Smart Catheter

by Steve Lee and Matt Brooks'02

Steve Lee holding endoinflator

The Smart Catheter Project involved constructing several biomedical catheters with embedded sensors and developing the electronic hardware and software to display the signal graphically on a laptop computer. The system is designed to be used to deploy endovascular stents in the coronary arteries of people suffering from advanced atherosclerosis. This system provides the interventional cardiologist with real time data that previous systems lacked to assist optimal expansion and placement. We essentially built the first working prototypes of a design patented earlier by our advisor, MAJ Squire, and were funded to do so through a grant from the Biomedical Engineering Center of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Matt Brooks graduated with Institute Honors and published a thesis based on this work, and he and MAJ Squire were jointly awarded the VMI Hinman Research Award. Steve Lee and COL Livingston were also part of the team and made important contributions in the area of software programming and communications protocols.

Back