The healthy heart generates regularly paced signals in order to coordinate the cycles of contraction and relaxation required to pump blood throughout the body. Sometimes the ability of the heart to regularly pace these signals is disrupted and a "pacemaker" is required to better regulate the timing of the heart's pumping action. The implantable pacemaker generates electrical impulses which closely match the natural rhythm of the heart.
Synchrony is a state of the art implantable pacemaker marketed by Siemens-Pacesetter, Inc., of Sylmar, California. A unique sensor allows the pacemaker to respond to activity levels and it has 28 pacemaker functions and thousands of programming combinations to accommodate diverse lifestyles. During increased activity, it accelerates the heart rate, boosting the supply of oxygen to the body. This allows pacemaker patients a much wider range of activities, jogging, dancing, swimming, for example, than were previously available and improves their quality of life. The device also records and stores pertinent patient information for up to a year.
The companion element of the Synchrony pacemaker system is the Programmer Analyzer APS-II which allows a doctor to reprogram and fine-tune the pacemaker based on each patient's special requirements without the risks involved in surgical procedures. Using, the APS-II, a doctor sends and receives signals from the pacemaker using bidirectional telemetry, a type of two- way communications technology originally developed by NASA to communicate between Earth-orbiting satellites and ground stations. Using this technology, the doctor can determine the pacemaker's status and adjust its rate to best suit a patient's individual needs.
The benefits of this pacemaker technology are:
In the early 1980's, chemical processes developed by NASA significantly improved sunglass lens technology. Greater lens hardness, greater scratch resistance, and improved protection from harmful ultraviolet rays is achieved by depositing a specially developed thin plastic coating on the lens surface.
While improving a spacecraft water purification system, chemist Dr. Ted Wydeven discovered the key elements for this revolutionary new technology. To recycle spacecraft water, NASA researchers developed a new method for applying thin plastic films to surfaces. The method was used to apply the abrasion resistant coating to the space suit helmet visors for the Apollo program.
Meanwhile, researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory independently developed a method to dye lenses on the helmets worn by welders to protect them from bright light and eye injury. Success in these three seemingly unrelated areas led to further applications by NASA and JPL researchers and commercial applications in the field of protective lenses. Using NASA technology, Suntiger Inc. Biomedical of North Hollywood, California produced a line of sunlight-filtering sunglasses that protect human vision by blocking sunlight at wavelengths that can cause eye damage and conditions such as cataracts. The Suntiger PST (Polarized Selective Transmission) lenses block out the intense sunlight that causes glare, thereby improving night vision and enhancing vision through smog or fog. The lenses are available in various tints for sunglasses, protective visors, ski goggles, and prescription eyewear.
Suntiger has advanced the technology to include many new applications. The Fluorotech lens was specifically developed to block the wavelengths emitted by fluorescent lights and unfiltered computer screens, which can cause eye irritation and chronic headaches. Their products also include inspection glasses that protect workers from flying objects, splash hazards and the harmful levels of some colors and intensities of light used in many manufacturing processes.
Scratching and reduced visibility have been the major limitations of plastic lenses. For this reason, ground and polished tempered glass has traditionally been the preferred lens in the eyeglass industry. However, plastic lenses have recently become more popular and profitable due to lowered manufacturing costs, improved optical properties and better absorption of the harmful components of sunlight. In addition, they are lightweight, resistant to shattering and easy to shape. The new coating process, made available through NASA research and licensing, minimizes these problems and has made the production of plastic sunglasses a profitable industry.
In 1983, Foster Grant Corporation, one of the world's largest manufacturers of non-prescription sunglasses, obtained a license from NASA to use the advanced lens coating process. By December 1986, the resulting products improved the company's sales by over 75 million dollars. The process, which was developed at the Ames Research Center, holds the NASA record for the most commercial units made and sold under a NASA license and is second in dollar value of royalties to NASA.
Today, coronary artery bypass surgery, a risky and high-cost medical procedure, is the principal method used in treating advanced coronary artery blockage. In some cases, "balloon angioplasty" is an effective alternative. In balloon angioplasty a flexible catheter with a tiny balloon at its tip is threaded into the blocked artery. When the balloon is inflated, it opens the artery and allows increased blood flow. Although it is less risky and less expensive than bypass surgery, the procedure is not suitable for many patients.
