Category Archives: Assignments

Miniature Suction Gripper for Eye Surgery (CLOSED)

The eye is made up of delicate tissue, which can easliy be damaged when it is being handled excessively during surgery. The outer layer on top of the eye, called the conjunctiva, is responsible for keeping the eye lubricated. This thin layer is often manipulated during surgery in order to perform other operations, but as a result of hard metal forceps it can become damaged. See this movie for an example.

In this assignment, the aim is to develop a miniature suction gripper that can handle delicate eye tissue during surgery. First you will look into miniature suction grippers for different applications, after which you will design and test a novel prototype.

Interested? Contact Vera Kortman (v.g.kortman@tudelft.nl) or Kirsten Lussenburg (k.m.lussenburg@tudelft.nl)

Design of a Wasp-Inspired Steerable Needle for Urology (CLOSED)

In nature, there is a special group of wasps known as parasitoid wasps. They have a thin and steerable needle-like structure called the ovipositor. This ovipositor is used to lay eggs in hosts. The ovipositor is a very thin organ shaped like a flexible, hollow needle. In order to reach the right location, the wasp can steer her ovipositor. How it steers is still being studied.

We are currently developing novel steerable needles for prostate and kidney interventions inspired by the wasp ovipositor. This project will focus on understanding the steering mechanism of the ovipositor and applying this to new needle designs. We are searching for an MSc student that can start at short notice with this interesting graduation project.

Interested? Please contact Jette Bloemberg, j.bloemberg@tudelft.nl

Shark-Skin Inspired Lattice Structure for Drag Reduction

Sharks are extremely diverse group of vertebrates and inhabit a wide variety of aquatic habitats. The skin of sharks is covered in thousands of tooth-like denticles or scales that are anchored to the collagenous layer of the skin known as the  stratum  laxum.  These  scales  play  an  important  role  in  locomotion in  terms  of drag  reduction  and  lift  production. Despite  numerous  studies  on  the  functional  significance  of  shark  denticles , no  studies  have  been performed  to  investigate  the  effect  of  the  anchoring  of the  denticles  in  the  skin or the effect of denticle shape change on the drag reducing and lifting abilities. Moreover, no studies to date have been conducted to study the effect of the denticles stacking and overlapping on the denticles performance.

The objective of this project is to take  the first steps in understanding the effect of shark denticle morphology(roughness, waviness, texture), stacking, and anchoring on the drag reducing and lift increasing properties of the shark skin using computational models and real-life biomimetic shark skin prototypes.

A compatible literature study is available for this project which is “Review of denticles in sea animals”. The objective of this study is to make an overview of the existing denticles in sea animals, the differences in their design and their influence on the drag reduction for these sea animals.

Interested? Contact Aimée Sakes: A.Sakes@tudelft.nl or Jovana Jovanova: J.Jovanova@tudelft.nl or Mostafa Atalla: M.A.A.Atalla@tudelft.nl

Design of a Bone Marrow Harvesting Device (CLOSED)

Bone marrow is a soft and fatty tissue located within the porous bone structure at the centre of the larger bones. During bone marrow biopsies, also called trephine biopsies, a 1-2 cm long sample of the bone and bone marrow is taken to check, amongst others, for blood cell abnormalities. A Jamshidi needle is used to collect the bone marrow by pushing the needle through the rigid cortical outer layer of the bone such that it will be located within the softer cancellous bone. During retrieval of the needle, the biopsy sample sometimes remains inside the incision. This requires manual removal of the sample using forceps, and possibly a second biopsy has to be taken.

During this project, you would first look into current instruments used to perform a bone marrow biopsy after which you will design a novel device that could be used for harvesting bone marrow samples.

Interested? Contact Esther de Kater, e.p.dekater@tudelft.nl

Wasp Inspired Steerable Bone Drill (CLOSED)

Parasitoid wasps can drill through relatively hard material such as wood with their ovipositor, a very thin structure through which the wasp transports its eggs. The ovipositor consists of three valves that slide one-by-one deeper in the wood to drill. Not only can the parasitoid wasp drill with this very thin structure through hard material but the wasp is also able to steer during drilling. It is still not fully known how the wasp can do this, but there are multiple hypotheses. Multiple steerable needles were designed based on the wasp ovipositor. The goal of this graduation project is to design a steerable wasp inspired bone drill.

Interested? Contact Esther de Kater: E.P.deKater@tudelft.nl

Entry point detection for spinal fusion surgery (CLOSED)

Multiple diseases can require patients to undergo spine surgery. At the BITE group, we are developing a novel probe that allows for the surgeon to steer through the bone along a secure drilling trajectory, avoiding nerves and blood vessels that run along the spinal column. To help the surgeon find and maintain the right trajectory, an optical sensing system based on Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy (DRS) will be integrated into the probe to differentiate the tissue ahead of the tool tip, thereby providing positional feedback for the surgeon in real time.

