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Transcranial Ultrasound Probe Holder
Transcranial Ultrasound Probe Holder
Winter 2020 MAE 156B Sponsored Project
University of California, San Diego
About 10% of Extracorpore
al Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) patients experience neurological complications such as acute ischemic stroke. Our Sponsor, Dr. Orestes O’Brien, MD, hypothesizes that the neurological complications experienced by ECMO patients may be due to irregularities in the cerebral vasculaturecaused by the ECMO system over long periods of time. A common method of measuring cerebral vasculature is via a Trans-cranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasound probe. TCD is a portable, real-time, inexpensive, and totally non-invasive method used to assess cerebral blood flow velocity and pulsatility. To measure cerebral vasculature, the TCD is applied by a hand-held transducer (usually 2Mhz) and the signal is acquired and optimized by tilting, sliding and rotating of the hand-held probe. Data from the probe is obtained in an episodic manner and then monitoring is discontinued.
Background:
Background:
Objective:
The objective of this project is to create a head mount for the TCD ultrasound probe that an ECMO patient could safely wear for a duration of 2 weeks. The headset, also referred to as the Trans-cranial Probe Holder (TCPH) should hold the TCD probe in the same position for it to interrogate the same spot in the cerebral vasculature for a duration of 8 hours at a time. Current designs that are available in the market are either unsuitable for long term wear, difficult to position effectively, or too expensive for our sponsor's budget.
In addition, the probe holder must be able tip and tilt with respect to the surface of the skin in order to find the best location for TCD measurements. The fine tuning needs to be done along two axis with a range of motion of ±4.9 degrees in each axis. The headset must be made of medically safe material so it can be used in an operating room setting.
Final Design:
The final design of the TCPH incorporates five primary subsystems: head securement (1), L-frame (2), probe gross positioning (3), fine-tuned probe positioning (4), and probe pipe fitting (5). The head securement and L-frame combine to create the system responsible for securing the probe positioning subsystems to the patients head. The probe gross positioning, fine-tuned probe positioning, and probe pipefitting subsystems combine to create the system responsible for locking the TCD probe into its final position.
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