GOALI: MEMS Based Sensors and Actuators for Medical and Biological Applications

机械呼吸机在挽救肺功能障碍患者的生命中起着至关重要的作用。急救人员每天使用手动复苏器使创伤病人苏醒。为了维持生命，这些设备必须能感知呼吸压力。当前压力传感器的尺寸和电力要求限制了对机器内部和患者气道远端压力点的传感。这可能会严重降低呼吸机的功效，甚至造成患者创伤，因为气道的自然解剖变异性会造成不可预测的压力损失。此外，由空气污染和哮喘引起的慢性肺部疾病正在增加。为了理解和量化对呼吸的影响，需要更好的传感器。该GOALI提案的重点是设计，制造和测试体内新型微机电系统（MEMS）压力和流量传感器，这些传感器纯粹基于光学，可以部署到气道中，例如气管内管，鼻面罩，呼吸机和复苏器。该研究团队由三个学术单位和三个工业合作伙伴组成，将使用纯光学技术进行传感器激活效应检测的基础研究，并将为光学MEMS生物传感器开发新的设计、分析、测试、校准和生产实践。新的数字信号处理方法将得到发展，以获得所需的精度和测量范围。作为拓展计划的一部分，GOALI团队将1)开发一门关于MEMS传感器和执行器分析、设计、原型设计和应用的新设计课程，包括生物医学；2)开发可在互联网上用于培训工业工程师和学生的课程；3)在工业合作伙伴现场提供两场工业研讨会。

0201773LewisMechanical ventilators play critical roles in saving lives of patients with pulmonary dysfunction. Emergency manual resuscitators are used daily by paramedics to revive trauma patients. For life support these devices must sense respiratory pressures. Size and electric power requirements of current pressure transducers restrict sensing of pressures to points within the machine and distal to patient airways. This can severely degrade the efficacy of the ventilator or even create patient trauma, as the natural airway anatomical variability creates unpredictable pressure losses. Moreover, chronic pulmonary illnesses due to air pollution and asthma are increasing. To understand and quantify the effects on respiration, better sensors are needed.This GOALI proposal focuses on designing, fabricating and testing in vivo novel microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) pressure and flow sensors based purely on optics that can be deployed into the airways, e.g. into endotracheal tubes, nasal masks, ventilators and resuscitators. The research team, which includes collaborations between three academic units and three industrial partners, will perform fundamental research in detecting sensor activation effects using purely optical techniques and will develop new design, analysis, testing, calibration, and production practices for optical MEMS biosensors. New digital signal processing approaches will be developed to obtain required accuracies and ranges of measurement. .As part of the outreach plan, the GOALI team will 1) develop a new design course on MEMS sensor and actuator analysis, design, prototyping, and applications, including biomedical, 2) develop courseware that can be used over the internet for training of industry engineers and students and 3) offer two industrial seminars on-site at industrial partners.