ALPHA-STEM · Advanced Laboratory Phantoms for Soft Tissues in Engineering and Medicine: ALPHA-STEM
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-10-01 → 2021-09-30
- EU contribution
- €244,269
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-GF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Advanced Laboratory Phantoms for Soft Tissues in Engineering and Medicine: ALPHA-STEM
Research has shown that the success rate in many types of surgeries is strictly related to the experience of the surgeon. However, early in their career, trainees are not given the opportunity to operate on a sufficient number of patients nor to perform an exhaustive mix of procedures. Training and technical tasks are usually practiced on cadavers, animals or using virtual simulators. However, all these alternatives present difficulties: limited availability, expensive handling and preservation processes (cadaveric training), costly set-up, etc. A potential solution is to promote the use of artificial synthetic models, also known as phantoms. Phantoms are reproduction of human parts and organs that allow the trainee to practice positioning of the anatomical structures as well as hand coordination. Unfortunately, they lack of reliable tactile feedback (e.g. palpation) and real tissue deformations which critically reduce the fidelity of the surgical training. The project’s main objective is the investigation and creation of new materials that can be used to design laboratory phantoms for surgical training. The main plan starts from the design of novel soft materials, the tuning of their mechanical capabilities (crosslinking agents, network configurations and 3D patterned structures) and finally the development of 3D phantoms of human organs and tissues. The Objectives are: To develop multicomponent natural and/or synthetic materials To investigate the capabilities of the 3D structures in enhancing the nonlinear mechanical behavior of the materials To tune the designed materials to mimic the properties of human tissues To apply the acquired know-how in the design of life-sized phantoms for medical applications and beyond
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Research has shown that the success rate in many types of surgeries is strictly related to the experience of the surgeon. However, early in their career, trainees are not given the opportunity to operate on a sufficient number of patients nor to perform an exhaustive mix of procedures. The scenario has been further worsened by the reduction of assisted training hours in Europe (since 2009) and US (since 2011). Training and technical tasks are usually practised on cadavers, animals or using virtual simulators. However, all these alternatives present difficulties: limited availability, expensive handling and preservation processes (cadaveric training), nonhuman anatomical structures (animal training), costly set-up, and doubtful skills transfer to the real operating theatre (virtual simulators). A potential solution is to promote the use of artificial synthetic models, also known as phantoms. Phantoms are reproduction of human parts and organs that allow the trainee to practice positioning of the anatomical structures as well as hand coordination. Unfortunately, they lack of reliable tactile feedback (e.g. palpation) and real tissue deformation patterns which critically reduce the fidelity of the surgical training. The main objective of this project is to overcome the present limitations by developing phantoms capable of providing detailed anatomical structures along with an accurate tactile response when performing surgical tasks such as cutting, indention and suturing. The proposed investigation is aimed at designing, making and testing synthetic advanced materials tailored to reproduce the mechanical response of different human organs and tissues (lung, brain, liver, skin, cartilage, etc.). Direct comparisons with experimental data on organic tissues and feedback from a number of experienced surgeons will be used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed solutions during this research journey towards safer surgeries.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- POLITECNICO DI MILANO · MilanoCoordinatorItaly
- PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE · CambridgeUnited States
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union