2024 Biomedical Engineering Capstone Designs

CareQueue enhances the current microphone system used in hospitals to place patient requests. With automatic speech to text detection, it categorizes and prioritizes requests, allowing nurses and clinicians to attend more urgent requests first and manage all patient needs in a timely manner.

Concussions are a common occurrence in full-contact varsity sports, and their lack of detection poses significant risks to the well-being of athletes, team dynamics, and the integrity of the University's athletic program. PACE aims to enhance current on-field concussion detection protocols through providing additional individualized, supplementary data to athletic therapists. Through leveraging neurocognitive assessments and gait analysis technologies, PACE is able to detect deviations from an athlete's baseline walking pattern and neurocognitive function to facilitate more informed on-field decision-making processes.

Canada Africa Community Health Alliance (CACHA), our Capstone partner, is a nonprofit organization that sends volunteer doctors and pharmacists to provide healthcare through clinics in rural communities of Tanzanian and Uganda. Their largest concerns are patient identification and communication with low medical illiteracy patients resulting in drug non-adherence. The CACHA Clinic Manager (CCM) is a full system solution with three components: (1) a biometrics-integrated patient identification system, (2) secure medical records keeping, (3) culturally sensitive translated labeling. This solution aims to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of CACHA clinics operations, and ultimately save lives.

Over 3 million people suffer from kidney failure worldwide and require weekly hemodialysis treatment to live a healthy lifestyle. One of the biggest complications that arise during hemodialysis treatment is stenosis (vessel thinning), which can lead to life threatening issues such as thrombosis. VeinGuard uses a non-invasive approach to monitor blood flow overtime for early stenosis detection. 

Home exercise adherence is a critical factor in the success of rehabilitation, which is a considerable challenge for conventional physiotherapy interventions. ROMET (Range of Motion Exercise Tracker) is a system to be used by acute wrist fracture patients and medical professionals to digitally monitor rehabilitation progress while performing range of motion exercises. The goal is to increase adherence through completing prescribed exercises remotely without negatively impacting expected recovery duration and outcome. This will optimize the recovery outcomes through the improved patient adherence while positively contributing to the efficient allocation of healthcare resources.

One of the most common knee injuries during physical activity are ACL tears. Pre-operative rehabilitation for these injuries is often neglected despite their time-reducing impact on surgical outcomes and recovery. We propose a take-home knee brace capable of measuring range of motion and hamstrings-to-quadriceps muscle strength ratio, to increase the efficiency of pre-operative physiotherapy sessions. The patient will independently perform knee flexion and extension, enabling the smart knee brace to measure and sync data with our online platform, allowing the physiotherapist to monitor patient progression.

REM Behaviour Disorder (RBD) is thought to be an early form of neurodegenerative disease (NDD) as the vast majority of RBD patients eventually develop an NDD. Early identification of NDD is likely to enable treatment advances and lead to better long-term outcomes. In Canada, access to sleep clinics and neurologists, both essential in RBD diagnosis, is limited. SleepSentry is an at-home sleep monitoring system that records overnight EEG and movement data and highlights signal regions of concern to aid physicians in interpretation.

Despite impressive advances in the control of modern myoelectric prosthetic devices, the current lack of sensory feedback remains a challenge, often cited as the primary cause of user dissatisfaction and device abandonment. SATURN aims to improve users' ability to interact with objects in their surrounding environment by sensing force at the fingertips and delivering pressure information to the user's phantom hand map via inflatable air bladders placed inside the socket. SATURN incorporates customized design elements, and is compatible with a range of prosthetic devices.

Gait training exercises involving wheelchairs in long-term care facilities are dangerous for both patients and healthcare staff; the worker must simultaneously hold the wheelchair and support an ambulating resident, which can increase the risk of falls. ADAPT (Automated Device for Assisting Physical Therapy) is a device that attaches to the back of a wheelchair and pushes it behind a walking resident, freeing up the hands of the staff member and making the exercise safer for everyone involved.

Peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) lines are misused by patients with a history of drug dependency. PICC misuse causes a higher risk of contamination, an increased likelihood of hospital readmission, the risk of developing endocarditis, and can lead to drug overdose. Our solution consists of a lockable small box enclosing the PICC line which can be unlocked with a unique key. Our team designed an innovative locking mechanism to increase the tamper resistance and lockability of the device to prevent unauthorized patient access.

