Award Data

Blast-induced Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a major threat to the health of military personnel serving in modern theaters. TBI incidence rates in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom approached 3% of all deployed personnel. Indeed, TBI has become known as the “signature” injury of these conflicts. Blast overpressure can also damage the lungs, eardrums, and eyes. Development ...

Hearing is important to our physical and mental health. Within the Department of Defense (DOD), more than 200,000 service members have hearing impairment and close to 500,000 Veterans receive compensation for service-connected hearing loss. To protect personnel from hearing loss, DOD Instruction 6055.12 establishes requirements for Hearing Conservation Programs (HCPs). Under 6055.12, each DOD Comp ...

Dizziness is a common complaint, with about one third of the population experiencing dizziness at some point in their life. Vestibular rehabilitation targets vestibular adaptation and substitution for patients with vertigo and dizziness of vestibular origin. Unfortunately, vestibular rehabilitation requires specialized physical therapists who may not be accessible to service members or the general ...

Antibiotic resistant infections are a principal concern for the Department of Defense and society at large due to the current lack of available treatments. Monoclonal antibodies represent a promising drug class that could be applied to antibiotic resistant infections to harness a patients own immune system to effectively combat the invading threat. In this program we continue program development t ...

The primary objectiveis to develop acommercially-viable prototype of theslopeadaptive prosthesis design and to iteratively improvethe design based on ISO standards testingand rigorous usein human subject field trials. The proposed work will build upon knowledgegained in PhaseI of the project,which established feasibility for this design approach in alightweight, passive hydraulicfoot-anklesystem. ...

The nature of military operations leads to high noise levels, exposing personnel to the possibility of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). Individual hearing monitoring is conducted yearly, which can only provide a record of the progression of irreversible hearing loss with limited options for intervention and mitigation. Furthermore, there is limited data that links actual, real-world noise exposu ...

The purpose of this SBIR topics is to develop, demonstrate, and commercialize an automated and data-driven computational framework for the design and optimization of passive prosthetic & orthotic (P&O) interfaces. Such a framework will predict the equilibrium shape and compliant mechanical properties of an optimized P&O interface, enhancing user comfort, mitigating soft tissue injury, and ultimate ...

A noise dosimeter must handle three types of noise: (1) continuous, (2) intermittent, and (3) impulsive, all of which may occur simultaneously. By nature, impulsive noise is highly dynamic with potentially extreme peak levels. The measurement of impulsive noise therefore requires a microphone that can detect very-high sound pressure levels with enough accuracy to determine total energy. The Depar ...

The current steam based sterilizers have weight and power related challenges that limits their use to Role 3 environments. Further, due to high temperature of use, these are unsuitable for non-metallic objects such as medical scopes. The proposing team will develop a sterilizer for far forward austere Role 2 environments. The sterilizer uses modalities such that it can be used for sterilization of ...

Within the Department of Defense (DOD), more than 200,000 Service Members have hearing impairment and close to 500,000 Veterans receive compensation for service-connected hearing loss. To protect personnel, each DOD Component must provide hearing protection devices (HPDs) to individuals exposed to hazardous noise. Furthermore, anyone who experiences a significant threshold shift needs to have thei ...