomedical workforce share their stories of how the program influenced their career paths.
Dendritic cells are key orchestrators of the immune response, but most vaccination strategies don’t effectively target them. NIBIB-funded researchers have developed biodegradable nanoparticles that are designed to deliver mRNA cargo to dendritic cells in the spleen.
The National Institutes of Health will advance the development of home-based and point-of-care health technologies with awards to six technology research and development centers around the country.
NIH's Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Technology (RADx® Tech) Fetal Monitoring Challenge calls on scientists, engineers, and clinicians around the country to submit their innovative approaches and compete for prizes and additional resources to support technology development and clinical impact.
By now, most people have used an at-home test to find out if they have COVID-19. Rapid antigen tests are a fast and convenient way for people to test themselves for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. They’re a popular alternative to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests that require a laboratory to process the results.
The National Institutes of Health and the higher education non-profit VentureWell have selected 10 winners and five honorable mentions of the Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) Challenge, who are set to receive prizes totaling $145,000.
Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis have used ultrasound to nudge rodents into an energy-conserving state that mirrors a natural, hibernation-like survival mechanism known as torpor. The technique could help buy precious time for patients in critical care.
Nanozymes—artificial enzymes that can carry out pre-determined chemical reactions—could selectively activate a cancer drug within a tumor while minimizing damage to healthy tissue in a mouse model of triple negative breast cancer.
NIH's RADx Tech committed resources in early 2022 for increased accessibility of COVID-19 home tests. The RADx Tech Accessibility Program subsequently invited collaboration from advocacy organizations to contribute to design insights and is a first step that will help manufacturers address the gap in accessible test availability.
For most of our tissues and cells, a lack of oxygen, or hypoxia, is bad news. However, cancer cells can thrive in these conditions, rendering tumors less susceptible to anti-cancer treatments including radiation. Now, new research may offer a way to break through cancer’s hypoxia-induced defenses.
This fully wireless ultrasound patch, which can capture detailed medical information and wirelessly transmit the data to a smart device, could represent a major step forward in at-home health care technology.
This interview with Maryellen Giger, PhD, delves into the creation of the MIDRC imaging repository, how its data can be used to develop and evaluate AI algorithms, ways that bias can be introduced—and potentially mitigated—in medical imaging models, and what the future may hold.
Researchers have shown that an automated cancer diagnostic method, which pairs cutting-edge ultrasound techniques with artificial intelligence, can accurately diagnose thyroid cancer, of which there are more than 40,000 new cases every year.
Tissue engineering research has shown that a skin cell type could be a new therapeutic target to accelerate the healing of burns and possibly other wounds.
Researchers from Rice University have created drug-filled microparticles that can be engineered to degrade and release their therapeutic cargo days or weeks after administration. By combining multiple microparticles with different degradation times into a single injection, the researchers could develop a drug formulation that delivers many doses over time.
NIH-funded researchers developed an online tool that can analyze self-collected, at-home videos with a smartphone. When deployed in a nationwide study, the tool could predict physical health and osteoarthritis of the knee or hip.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are developing lipid nanoparticles that are designed to carry mRNA specifically to the pancreas. Their study in mice could pave the way for novel therapies for intractable pancreatic diseases, such as diabetes and cancer.
Bioengineers from Columbia University are developing a pipeline to systematically evaluate how bacterial treatments might synergize with existing anti-cancer therapies in preclinical models.
After years of research, an NIH-funded team has developed a wearable cardiac ultrasound imager that can non-invasively capture real-time images of the human heart. The prototype patch, which is about the size of a postage stamp, can be worn during exercise, providing valuable cardiac information when the heart is under stress.
NIBIB has established the Center for Biomedical Engineering Technology Acceleration—BETA Center, a new intramural research program to solve a range of medicine’s most pressing problems. The BETA Center will serve the wider NIH intramural research program as a biotechnology resource and catalyst for NIH research discoveries.
Using state-of-the-art imaging technology, NIH-funded researchers have found the secret behind the glassfrog’s ability to become transparent, an effective form of camouflage. Future research may provide insights into disorders related to blood clotting or stroke in humans.