Excimer laser angioplasty is a promising alternative for treating blockage of coronary arteries. Although conventional lasers are hot and can cause damage to arterial walls, the Dymer 200+ system uses an excimer laser, a"cool" laser that removes arterial deposits with extraordinary precision and without unnecessary damage. The Dymer 200+ is based on NASA-patented technology. The excimer laser now offers a second low risk, non-surgical alternative, to coronary bypass surgery. The Dymer 200+ is the first fully integrated "cool" laser capable of generating laser energy and delivering it precisely to the target. While thermal lasers remove plaque by applying heat, the excimer laser uses pulses of ultraviolet light to break up and disintegrate the substance causing the blockage. In the Dymer 200+ system, the laser light is fired in short bursts through fiber optic bundles. Precise control of the laser pulse is made possible by a system of magnetic switches developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The Dymer 200+ system has been used in clinical trials since 1988 and received FDA approval in 1992. The laser has proved effective in treating blockages, which are not suited to balloon angioplasty, with a success rate of approximately 85 percent. Some physicians have achieved good results using the excimer laser in combination with balloon procedures.
The magnetic switching system was originally developed to control satellite-based excimer lasers as part of a NASA-sponsored program to measure gases in the earth's atmosphere. The specially modified switching system incorporated in the Dymer 200+ was developed at JPL with funds from NASA, the National Institutes of Health and private donations.
The technological benefits of the excimer laser angioplasty technique are:
The traditional method of testing for disease-producing microorganisms, or pathogens, involves three steps. First, specimens of body fluid - urine or sputum, for example - are prepared in cultures. Then the cultures are incubated for two to four days, after which time microbiologists study the cell growth to determine the presence and identity of pathogens. Speeding up this process can reduce hospital stays by allowing quicker identification and earlier treatment of infection.
NASA's Voyager Interplanetary Exploration Program sparked the development of a Microbial Load Monitor device, to detect bacterial contamination aboard the spacecraft. Later the system was enhanced to identify bacterial infections among the astronaut crew and then was further developed into a time-saving system for medical analysis called the Auto Microbic System.
Instead of the petri dish customarily used to prepare cultures, AMS employs test kits, disposable, plastic cards approximately the size of a playing card, with each card containing from 16 to 30. Each card holds a different chemical substance. There are two types of cards, identification cards and susceptibility cards. A body fluid sample is injected into the identification card and organisms in the sample react with the chemicals in the wells. Mounted in trays, the cards are placed in an AMS incubator- reader module. Scanning each well once an hour, the system "reads" the reactions taking place, compares them with information in the computer, and identifies the organism, or gives a negative report when no organism is present. This data is reported on a display screen and printout.
Once an organism is identified, the body sample goes into the susceptibility card, whose wells contain a number of different antibodies. This card is similarly inserted into the system for computer examination, to determine which antibiotic is most effective against the organism. The entire process takes from 4 to 13 hours, compared with 2 to 4 days for the culture preparations. AMS can handle up to 240 specimens at one time. In addition to enabling microbiology laboratories to furnish guidelines for antimicrobial treatment within one day of specimen collection, the AMS also minimizes human error, reduces technician time, and increases laboratory output. Beyond its medical uses, the AMS can serve in food processing and other industry laboratories for such applications as detection and identification of biological indicators in sterilization processes and for in-plant environmental testing.
The development, improvement and manufacture of the stem was done by Merieux Vitek, Inc., formerly Vitek Systems, a subsidiary of McDonnell Douglas of Hazelwood, Missouri.
Balance disorders affect more than two million Americans annually. In some 20 percent of these cases, the problem is caused by inner ear disease or dysfunction. The balance disorder may cause disorientation or dizziness, which leads to a fall and associated injuries leading to time lost from work and family.
The body's balance is maintained by visual, touch I and vestibular information integrated within the brain. The vestibular information serves as the body's internal monitoring system while vision and touch monitor the external environment.
The more that we can learn about the function and regulation of the body's internal balance mechanisms, the better we will be able to prevent balance-related accidents and injury.
A sophisticated tool to study balance phenomena is a rotating chair, technically known as a "sinusoidal harmonic acceleration system." The chair system turns a patient at carefully adjusted speeds and monitors his or her responses to rotation. This NASA Life Sciences Technology was originally developed to investigate changes in the function of the inner ear during space flight. Technology that was used successfully to perform experiments on the Spacelab Life Sciences missions, 1 and 2 which provided new insights into the changes that occur in the body's nervous and balance systems in microgravity.
