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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1986

Low-Flammability PTFE for High-Oxygen Environments

Modified forming process removes volatile combustible materials. Flammability of cable-wrapping tape reduced by altering tape-manufacturing process. In new manufacturing process, tape formed by proprietary process of screw extrusion, followed by washing in solvent and drying. Tape then wrapped as before. Spectrogram taken after extrusion, washing, and drying shows lower hydrocarbon content. PTFE formed by new process suited to oxygen-rich environments. Safe in liquid oxygen of Space Shuttle tank and in medical uses; thin-wall shrinkable tubing in hospital test equipment, surgical instruments, and implants.

Walle, E.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Influence of simulated weightlessness on maximal oxygen uptake of untrained rats

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of hindlimb suspension on maximal oxygen uptake of rodents. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were assigned to head-down (HD) suspension, horizontal (HOZ) suspension, or cage (C) control for 6-9 days. Rats were tested for maximal oxygen uptake before and after surgical instrumentation (Doppler flow probes, carotid and jugular cannulae), and after suspension. Body weight was significantly decreased after suspension in both HD and HOZ groups, but was significantly increased in the C group. Absolute maximal O2 uptake (ml/min) was not different in the C group. However, because of their increased weight, relative maximal O2 uptake (ml/min per kg) was significantly reduced. In contrast, both relative and absolute maximal O2 uptake were significantly lower, following suspension, for the HD and HOZ groups. These preliminary results support the use of hindlimb suspension as an effective model to study the mechanism(s) of cardiovascular deconditioning.

Overton, J. Michael↗
NASA NTRS1997

Robotic Assisted Microsurgery - RAMS FY'97

JPL and Microdexterity Systems collaborated to develop new surgical capabilities. They developed a Robot Assisted Microsurgery (RAM) tool for surgeons to use for operating on the eye, ear, brain, and blood vessels with unprecedented dexterity. A surgeon can hold the surgical instrument with motions of 6 degrees of freedom with an accuracy of 25 microns in a 70 cu cm workspace. In 1996 a demonstration was performed to remove a microscopic particle from a simulated eyeball. In 1997, tests were performed at UCLA to compare telerobotics with mechanical operations. In 5 out of 7 tests, the RAM tool performed with a significant improvement of preciseness over mechanical operation. New design features include: (1) amplified forced feedback; (2) simultaneous slave robot instrumentation; (3) index control switch on master handle; and (4) tool control switches. Upgrades include: (1) increase in computational power; and (2) installation of hard disk memory storage device for independent operation and independent operation of forceps. In 1997 a final demonstration was performed using 2 telerobotics simultaneously in a microsurgery suture procedure to close a slit in a thin sheet of latex rubber which extended the capabilities of microsurgery procedures. After completing trials and demonstrations for the FDA the potential benefits for thousands of operations will be exposed.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2001

Teeing Off With an Entirely New Material

Liquidmetal(R) alloy is part of an entirely new class of vitrified metals, and is also known as metallic glass, or Vitreloy(R). A vitrified metal is a frozen liquid that fails to crystallize during solidification, unlike common metals such as titanium, steel, and aluminum. The technology takes the non-crystalline structure of glass and combines it with the properties of metal, a combination not found in nature, allowing for a product that offers the strength of a metal with the elasticity of a polymer. This unique technology is more than twice as strong as titanium and has a higher elastic limit. Liquidmetal(R) Golf presents this space-age development in a complete line golf clubs. Clubs made with this technology have a lower vibration response along with a softer, more solid feel. Because less energy is absorbed by the club's head upon impact, more energy is transferred directly to the ball. Vitreloy has potential commercial uses in sporting equipment: tennis rackets, bicycle frames, and baseball bats. The material may find applications in the medical industry for the manufacturing of surgical instruments and prosthetics. The Liquidmetal alloy is projected to replace many high performance materials, such as titanium, in the industries of aerospace, defense, military, automotives, medical instrumentation, and sporting goods

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1997

Gold Coating

Epner Technology Inc. responded to a need from Goddard Space Flight Center for the ultimate in electroplated reflectivity needed for the Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA). Made of beryllium, the MOLA mirror was coated by Epner Technology Laser Gold process, specially improved for the project. Improved Laser Gold- coated reflectors have found use in an epitaxial reactor built for a large semiconductor manufacturer as well as the waveguide in Braun-Thermoscan tympanic thermometer and lasing cavities in various surgical instruments.