NIH, in collaboration with the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response at HHS, has launched the Home Test to Treat program, an entirely virtual community health intervention that will provide free COVID-19 health services—at-home rapid tests, telehealth sessions and at-home treatments—in selected communities.
NIBIB-funded researchers are developing a new method to treat pancreatic cancer. In their study, they combined an injectable radioactive gel with systemic chemotherapy in multiple mouse models of the disease. The treatment resulted in tumor regression in all evaluated models, an unprecedented result for this genetically diverse and aggressive type of cancer.
NIBIB-funded researchers are fine-tuning a wearable, cuffless blood pressure monitor. Made of graphene, one of the thinnest materials in the world, the device is worn on the underside of the wrist and can measure blood pressure with comparable accuracy to a standard blood pressure cuff.
Reporting a positive or negative test result just became easier through a new website from the National Institutes of Health. MakeMyTestCount.org, developed through NIH’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx®) Tech program, allows users to anonymously report the results of any brand of at-home COVID-19 test.
The National Institutes of Health has awarded research funding for seven pilot projects developing early stage, yet groundbreaking neuro-technologies. The innovative projects would enable new medical devices to diagnose and treat both acute and chronic disorders, from neuropathic pain to mental illness.
When it blasts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Artemis I will carry two anthropomorphic mannequins strapped into its crew module. The mannequins are part of a project aided by a team of Duke University bioengineers with support from NIBIB.
Researchers have found that AI models could accurately predict self-reported race in several types of medical images, suggesting that race information could be unknowingly incorporated into image analysis models.
NIBIB-funded researchers have developed an interlinked tissue chip system that can model four mature organs in their perspective environments simultaneously. These multi-organ tissue chips could represent a new way to evaluate diseases or drugs that affect multiple different tissues.
The National Institutes of Health, through its Blueprint MedTech program, has established two incubator hubs and launched a funding solicitation in support of commercially viable, clinically focused neurotechnology solutions to diagnose and treat disorders of the nervous system.
A research team funded by the National Institutes of Health has shown that commercially available rapid antigen tests can detect past and present variants of concern and has identified potential mutations that may impact test performance in the future.
Two biomedical imaging technologies developed with support from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) have been cleared for clinical use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Both technologies offer advances in computed tomography (CT).
The National Institutes of Health announced the winners of its NIH Technology Accelerator Challenge (NTAC) for Maternal Health, a prize competition for developers of diagnostic technologies to help improve maternal health around the world.
An interdisciplinary research team has developed a fast, cost-effective method to detect the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 variants. The approach can augment current surveillance methods that use comprehensive next-generation sequencing of virus samples, helping focus sequencing efforts on samples representing unknown and emerging variants.
Osteoarthritis – a painful condition that results from the deterioration of the cartilage in our joints – affects millions of people worldwide. To combat this issue, NIBIB-funded researchers are developing an implantable, biodegradable film that helps to regenerate the native cartilage at the site of damage. Their study, performed in rabbits, could be an initial, important step in the establishment of a new treatment for this common condition.
NIBIB-funded researchers are developing an imaging method that would allow surgeons to better identify cancerous cells in breast tumor margins during surgery. This technique could lead to a reduction in follow-up breast cancer surgeries and reduce rates of breast cancer recurrence.
NIBIB-funded researchers are developing an autonomous robot that can perform bowel surgery with minimal assistance from a surgeon. In preclinical models, the robot outperformed expert surgeons when compared head-to-head.
NIBIB-funded researchers are developing a method to activate natural killer cells using an external magnetic field, which not only enhances their cytotoxicity, but allows them to be tracked using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to verify that they’ve reached their target.
NIBIB-funded researchers are developing a robotic pill that, after swallowing, can deliver biologic drugs into the stomach, which could provide an alternative method for self-injection for a wide range of therapies.
NIBIB-funded researchers have found a way to model the human neuromuscular junction by growing these synapses in a lab, which could accelerate novel treatments for neuromuscular diseases.