At the Minneapolis Neuroscience Institute on the Abbott Northwestern Hospital campus, the Balance Function Laboratory and Clinic is a collaborative project of community physicians and Life Span hospitals offering diagnosis and treatment of patients with balance function disorders. Clinicians at the clinic have used the chair to monitor recovery of balance function following acoustic/vestibular nerve tumor removal and to treat post-operative dizziness. " The chair technology is invaluable for assessing balance function problems," says Dr. Gene Balzar, audiologist and clinical researcher. "It is particularly helpful in my research with deaf and blind individuals who lack vestibular function, a group that could not adequately be evaluated with previous testing technology. Chair testing can also be used to evaluate children under age two, something that was difficult with other tests." The chair system is also used by clinical neurologist Dr. Rick Nissen to diagnose patients with Meniere's disease (abnormal fluid buildup in the inner ear) and by clinical neurologist Dr. Richard V. Johnson in diagnosis of older patients with loss of vestibular function and patients having difficulty integrating sensory information.
The chair system was manufactures by ICS Medical Corporation, Schaumberg, Illinois.
Whether walking on the moon or servicing the Hubble Space Telescope, working in a space suit is very hard work. In order to remove the perspiration and body heat an astronaut generates, NASA has developed a Liquid Cooling Garment, which is worn under an astronaut's space suit. The LCG worn by today's astronauts is a zippered one-piece suit made of a stretchable material, called Spandex, laced with over 270 feet of plastic tubing. Chilled water circulates through the plastic tubes to cool the astronaut. Hollow tubes that run down the back, arms and legs of the suit draw perspiration away from the crew member.
Development of the "cool suit" technology has found its way into many civilian uses. People born without any of the sweat glands needed to reduce body heat can develop heat stroke during physical exercise or when exposed to warm temperatures. People without sweat glands in certain areas of the body may develop body sores that may eventually require amputation of arms or legs. These individuals can avoid overheating and live relatively normal lives by using commercially available products that use cool suit technology.
An adaptation of a Liquid Cooling Garment was made for a young boy without sweat glands. It consisted of a helmet liner and vest that fitted comfortably beneath the boy's clothes. A portable, battery-powered refrigeration unit pumped cooled antifreeze solution through the tubes to the garment, carrying away the boy's body heat and helping his heart and lungs to function normally. Based on NASA's design of the "cool suit" a completely portable, fully insulated cooling garment to maintain worker comfort and safety when exposed to extremely warm temperatures for extended periods of time has been developed. Chilled water circulated by a battery- powered pump throughout the Cool Vest prevents heat stress and keeps workers cool and productive. The "cool suit" technology and other NASA life support technologies have been used to develop extremely rugged and compact systems that provide safety and support life in high temperature industrial environments.
In 1971, NASA's Ames Research Center awarded a contract to Acurex Corporation for an extension of technology used to develop a liquid-cooled helmet liner for helicopter pilots. In agricultural states, most cropdusting is done in the late afternoon or evening, after the cropdusting aircraft has been exposed to hot sunlight for hours. The cockpit temperature may be as high as 125 degrees. Cockpit heat is a ma jor problem for the professional cropduster because elevated body temperature can cause fatigue, dehydration and even collapse, extremely dangerous consequences to a pilot flying only two to four feet above the vegetation. SSI of Mountainview, California, has developed a lightweight vest unit called the Cool Head System. With "Cool Head", most body heat storage can be eliminated and the pilot's heart rate can be lowered, increasing the personal safety of people in this very hazardous occupation.
Life Support Systems, Inc., Mountainview, California, developed the adaptation cool suit for the boy without sweat glands, ILC Dover, Inc., Frederica, Delaware, developed the "Cool Vest" used in industry.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is a leader in the development of imaging technology for X-ray astronomy, the study of stars and galaxies by measuring the X- rays that they emit. Based on this technology, Goddard scientists and engineers have produced a small, portable, low-radiation X-ray instrument known as the Low Intensity X-ray Imaging Scope (LIXISCOPE) for diagnostic use in the field, such as at an accident site or at a sporting event.
After development, NASA licensed the technology to several companies, among them HealthMate, a leader in the development of high-resolution, low-radiation devices for medical applications. The company improved the NASA design but retained the small size and light weight of Goddard's system and markets the product as FluoroScan.
Because the device emits minimal radiation, the FDA allows use of the FluoroScan without the lead aprons, film badges, or lead-lined walls required with other x-ray systems. FluoroScan occupies a small 2 square foot space, weighs about 20 pounds, and can be plugged in or operated from a battery. According to HeolthMate, approximately 500 hospitals have replaced their high-intensity imaging systems with FluoroScan systems.