In the scope of the proposed graduation project, a probe prototype will be designed that enables the surgeon to sense the correct entry point for spine drilling procedures. Its usability for guidance will be assessed through drilling tests on a bone phantom/ex-vivo animal bone.

This assignment will be available from September 2021. Interested? Contact Esther de Kater, e.p.dekater@tudelft.nl or Merle Losch, m.s.losch@tudelft.nl.

Design of an Ultrasound-Enhanced Needle (Closed)

Needles are an integral part of many medical procedures nowadays. In prostate cancer ablation procedures, for example, surgeons insert a needle into the prostate tumor with image guidance to deliver the treatment fiber to the cancerous tissue. Needle insertion is not, however, a simple task and requires precision localization to reach the target accurately. Furthermore, minimal insertion forces are required to preserve the tissue that the needle is penetrating. In nature, some wasp and mosquito species are able to move a needle-like structure in substrates using a vibrating motion, this vibrating motion is thought to reduce the frictional force during the penetration process. In this graduation project, we look forward to developing an ultrasound-enhanced needle to minimize the effect of the friction forces acting on the needle, thus increasing the positioning accuracy and minimizing the tissue damage due to penetration.

The assignment is available from October 2021. Interested? Contact Jette Bloemberg: j.bloemberg@tudelft.nl or Mostafa Atalla: m.a.a.atalla@tudelft.nl.

Design of a Smart Surgical Knife (CLOSED)

Lumpectomy is the preferred surgical treatment for women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer. At this stage, the cancerous tissue only forms a small portion of the breast and during lumpectomy, the surgeon removes this portion of the breast along with some surrounded healthy tissue to assure the complete resection of the tumor and meanwhile satisfactory cosmetic outcomes. On the surgical side, the tumor and healthy breast tissue cannot always be clearly distinguished, making it difficult for the surgeon to determine where to dissect the tissue. Difficulty in detecting the border of the tumor in lumpectomy can result in incomplete tumor resection which only can be determined by histopathological investigation of the excised specimens after the surgery. In this case, the treatment of the patient may continue with a re-excision surgery or extra chemotherapy. Using an intraoperative margin assessment technique during lumpectomy could help the surgeon with detecting the border of the tumor and distinguish it from the breast’s healthy tissue. Among different type of techniques, diffused reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) has recently become known as a promising tumor detection technique and has been widely studied for its application in this field. Recently we studied the possibility of integrating an electrosurgical knife with a DRS system to provide the surgeon with real-time oncological guidance during the lumpectomy. To find the optimum design of the smart surgical knife we are looking for an enthusiastic MSc student who can come up with creative design ideas.

If you are interested in designing surgical instruments and preferably have a background in mechanical design, then you are the right person for this MSc project/assignment.  For more information please contact Sara Azizian Amiri, s.azizianamiri@tudelft.nl.

Design of a bone phantom (CLOSED)

Spinal fusion is the surgical procedure of stiffening parts of the spinal column to reduce back pain for patients affected by multiple diseases. At the BITE group, we are developing a novel drill that allows for the surgeon to steer through the bone along a secure drilling trajectory, avoiding nerves and blood vessels that run along the spinal column.

To help the surgeon find and maintain the right trajectory, an optical sensing system based on Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy (DRS) will be integrated into the drill to differentiate the tissue ahead of the tool tip, thereby providing positional feedback for the surgeon in real time.

In the scope of the proposed graduation project, a bone tissue-simulating phantom will be designed that mimics both mechanical and optical properties of human bone. This phantom will allow for mechanical testing of the steerable drill, as well as for optical testing of the sensing system. Eventually, it will also provide a training environment where surgeons can become accustomed to the novel tool.

This assignment will be available from March/April 2021. Interested? Contact Merle Losch, m.s.losch@tudelft.nl.

Exploring hierarchical mechanisms (CLOSED)

Imagine a tower build of LEGO, consisting of a number of bricks that together form a new shape. Now imagine that each LEGO brick is a tiny mechanism, in contact with the mechanisms that surround it. What if we can program each individual mechanism with a very simple task, and are able to turn it on or off when we desire. Could we use these tiny mechanisms as cells that create a new, larger mechanism? Can we create a mechanism that is a lawnmower one day, a coffee machine the next, just by switching on or off certain cells?

We want to use the form complexity of 3D printing to create ‘hierarchical mechanisms’, closely related to metamaterials. This is an exploratory assignment, so we are looking for a creative student with an investigative, curious mind. Some inspirational work is shown on this page.

Interested? This assignment is available starting January/February 2021. Contact Kirsten Lussenburg, k.m.lussenburg@tudelft.nl.

Metamaterial mechanisms by Hasso Plattner Institute

Overview ‹ kinetiX — MIT Media Lab
Kinetix Mechanisms by Tangible Media Group

Core Concept: Mechanical metamaterials bend the rules of everyday physics |  PNAS
Textured Mechanical Metamaterials by Yair Shokef’s Research Group