HEALTH WARRIORS

More than 200,000 Canadians have a pacemaker, a number that will likely grow as our population ages.*

Pacemaker batteries have an average lifespan of five to eight years—and changing them requires surgery. Using smart materials that transform vibrations into energy, Armaghan Salehian (Engineering) is aiming to make those batteries last longer and reduce the number of surgeries patients need.

A pacemaker is a lifesaver, but patients who use them risk their lives in surgery every time a pacemaker's battery runs down—about every eight years. Young patients may go under the knife for a battery change as many as 10 times in their lifetimes. Armaghan Salehian is developing a way to make those batteries last longer. Using a range of smart materials, Salehian and her team have designed wideband hybrid energy harvesters to help prolong battery life and reduce the number of open heart surgeries for these patients.

There are an estimated nine million new cases of tuberculosis every year, but three million of them are never diagnosed.*

Karim Karim (Electrical and Computer Engineering) has developed a portable x-ray system that makes diagnosis more accessible to low-income countries.

Tuberculosis is curable, but it's still the second greatest killer disease in the world. That's because over 95 per cent of deaths occur in low- to middle-income countries, where diagnosis and treatment are harder to access.* For over a decade, Karim Karim has been working to develop a low-cost, portable digital X-ray system that dramatically reduces the cost of X-ray diagnosis. Now, Karim is completing an engineering prototype and is launching a social venture startup to fund the final stages of development. See more at www.pneumavision.com.

Demand for medical laboratory tests rose 180 per cent between 1996 and 2011.*

A palm-sized piece of plastic may someday provide your medical test results. Carolyn Ren (Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering) is developing a “lab-on-a-chip” that can process multiple laboratory tests at once, faster than traditional labs.

Carolyn Ren and her team are working to fit whole laboratory test processes on a single piece of glass the size of your palm. Her lab-on-a-chip uses nanoliter-sized drops, generated through tiny channels on the chip's surface, to run chemical and biological tests. It saves time over traditional methods by running multiple processes at once, saves thousands of dollars on the expensive chemical agents that current tests use, and requires smaller samples to produce results. This transformative technology means quicker results from your doctor (and maybe fewer needles), the faster and cheaper development of new drugs, and much greater access to medical testing in low- and middle-income countries.

It's estimated that about 50,000 Canadians will suffer a stroke each year—that's one every 10 minutes*

With just Google Earth Street View and an exercise bike, Bill McIlroy (Kinesiology) works stroke patients' bodies and brains by taking them on virtual tours.

It's estimated that one in seven men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.*

Using a new mix of signals, Alex Wong (Engineering) has developed a form of MRI that can detect previously undetectable prostate tumours.

Half of the seniors who break a hip will never regain full function; one in five will die within the year.*

Andrew Laing (Kinesiology) is running clinical trials on a new kind of flooring that flexes to absorb the impact of falls—ideal for long-term care facilities.

For seniors, a broken hip from a fall can mean a huge reduction in the quality of life, even after recovery. Andrew Laing is developing specialized flooring that flexes to absorb the impact of a fall, reducing the risk of injury—but is still rigid enough to perform daily tasks on. Laing is currently putting this type of flooring through clinical trials at a long-term care facility in British Columbia.

One in 2500 infants have craniosynostosis, the premature fusion of skull bones, which can lead to brain development problems and facial deformities.*

Bringing math and medicine together, Andre Linhares (Math) runs algorithms that help surgeons determine the best way to repair facial deformities in children with craniosynostosis.

Surgeons at Toronto's SickKids Hospital are working with PhD candidate Andre Linhares on a project to determine the best way to repair facial deformities in children. In the past, these doctors have relied on years of experience to choose the best placement for surgical incisions. Now, they combine those skills with algorithms that Linhares runs to determine best placement—and the results have been transformative. Linhares hopes to expand the program's use to other types of surgery.

Current medical databases rely on text descriptions to generate search results—not ideal for image retrieval.

Using a new kind of search technique not driven by keywords or metadata, Hamid Tizhoosh (Systems Design Engineering) is developing image retrieval technologies that can rapidly yield search results from a vast field of visual information.

Suppose you're a doctor treating an unusual case of breast cancer. You'd like to find images of similar cancers, and consult with other doctors about the treatment they used for those cases. Huge databases of such images exist. But capturing a medical image's qualities in words—your search terms—is generally fruitless work. Hamid Tizhoosh and his team are developing advanced image retrieval technologies that can use image recognition to search a database from multiple, opposing points of reference, covering a vast search field rapidly. The result will be a genuinely visual search that will work quickly and effectively, saving time, money, and lives.

Over a lifetime, voice disorders affect around 30 per cent of the population and up to 60 per cent of teachers.*

Sean D. Peterson (Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering) is creating mechanical models of vocal fold motions that may someday help surgeons personalize treatment plans using a replica of each patient's own vocal cords.

Losing the ability to speak can be devastating: polyps, vocal fold paralysis, and neurological disorders can all have an adverse effect on speech. Sean D. Peterson studies the mechanics of vocal fold vibrations and is working to develop mathematical models of vocal fold motions. These models can be altered to mimic an individual patient's vocal folds. The long-term goal is to use these personalized models to help surgeons plan treatment that will maximize each patient's recovery potential.

The leading cause of job-related disability in the U.S. is lower back pain.*

Whether you sit or stand at work, a study being run by Clark Dickerson (Kinesiology) and Jack Callaghan (Kinesiology) will have something to tell you about your posture's effects on your back, shoulders, and knees.

Do you sit or stand to work? Which would be better for you in the long run? Clark Dickerson and Jack Callaghan are collaborating with Teknion Seating Systems and Taylor'd Ergonomics to run an extensive laboratory study of sitting or standing's different effects, not only on your back, but also on your shoulders and knees. A broad range of sectors will be covered in the study, including office work and light materials handling such as assembly line or warehouse work. With support from Ontario's Ministry of Labour, their hope is to help businesses across Ontario design workplaces that prevent pain and injury in their workers.