Researchers today unveiled results from a new blood test to help identify which patients are at an elevated risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The findings showed that the biochip test, which allows multiple tests to be run on one blood sample, was as accurate as existing molecular tests that analyse DNA.
‘This is the first time that we have used this biochip technology to test for an increased risk of Alzheimer’s disease,’ said Emma C. Harte, PhD, a research scientist. ‘This type of testing is important in our quest to understand and diagnose Alzheimer’s and empower patients to understand risks, consider medication, and even make early lifestyle changes.’
This test detects the presence of a protein in the blood produced by a specific variation of the apolipoprotein gene (ApoE4), which is associated with increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. The apolipoprotein gene is inherited from each parent and when a patient inherits the ApoE4 variant from one parent they have a three times greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, whereas a patient who inherits ApoE4 from both parents is eight-to-12 times more likely to develop the disease.
To verify the accuracy of the biochip test, 384 samples were analysed and results compared to those from a standard molecular diagnostic test. Researchers from Randox Laboratories collaborated with research colleagues at the Medical University of Vienna and found that results from the two tests were in 100percent agreement. As biochip tests allow clinicians and researchers to quickly run multiple tests on one sample of blood, this new test is also faster and more affordable than the standard DNA test, producing results in only three hours. This enables doctors to predict the risk of an individual developing Alzheimer’s disease.
‘Pairing this test with medical and family history for risk of Alzheimer’s disease has the real potential to advance personalized medicine,’ said Harte. ‘This fast, accurate testing will allow doctors and patients to make more informed choices earlier to potentially slow the possible progress of Alzheimer’s.’

AACC http://tinyurl.com/zeamaf2

A team led by electrical engineer Krishna Shenoy developed technology that detects brain signals to move a cursor. Animals trained to copy text using the technology were able to type at a rate of up to 12 words per minute.
That technology, developed by Stanford Bio-X scientists Krishna Shenoy, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford, and postdoctoral fellow Paul Nuyujukian, directly reads brain signals to drive a cursor moving over a keyboard. In an experiment conducted with monkeys, the animals were able to transcribe passages from the New York Times and Hamlet at a rate of up to 12 words per minute.

Earlier versions of the technology have already been tested successfully in people with paralysis, but the typing was slow and imprecise. This latest work tests improvements to the speed and accuracy of the technology that interprets brain signals and drives the cursor.

‘Our results demonstrate that this interface may have great promise for use in people,’ said Nuyujukian, who will join Stanford faculty as an assistant professor of bioengineering in 2017. ‘It enables a typing rate sufficient for a meaningful conversation.’

Other approaches for helping people with movement disabilities type involve tracking eye movements or, as in the case of Stephen Hawking, tracking movements of individual muscles in the face. However, these have limitations, and can require a degree of muscle control that might be difficult for some people. For example, Hawking wasn’t able to use eye-tracking software due to drooping eyelids and other people find eye-tracking technology tiring.

Directly reading brain signals could overcome some of these challenges and provide a way for people to communicate their thoughts and emotions.

The technology developed by the Stanford team involves a multi-electrode array implanted in the brain to directly read signals from a region that ordinarily directs hand and arm movements used to move a computer mouse.

It’s the algorithms for translating those signals and making letter selections that the team members have been improving. They had tested individual components of the updated technology in prior monkey studies but had never demonstrated the combined improvements in typing speed and accuracy.

‘The interface we tested is exactly what a human would use,’ Nuyujukian said. ‘What we had never quantified before was the typing rate that could be achieved.’ Using these high-performing algorithms developed by Nuyujukian and his colleagues, the animals could type more than three times faster than with earlier approaches.

The monkeys testing the technology had been trained to type letters corresponding to what they see on a screen. For this study, the animals transcribed passages of New York Times articles or, in one example, Hamlet. The results show that the technology allows a monkey to type with only its thoughts at a rate of up to 12 words per minute.

People using this system would likely type more slowly, the researchers said, while they think about what they want to communicate or how to spell words. People might also be in more distracting environments and in some cases could have additional impairments that slow the ultimate communication rate.

‘What we cannot quantify is the cognitive load of figuring out what words you are trying to say,’ Nuyujukian said.

Despite that, Nuyujukian said even a rate lower than the 12 words per minute achieved by monkeys would be a significant advance for people who aren’t otherwise able to communicate effectively or reliably.

Stanford University news.stanford.edu/2016/09/12/typing-brain-sensing-technology/

In the operating room of the future, robots will be an integral part of the surgical team, working alongside human surgeons to make surgeries safer, faster and more precise. Engineers in Michael Yip’s lab at UC San Diego are developing advanced robotic systems to help make that vision a reality.

From intelligent algorithms that can enable robots to lend a helping hand during surgery, to ‘smart’ endoscopes that can autonomously maneuver through sensitive nooks and crannies inside the body, the robotics technologies in Yip’s lab are all inspired by a common goal: to augment the capabilities of surgeons.

The goal is not to replace human surgeons, but to better assist and enable them to do much more, said Yip, a professor of electrical engineering. Human surgeons, he explained, are still needed to make decisions that can’t be left to a robot, such as what treatment is best for the patient, or how a surgical procedure should be performed.