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NASA NTRS1998

Effects of 12 days exposure to simulated microgravity on central circulatory hemodynamics in the rhesus monkey

Central circulatory hemodynamic responses were measured before and during the initial 9 days of a 12-day 10 degrees head-down tilt (HDT) in 4 flight-sized juvenile rhesus monkeys who were surgically instrumented with a variety of intrathoracic catheters and blood flow sensors to assess the effects of simulated microgravity on central circulatory hemodynamics. Each subject underwent measurements of aortic and left ventricular pressures, and aortic flow before and during HDT as well as during a passive head-up postural test before and after HDT. Heart rate, stroke volume, cardiac output, and left ventricular end-diastolic pressure were measured, and dP/dt and left ventricular elastance was calculated from hemodynamic measurements. The postural test consisted of 5 min of supine baseline control followed by 5 minutes of 90 degrees upright tilt (HUT). Heart rate, stroke volume, cardiac output, and left ventricular end-diastolic pressure showed no consistent alterations during HDT. Left ventricular elastance was reduced in all animals throughout HDT, indicating that cardiac compliance was increased. HDT did not consistently alter left ventricular +dP/dt, indicating no change in cardiac contractility. Heart rate during the post-HDT HUT postural test was elevated compared to pre-HDT while post-HDT cardiac output was decreased by 52% as a result of a 54% reduction in stroke volume throughout HUT. Results from this study using an instrumented rhesus monkey suggest that exposure to microgravity may increase ventricular compliance without alternating cardiac contractility. Our project supported the notion that an invasively-instrumented animal model should be viable for use in spaceflight cardiovascular experiments to assess potential changes in myocardial function and cardiac compliance.

NASA Discipline Cardiopulmonary↗
NASA NTRS2006

The Validation of Vapor Phase Hydrogen Peroxide Microbial Reduction for Planetary Protection and a Proposed Vacuum Process Specification

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in conjunction with the NASA Planetary Protection Officer, has selected the vapor phase hydrogen peroxide sterilization process for continued development as a NASA approved sterilization technique for spacecraft subsystems and systems. The goal is to include this technique, with an appropriate specification, in NPR 8020.12C as a low temperature complementary technique to the dry heat sterilization process.To meet microbial reduction requirements for all Mars in-situ life detection and sample return missions, various planetary spacecraft subsystems will have to be exposed to a qualified sterilization process. This process could be the elevated temperature dry heat sterilization process (~115 C for 40 hours) which was used to sterilize the Viking lander spacecraft. However, with utilization of such elements as highly sophisticated electronics and sensors in modern spacecraft, this process presents significant materials challenges and is thus an undesirable bioburden reduction method to design engineers. The objective of this work is to introduce vapor hydrogen peroxide (VHP) as an alternative to dry heat microbial reduction to meet planetary protection requirements.The VHP process is widely used by the medical industry to sterilize surgical instruments and biomedical devices, but high doses of VHP may degrade the performance of flight hardware, or compromise material properties. Our goal for this study was to determine the minimum VHP process conditions to achieve microbial reduction levels acceptable for planetary protection.

planetary protection↗
NASA NTRS1977

Tissue macerating instrument

A surgical tissue macerating and removal tool is described which has a rotating rod with a cutting member at one end and which disposed in a tube which is then contained in an extension of the tool handle. A frusto-conical member extends into the extension at the cutter member end of the rotating rod with its small end engaging the tube. The portion of the frusto-conical member outside of the extension forms a tissue engaging member and may be cut-off at an angle to the axis of the rod to form a tissue engaging edge. Apertures are provided in the extension adjacent the frusto-concial member so that treatment fluid supplied in the annular space between the tube and the extension may flow to the operative site. An aperture is provided in the frustoconical member between the extension and the tube so that fluid may also flow into the tube where it mixes with macerated tissue being directed through an aperture in the tube to a passageway which may have suction applied to help remove macerated material.

Baehr, E. F.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Surgical Borescopes Remove Contaminants

Borescope instruments put to use in extracting hard-to-reach particles. Surgical instruments in flexible borescopes used for removing contaminant particles from normally inaccessible places within equipment. Instruments readily enter small openings, turn corners, and reach far.