The latest application of LIXISCOPE technology is the Inner View Realtime X-Ray Imaging System, a direct spin-off of the FluoroScan produced by National Imaging Systems, a division of HealthMate, Inc. Inner View offers low cost and safety for industrial X-ray applications such as airport and building security (inspection of luggage, containers, boxes, etc.) nondestructive testing, quality control inspection and production inspection.
The technological benefits of the LIXISCOPE are:
The accurate measurement of burn depth is a critical factor in the diagnosis and treatment of serious burns. A unique application of NASA ultrasound technology, originally developed to detect microscopic flaws in spacecraft materials, has provided an instrument that enables immediate assessment of burn damage. This knowledge improves patient treatment and may even save lives in serious burn cases.
The customary treatment for severe burns is to allow natural sloughing of dead tissue and then to close the resulting wounds with skin grafts. Effective treatment depends upon early and accurate determination of the extent of tissue damage followed by removal of dead tissue by chemical or surgical means.
In 1983, NASA's Langley Research Center initiated a project to address the medical community's need for precise determination of burn depth. The project was managed by Langley's Nondestructive Measurement Science Branch, which conducts research on advanced techniques for evaluating quality and fatigue of aerospace materials. A prototype instrument was developed which was capable of determining the depth of the boundary between burned and healthy tissue. When skin is burned the protein that makes up some 40 percent of skin becomes more dense. The technique involves directing ultrasonic waves at the burned area. The difference in density between damaged and healthy tissue causes sound waves to bounce back from the interface and its depth can be accurately measured.
After successful completion of preliminary clinical tests, the commercial version, known as the Supra Scanner, was granted FDA approval in December 1990. The device is light and portable and can be used at a patient's bedside. The Supra Scanner is also finding clinical use in the diagnosis of skin cancer,lymphatic disorders, and in reconstructive surgery.
The benefits of the NASA ultrasound technology are:
Insulin-dependent diabetics have been aided by the use of space technology in the development of both external and implantable (internal) insulin delivery systems. In these devices a computerized pump serves as an artificial pancreas that provides insulin to the body at a controlled rate. These insulin pumps provide precise control of blood sugar levels without which conditions such as blindness and kidney disease could result. The diabetic is also freed from the burden of daily insulin injections.
The implant is surgically placed in the diabetic's abdomen to continuously deliver insulin. The implant consists of a refillable reservoir, a pumping mechanism, a tube leading to the diabetic's intestines, a microcomputer, and a battery all encased in a titanium shell three inches in diameter and three-quarters of an inch thick. The pump's tiny dimensions are the product of NASA's expertise in miniaturizing components for satellite use.
NASA technology also helped create the pumping mechanism, which is based on a design developed for the Mars Viking lander. To conserve battery power, the device delivers insulin into the abdominal cavity in short "pulses." When an insulin refill IF needed it can be accomplished without surgery using a special hypodermic needle.
By holding a small radio transmitter over the implant and dialing one of 10 preprogrammed codes, the diabetic can change the infusion rate or ask for a supplemental dose of insulin before meals or when blood sugar levels are elevated. Another code allows the physician to access information from the pump's stored memory, reprogram insulin delivery, and generate computer records of the pump's performance.
The MiniMed 504 Insulin Infuser Pump is a device similar to the Programmable Implantable Medication System just described, but is worn externally. Also based on NASA-developed technology, the MiniMed 504 can be clipped to any part of the user's clothing and worn around the clock. About the size of a credit card and weighing just 3.8 ounces, it houses a computer, a battery, and a syringe filled with insulin.
The syringe is connected to a thin, flexible plastic tube about 30 inches long with a needle at its end. The patient inserts the needle just under the skin and insulin is administered at rates determined by the patient's needs and controlled by the computer.
The medical and societal benefits of implantable and external pumps are:
In the United States today, thousands of young children have eye defects which, it not detected and treated in the early stages, could result in permanent blindness. Until recently, there was no nationwide ocular screening program for the young, due to the lack of a fast, reliable, and economical screening method. Now, a NASA-patented invention called Visiscreen-100 provides the means for wide-scale detection of vision problems at an early stage, when treatment has a better chance for success. Visiscreen is a portable device measuring 2.4 meters and has a hood at one end to hold the subject's head. At the other end is a device containing a 35mm camera with a telephoto lens and an electronic flash unit.
When the subject is photographed, the light from the flash is sent into the patient's eye and reflected back to the camera lens. The camera captures the reflective properties of key parts of both eyes and produces a color photograph that is analyzed using a computer. Each eye is examined for numerous conditions that are treatable if diagnosed early. If problems are discovered, they are verified by an ophthalmologist and treated.
The technological benefits of the ocular screening system are: