Resources

PURCHASING

See the How to Buy guide.

WRITING

Writing Resources: for writing proposals, writing literature reviews, writing theses, writing project reports and making scientific posters.

DISABILITIES

Reference resources on disabilities.

- Wikipedia disability entry is a good start.
- Disability etiquette. Booklet from United Spinal Association How to handle yourself around and how to write about persons with disabilities. Excellent, and required reading for anyone working on rehabilitation engineering research. (PDF 2.1 Mb)
- Basics of spinal cord injuries. Also Wikipedia entry on SCI with good information on rating and an excellent set of references.
- Statistics on spinal cord injuries. Another page of SCI stats.
- For general disability stats, google "disability statistics".

RESEARCH WITH HUMAN VOLUNTEERS

Many experiments in the lab collect data from human volunteers. Any experiment where data is collected from a human, even if it is an experiment where you are only collecting data using yourself as the participant, requires IRB approval. Any experiment involving humans requires that participants agree to sign a consent form that explains the experiment and the risks and benefits. The IRB process involves submitting an application and consent form to the University IRB committee for review an approval. This can take 4-6 weeks so plan accordingly. In addition to the application, all people conducting experiments must be trained in the informed consent process. The U has an on-line training procedure. Links to IRB and to training appear below. Sample IRB applications and consent documents can be obtained from Durfee.

- H/MDL Collecting Data From Human Subjects guide (link)
- Research with humans training: New student researchers must complete the CITI training course titled “Good Clinical Practice and Human Research Protections for Biomedical Study Teams—Basic Course." Instructions are here.
- Health data privacy (Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act or HIPAA) training: Some research may involve access to protected health information, in which case students must complete the (HIPAA16) HIPAA Training. Instructions are here.
- University of Minnesota IRB home page.
- IRB application forms.
- "Risks and Wrongs in Social Science Research..." by Michael Oakes, UMN. An excellent article on IRB fundamentals. Required reading. Find it here.

SAFETY

Make ours a safe lab. Know what you are doing when you handle chemicals or turn on machines. Read and understand the Mechanical Engineering Safety program.

- Mechanical Engineering Safety Program

INTEGRITY

Integrity is essential for those working in a lab. Try this interactive video for re-learning the basics.

MANAGEMENT

"Lab Management" is an on-line book covering laboratory practices. While geared to bioscience labs, it still has great information for the engineering lab.

STATISTICS

For an introduction to statistics and study design for clinical research, the online, 2 hour UMN short course, "Basic Statistics for Clinical Research", is strongly recommended.

Make your experiment design and analysis statistically sound. For introductory material, the book "Foundations of Clinical Research: Applications to Practice" by Portney and Watkins is highly recommended and is available in electronic form from the UMN library, followed by "Design and Analysis of Experiments" by Montgomery. Excel is good for simple statistical analysis. See the books "Statistics with Microsoft Excel" by Dretzke and Heilman, or "Data Analysis with Microsoft Excel" by Berk and Carey.

For comprehensive statistics, R is recommended. R is an open-source, full-featured analysis and graphing statistics package that is well respected by the statistics community. The R home page has links to many books and on-line tutorials. Some places to start are the Clarkson R Tutorial, the simpleR tutorial by Verzani.

A Google search will produce an overwhelming number of additional hits on statistics or any statistical method, including notes from college courses.

The CTSI at UMN has an excellent statistical consulting service, which includes walk-in consulting during office hours. Info is here.

For reporting statistics, see the Writing Resources section.

JOURNAL ARTICLE AND OTHER DATABASES

PubMed For anything related to medicine and bioengineering. (Access PubMed through the UMN Library for direct links to full-text articles)

Compendex Leading academic engineering database. Direct links to full-text for UMN community.

Web of Science For Citation index.

Patents. Either USPTO or Google Patents. For PDF prints, try pat2pdf

MEDICAL DEVICE DESIGN AND REHABILITATION ENGINEERING

The Standard Handbook of Biomedical Engineering and Design. Free on-line resource through the UMN Library. See chapters on medical device design and on rehabilitation engineering. Also good chapters on basic physiology.

The Biomedical Technology and Devices Handbook, another on-line resource through the UMN Library.

Overview of the FDA process

"Design and development of medical electronic instrumentation: a practical perspective of the design, construction, and test of medical devices" by David Prutchi, Michael Norris. An excellent medical device electronics text book. Chapter 7 has muscle stimulator designs. Available on-line through the UMN library

Medical device library resource page. An excellent set of vetted resources on medical device design. Developed for the UMN Medical Devices Fellows program.

FES

- FES Information Center at Case.

Get their FES Guide
- International Functional Electrical Stimulation Society (IFESS)
- Paralysis Resource Center Good source of information on Spinal Cord Injury. Order the free "Paralysis Resource Guide"
- Brief bibliography

SPINAL CORD INJURY

National Spinal Cord Injury Association

Paralyzed Veterans of America

Miami Project to Cure Paralysis

Christopher Reeve Foundation

National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center Best source of demographic data

MUSCLE

The chapter on muscle from Vander, Sherman & Luciano's Human Physiology text, one of the most widely used physiology texts in the world. The chapter is excellent. (If the link above is broken, use this: PDF 2.6 Mb)

An excellent article titled "Muscle Genes and Athletic Performance" from the 9/2000 issue of Scientific American. (PDF 364 Kb)

The Dept of Radiology at the University of Washington has an excellent upper and lower extremity Muscle Atlas with images suitable for presentations. The site has a simple and free copyright form to use the images for academic purposes.

Medline Plus has an excellent section on Muscle Disorders.

The Web Anatomy muscle site from course PSTL 1135 at the U.

An animation of Actin Mysosin Crossbridge Cycling

Identify superficial muscles. A useful site.

The Innerbody.com Human Anatomy Online.

The book Prime Mover by Steven Vogel is an excellent introduction to muscle written for a general audience.

See the NIH page on Muscular Dystrophy.

The home page for the Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Center at the U.

BIOMECHANICS

Human walking data from Winter, "The Biomechanics and Motor Control of Human Gait"

Tracker video analysis and modeling tool.

EMG

Delsys: The Delsys "Surface Electromyography: Detection and Recording" tutorial is excellent! Same with the other tutorials on the Delsys Support > Documentation > Tutorial web site. For example, the "A Practicum on the Use of Surface EMG Signals in Movement Sciences" is highly recommended for anyone doing anything in EMG.

The Noraxon tutorial, "ABCs of EMG" is excellent, as is the Thought Technology tutorial and the Bortec Biomedical "Important Factors in Surface EMG Measurements".

The chapter on Electromyography from the Biomedical Technology and Devices Handbook (CRC Press, 2004). Book is in the UMN library.

Excellent free book, "Topics in Surface Electromyography" from NIOSH.

An EU project, SENIAM has established widely recognized standards for measuring surface EMG. Use this summary: Standards for surface electromyography: the European project "Surface EMG for non-invasive assessment of muscles (SENIAM)”, Stegeman & Hermens. (link)

SENIAM recommends 10 mm dia electrodes spaced by 10 mm.

The tutorial from Thought Technology (link) has diagrams showing electrode placement for many muscles, as well as excellent practical tips on EMG application.

Merletti has a set of standards for what should be reported in articles describing sEMG studies: Standards for Reporting EMG data. Merletti. (link)

For DIY rectified, averaged output, buy the MyoWare Muscle Sensor board from Advancer Technologies, or from Sparkfun or from Adafruit.

DEEP BRAIN STIM

Overview article from Scientific American. Impressive video of a Parkinson's patient with DBS unit off and on.

DATA ACQUISITION

- Measurement Computing: Data Acquisition Handbook (link)
- Data Translation: Basics of Data Acquisition slide show (link)
- National Instruments: Introduction to Data Acquisition (link)

ELECTRONICS

Lab resource page on electronics (link)

PHOTOGRAPHY

Learn how to take professional photographs of your experiment apparatus (link)

USEABILITY TESTING

Here's a great list of useability testing books; read them in order.

ANATOMY

Lots of charts posted in the lab.

Get yourself a good anatomy textbook.

Web sites (if using in presentation or manuscript, cite the source!):

http://www.rsdrx.com/Anatomy%20Sketches.htm

Visible Body

http://www.medword.com/Anatomy/index.html

http://www.innerbody.com/htm/body.html

E-STIM ELECTRODES

Here are discount electrodes on Amazon that work well: 2x4 inch, 2x2 inch and 1 inch round.

Amazon also has these: 2x2 inch and 2x3.5 inch. And here is an economy 2x2 inch.

In the past, the lab has used Dura-Stick-PLUS reusable self-adhesive stimulation electrodes, purchased from www.allegromedical.com. Electrodes are good for about 15 uses. Also available in cases of 40 or 100.

Square 2 x 2", pigtail pin, 4-pack, $5.64

Rectangle 2 x 3.5 ", pigtail pin, 4-pack, $7.38.

Second source backup are Re-Ply reusable stimulation electrodes (made by Uni-Patch), purchased from www.allegromedical.com.

Uni-Patch Re-Ply - oval 1 1/2 x 2", pigtail pin, PN 650_PK, 4-pack, $6.

Uni-Patch Re-Ply - square 2 x 2", pigtail pin, PN 654-PK, 4-pack, $6.

Uni-Patch Re-Ply - rectangle 2 x 4", pigtail pin, PN 658-PK, 4-pack, $9.

The Uni-patch web site has info on electrodes. See the product brochure and the electrode care and use guide .