Vallow, K.↗
NASA NTRS1961

Methods for Determining Blood Flow Through Intact Vessels of Experimental Animals Under Conditions of Gravitational Stress and in Extraterrestrial Space Capsules

Work during the initial six months of this program has proceeded along three lines: (1) technical development of blood flowmeter instrumentation: (2) surgical considerations related to special problems of chronic implantation of flowmeter probes: (3) study of the relationship between levels of blood flow and organ activity. Principal engineering effort has been focused on the fundamental phenomena operative in the flowmeter probe and on probe design. Two probes have been constructed and a third is nearing completion. A previously unrecognized source of zero drift has been discovered and corrected. has been designed, assembled, tested and successfully employed in work on the several probes. A significant innovation which has been introduced is the use of a transformer coupled input for suppression of unwanted common mode signals. New low noise transistor amplifiers with characteristics suitable for space vehicle packaging are being developed. Linearity of the present apparatus has been found to extend at least into the near turbulent flow region. Attention has been directed to the two vascular beds of physiologic interest that present particular problems with regard to chronic implantation of flowmeter probes, the myocardium and the liver. Surgical techniques have been perfected that will permit myocardial and liver blood flow measurement. Two groups of animals have successfully undergone surgery and await the implantation of probes. Studies of the relationship between organ blood flow and levels of physiologic activity have been initiated. The first organ system studied was the heart, For the first time autoregulatory mechanisms have been demonstrated within the myocardial vascular bed which rapidly and precisely maintain coronary blood flow at a level i n keeping with the magnitude of cardiac work, Following a summary statement of the status of the program, the work performed is described, A financial review of expenditures incurred and a proposal for future funding are appended,

Shaw, R. F.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Generalized interactions using virtual tools within the spring framework: cutting

We present schemes for real-time generalized mesh cutting. Starting with the a basic example, we describe the details of implementing cutting on single and multiple surface objects as well as hybrid and volumetric meshes using virtual tools with single and multiple cutting surfaces. These methods have been implemented in a robust surgical simulation environment allowing us to model procedures ranging from animal dissection to cleft lip correction.

Feedback↗
NASA NTRS1977

Corneal seal device

A corneal seal device is provided which, when placed in an incision in the eye, permits the insertion of a surgical tool or instrument through the device into the eye. The device includes a seal chamber which opens into a tube which is adapted to be sutured to the eye and serves as an entry passage for a tool. A sealable aperture in the chamber permits passage of the tool through the chamber into the tube and hence into the eye. The chamber includes inlet ports adapted to be connected to a regulated source of irrigation fluid which provides a safe intraocular pressure.

Baehr, E. F.↗
DOE OSTI2023

CholecTriplet2021: A benchmark challenge for surgical action triplet recognition

Context-aware decision support in the operating room can foster surgical safety and efficiency by leveraging real-time feedback from surgical workflow analysis. Most existing works recognize surgical activities at a coarse-grained level, such as phases, steps or events, leaving out fine-grained interaction details about the surgical activity; yet those are needed for more helpful AI assistance in the operating room. Recognizing surgical actions as triplets of ‹ instrument, verb, target › combination delivers more comprehensive details about the activities taking place in surgical videos. This paper presents CholecTriplet2021: an endoscopic vision challenge organized at MICCAI 2021 for the recognition of surgical action triplets in laparoscopic videos. Here, the challenge granted private access to the large-scale CholecT50 dataset, which is annotated with action triplet information. In this paper, we present the challenge setup and the assessment of the state-of-the-art deep learning methods proposed by the participants during the challenge. Here, a total of 4 baseline methods from the challenge organizers and 19 new deep learning algorithms from the competing teams are presented to recognize surgical action triplets directly from surgical videos, achieving mean average precision (mAP) ranging from 4.2% to 38.1%. This study also analyzes the significance of the results obtained by the presented approaches, performs a thorough methodological comparison between them, in-depth result analysis, and proposes a novel ensemble method for enhanced recognition. Our analysis shows that surgical workflow analysis is not yet solved, and also highlights interesting directions for future research on fine-grained surgical activity recognition which is of utmost importance for the development of AI in surgery.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Optics-Free Chip-Scale Intraoperative Imaging Using NIR-Excited Upconverting Nanoparticles