Meanwhile, robots will be used to perform tasks that humans cannot. For example, flexible and dexterous robots armed with high-power computing and sub-millimeter precision will be able to perform minimally invasive surgery, control complex instruments and navigate through spaces in the body that a human surgeon can’t access. These robots could perform other advanced tasks, such as creating real-time 3D maps inside the body as they self-navigate, relying on a patient’s medical data and imaging information.

This vision illustrates the idea of ‘Shared Autonomy,’ the theme of the most recent UC San Diego Contextual Robotics Institute Forum held on campus during October. In an age of increasing automation, researchers in the institute, such as Yip, are focused on developing robotic systems that can interact well in a human world and benefit society.

The da Vinci Surgical System is a robotic surgical system designed to perform minimally invasive surgery. The system, developed by the company Intuitive Surgical, is remotely controlled by a surgeon from a console. The system is equipped with four robotic arms, but a surgeon is able to control only two of them at a time. Yip’s ARCLab currently has a full da Vinci Surgical System dedicated for research in shared autonomy.

Yip’s team aims to put the other two arms to work. To do this, they are creating software and hardware that will enable these arms to function autonomously. A goal is to have these robotic arms assist the primary surgeon with routine surgical tasks (suction, irrigation or pulling tissue back) that are tedious and are currently performed by additional human surgeons.

‘This would reduce the number of surgeons in the operating room, which would reduce the overall cost of the surgery,’ said Nikhil Das, an electrical engineering Ph.D. student in Yip’s lab. It would also free up surgeons who normally do these tasks to see other patients, he added.

Das develops motion planning algorithms that will enable the auxiliary arms to move without hitting obstacles, such as the surgeon-controlled manipulator arms. He is working on this project with undergraduate student Naman Gupta, who is visiting from Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, India. Gupta implements these algorithms in a simulated da Vinci system’s robotic arm and is in the process of validating his approach before moving it onto the ARCLab’s da Vinci system.

Other students in the ARCLab are incorporating haptics into the system so that surgeons operating the robotic arms can recover the textures and sensations of feeling the tissues, a critical sensation missing in current systems.

‘We’re trying to close the gap between the surgeon and the robot,’ Das said.

To reach truly small scales, the ARCLab is developing its own robotic catheters. These catheters are meter-long, millimeter-diameter flexible robots that can access the deepest parts of the body from atraumatic locations such as the leg. With 8 wires that are individually controlled by 8 different motors, Yip’s lab can shape and steer the robot catheters in more complex configurations and navigate far more effectively than surgeons could do manually.

One goal is to automate the catheter and incorporate haptic controls so that the operator can receive feedback from the motors. ‘That’s what makes our catheter different from the steerable catheters in industry,’ said Aaron Gunn, a mechanical engineering undergraduate working on this project.

University of California San Diego ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/feature/engineers_developing_advanced_robotic_systems_that_will_become_surgeons

Many people who experience chest pain, but don’t have a heart attack, breathe a big sigh of relief when a stress test comes back negative for blockages in their blood vessels. But a new study by cardiac researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City found they may not be off the hook after all.

Researchers studied 658 men and women between the ages of 57 and 77 who passed a stress test for blocked arteries and who were later found to have calcium in their arteries after being screened by imaging technology that measured their total coronary artery calcification.

They found that five percent of patients who passed their stress test and later tested high for calcium in their arteries – 31 of 658 patients – went on to have an adverse cardiac event within one year. Such events included death, heart attack and stroke.

Researchers say there is something more doctors can do to assess a patient’s risk of future heart attack: check the calcium – a sign of plaque build-up – in a patient’s arteries.

‘We now have the ability to better measure coronary artery calcification,’ says Viet Le, MPAS, PA-C, lead author of the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute study.

‘People say, I’m good. They gave me a stress test,” said Le. ‘But it doesn’t tell the whole story. The story it tells is that on that day your engine – your heart – passed the test. Some of these people die within a year from a heart attack.’

Cardiac experts have known for years that calcium left by plaque is a good marker of heart disease, but there was not good imaging technology to measure it without exposing the patient to too much radiation, Le said. That changed about five years ago.

PET/CT, an advanced nuclear imaging technology that combines positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT) in one machine, allows physicians doing a chemical stress test to also measure coronary artery calcification.

Calcification cannot be reversed, but the plaque that causes it can be reduced or stabilized with proper medication, diet and exercise.

Researchers found that 33 patients in the study, or five percent, had no or mild calcification, and they had no cardiac events. But there was a significant correlation between the amount of calcium and the occurrence of cardiac events in the remainder of the patients.

Twelve of 309 (3.88 percent) patients with moderate calcification had a cardiac event within a year, 10 of 190 (5.26 percent) with severe calcification had a cardiac event within a year, and nine of 126 (7.14 percent) with very severe calcification had a cardiac event within a year. In total, 16.28 percent of calcified patients in the study had a heart event.

The results confirmed for Le the value of assessing calcification in patients suspected of having clogged arteries.

‘Right now, it’s a neglected tool that should better be utilized,’ he said.

Intermountain Healthcare intermountainhealthcare.org/news/2016/11/cardiac-pet-ct-imaging-effective-calcium-blockage-assessing-heart-attack-risk/