"Medication non-adherence can act as a barrier to successful long-term treatment, resulting in an increased mortality rate and an increased burden on the healthcare system. However, pharmacists currently rely on patient self-reporting and prescription refill dates to determine a patient's adherence. AdhereRx is a tool that provides quantitative medication intake data to pharmacists. With this data, pharmacists can identify trends and provide more tailored counseling. As a result, they can alter the medication regimen to better fit the patient's needs. 

Engagement in sports is essential for physical, mental, and social well-being. Triathlon, a popular cross-training activity consisting of swimming, cycling, and running, can be challenging for below-knee amputees to participate in as all three sports require different device needs. We designed a device that attaches onto a running prosthetic and allows it to be used for biking. In this way, we address the disproportionate amount of time and effort taken for below-knee amputees to transition between events in triathlons in a safe and effective manner.

Physiotherapists are looking for methods of acquiring more quantitative information about the progress of their patients' treatments. For patients with knee osteoarthritis, ArthroSync serves as a wearable device that measures clinically relevant metrics, such as joint angle and speed, as well as collecting information and providing feedback on form, to both relay information to the physiotherapist and help patients receive more personalized and accurate care.

Mismanaged post-operative pain management in infants is detrimental to long-term development. The PainSightAI team is dedicated to revolutionizing infant pain assessment by developing an AI-powered device aiming to replace subjective and time-consuming methods.  Using the Neonatal Facial Coding System (NFCS), we assess key facial cues such as brow bulge and nasolabial folds to provide objective pain values on a 0-9 scale. Combined with a custom-designed mounting device, we envision our solution being used in a variety of pediatric settings. 

Organ transplantation is a surgical procedure that involves replacing a failed organ in the recipient with a healthy donor organ. The current standard of organ preservation during transit involves storing them in ice boxes, which threatens organ viability due to cold injury. To maximize viability, we have developed a temperature-regulated transport device for kidneys that actively maintains an internal temperature at the safest temperature range (4-8°C) for up to 24 hours.

Developing a mobile application that integrates computer vision, LiDAR, and machine learning technologies to offer individuals with visual impairment real-time feedback on outdoor obstacles. This application will identify the type of obstacle, measure its distance from the user, and track the obstacle's direction if it's moving. Designed to complement traditional navigation aids like guide dogs and white canes, this solution aims to enhance route decision-making and boosts user confidence and independence in outdoor navigation.

The PressurePro team has developed a system for pressure ulcer reducing air-filled cushions used by manual wheelchair users with complete spinal cord injuries. This system integrates into the standard four quadrant ROHOtm air cushion, prescribed to high-risk patients. To effectively mitigate pressure ulcers, the cushion must maintain an ideal internal pressure set by an occupational therapist. The objectives of this device include eliminating daily manual pressure checks, automating cushion inflation/deflation, and alerting users to detected leaks for more effective repairs.

Alcohol withdrawal syndrome is a life-threatening condition for which tremors are one of the key indicators. Currently, practitioners indicate a patient's tremor severity on a seven-point scale based on their personal interpretation and experience, which can wrongly inform treatment and lead to unnecessary benzodiazepine prophylaxis. Quantrem is a wearable device that takes postural tremor frequency readings at the hand and reports the associated severity and trends on a streamlined interface. The goal of Quantrem is to minimize score inconsistencies for improved withdrawal management by better informing practitioners.

In the last decade, skin and subcutaneous disorders accounted for the fourth leading cause of nonfatal disease burden globally. Given the severe shortage of dermatologists nationwide, patients often suffer long wait times and delayed care. Most Canadians regularly visit their family doctors yet the doctors often lack the expertise to confidently diagnose skin lesions. Skin Lesion AI (SLAI) is a cross-platform AI case-retrieval system that will allow family doctors to accurately screen skin lesions in a timely manner.

With over 50 000 Canadians affected by brain tumours each year and a 5-year survival rate of 35%, it is important to provide patients reliable information on their diagnosis. However, due the wide range of treatments, potential side effects, tumour heterogeneity, and mental burden, developing a holistic understanding of treatment plans is difficult. Thus, NeuroMap aims to streamline this process by using segmentation as a tool to classify and visualise tumours, while promoting patient understanding by providing personalized educational information.