Here we present an optics-free CMOS image sensor that incorporates a novel time-gated dual-photodiode pixel design to allow filter- and lens-less image acquisition of near-infrared-excited (NIR-excited) upconverting nanoparticles. Recent biomedical advances have highlighted the benefits of NIR excitation, but NIR interaction with silicon has remained a challenge, even with high-performance optical blocking filters. Using a secondary diode and a dual-photodiode design, this sensor is able to remove the 100s of mV of NIR background on pixels and bring it down to single-digit mV level, nearing its noise floor of 2.2 mV rms, not achievable with any optical filter. Non-linear effects of background cancellation using the diode pair has been mitigated using an initial one-time pixel-level curve fitting and calibration in a post-processing setting. This imager comprises a highly linear 11 fF metal-oxide-metal (MOM) capacitor and includes integrated angle-selective gratings to reject oblique light and enhance sharpness. Each pixel also includes two distinct correlated double sampling schemes, to remove low frequency flicker noise and systematic offset in the datapath. We demonstrate the performance of this imager using pulsed NIR-excited upconverting nanoparticles on standard United-States-Air-Force (USAF) resolution targets and achieve an SNR of 15 dB, while keeping NIR background below 6 mV. This 36-by-80-pixel array measures only 2.3 mm by 4.8 mm and can be thinned down to 25 µm, allowing it to become surgically compatible with intraoperative instruments and equipment, while remaining optics-free.

42 ENGINEERING↗
NASA NTRS2000

High Resolution Multimode Fiber Image Recovery

The research emphasis is on developing a cost-effective method of recovering image information from small, closely confined spaces using multimode fibers. The state-of-the-art good quality-viewing fiber, which can currently be used for performing this function, is a 0.5 mm diameter bundle containing 6000 pixels at a cost of $10,000 per fiber bundle. However, these fiber bundles are very fragile and can easily break during surgical use, thereby making instrument reliability and replacement cost,a major impediment to their routine use in many applications. The advantage of working with a single multimode fiber is that it is significantly less expensive and mechanically more robust. In addition, careful choice of numerical aperture allows a higher image resolution (roughly 750,000 pixels) with a 0.5 mm diameter multimode fiber.

Jackson, Deborah↗
DOE OSTI2015

Results from the commissioning of a multi-modal endoscope for ultrasound and time of flight PET

The EndoTOFPET-US collaboration has developed a multi-modal imaging system combining Ultrasound with Time-of-Flight Positron Emission Tomography into an endoscopic imaging device. The objective of the project is to obtain a coincidence time resolution of about 200 ps FWHM and to achieve about 1 mm spatial resolution of the PET system, while integrating all the components in a very compact detector suitable for endoscopic use. This scanner aims to be exploited for diagnostic and surgical oncology, as well as being instrumental in the clinical test of new biomarkers especially targeted for prostate and pancreatic cancer. (authors)

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
NASA NTRS2015

Utilization of the NASA Robonaut as a Surgical Avatar in Telemedicine

The concept of teleoperated robotic surgery is not new; however, most of the work to date has utilized specialized robots designed for specific set of surgeries. This activity explores the use of a humanoid robot to perform surgical procedures using the same hand held instruments that a human surgeon employs. For this effort, the tele-operated Robonaut (R2) was selected due to its dexterity, its ability to perform a wide range of tasks, and its adaptability to changing environments. To evaluate this concept, a series of challenges was designed with the goal of assessing the feasibility of utilizing Robonaut as a telemedicine based surgical avatar.

Dean, Marc↗
NASA NTRS1991

Surgical force detection probe

The development progress of a precision electro-mechanical instrument which allows the detection and documentation of the forces and moment applied to human tissue during surgery (under actual operation room conditions), is reported. The pen-shaped prototype probe which measures 1/2 inch in diameter and 7 inches in length was fabricated using an aerodynamic balance. The aerodynamic balance, a standard wind tunnel force and moment sensing transducer, measures the forces and the moments transmitted through the surgeon's hand to the human tissue during surgery. The prototype probe which was fabricated as a development tool was tested successfully. The final version of the surgical force detection probe will be designed based on additional laboratory tests in order to establish the full scale loads. It is expected that the final product will require a simplified aerodynamic balance with two or three force components and one moment component with lighter full scale loads. A signal conditioner was fabricated to process and display the outputs from the prototype probe. This unit will be interfaced with a PC-based data system to provide automatic data acquisition, data processing, and graphics display. The expected overall accuracy of the probe is better than one percent full scale.

Tcheng, Ping↗