Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Serious wheelchair accidents have risen to almost 37,000 per year. Users of power chairs are three times as likely to have accidents as users of manual chairs! Many people can neither walk nor successfully navigate a wheelchair, e.g., many with MS, quadraplegia, spinal stenosis, visual and other impairments. The Safety Sensing Independence-Enhancing Wheelch ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Scientists have documented the phenomenon of fetal ceils in maternal blood, and envisioned using them for noninvasive prenatal screening. A key limiting factor is the small number of fetal cells in the maternal circulation, making fetal cell isolation difficult and limiting the accuracy of genetic analysis. Current emphasis is on simple, practical and reprod ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Automated karyotyping is an important procedure in cytogenetics labs worldwide. Multiplex fluorescence in situ hybridization (M-FISH) is a relatively recent development that uses multicolor chromosome painting probes and multispectral image analysis to identify subtle and complex chromosomal rearrangements. It promises to make automated karyotyping faster, m ...

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DESCRIPTION: An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus has been proposed for Dental applications in determining tooth pathologies such as demineralization/caries, hidden fractures, and formation of abscesses. The equipment adopts a piezoelectric and laser optic hybrid transduction system for interrogation of teeth. Ultrasonic responses of the tooth structure will be analyzed by a pattern recognition expe ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Severe sepsis is a major cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the world. It is the leading cause of death in non-coronary intensive care units (ICUs) in the United States, with more than 750,000 cases occurring every year. This means that in the United States, more than 500 patients die from severe sepsis every day, with 28% to 50% of the patients succum ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): One objective of the proposal is to develop a product line that will consist of amplified RNA (aRNA) derived from pure populations of cells from various regions of mouse brain. The target cells will be selected by Laser Capture Micro-dissection (LCM). The product line will include aRNA derived from normal mice and from mutant mice that serve as models of hum ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): During Phase I of our proposed research, we will develop and validate procedures for recovering, labeling, and analyzing miRNAs from fixed tissue samples. The procedures will be based on the miRNA microarray and fix ed tissue RNA isolation systems that we developed in other SBIR-funded programs. The development of our miRNA isolation and labeling procedures ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This program will demonstrate the potential for commercial success of a novel approach for tracking and displaying the position and orientation of instruments in image-guided cancer interventions. Prototype systems will be demonstrated in selected pancreatic procedures in human subjects. New clinical applications will be examined and commercialization will beg ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project proposes to build and test a 20 L capacity Remediator for medical wastes. Infectious Medical Wastes (IMW), mainly from hospitals, represents a major component of hazardous wastes generated in the U.S.. In f act, more than 4.5 million tons are generated per year. Hospital waste remediation was a 1.5 billion industry in 2003. Incineration remains th ...