Our recent issue on “Equipment for eye care” (number 73, September 2010) addressed the importance of equipment in the delivery of eye care and covered maintenance, repair, training, purchasing, and donations. This issue (number 76) addresses similar concerns around surgical instruments and consumables. For an eye unit to function, instruments must be carefully managed so that they remain in goo...

BACKGROUND The cleaning stage of the instrument decontamination process has come under increased scrutiny due to the increasing complexity of surgical instruments and the adverse affects of residual protein contamination on surgical instruments. Instruments used in the podiatry field have a complex surface topography and are exposed to a wide range of biological contamination. Currently, podiat...

I n 1609, while exploring the lake that now bears his name, Samuel de Champlain looked to the east and exclaimed, “Voila les vert monts.” The Green Mountain State was an inhospitable place at that time; few dared to settle there until after the end of the French and Indian War, in 1763. By 1771, the population of Vermont was 4667 people. They led a difficult existence, and the earliest surgeons...

A family of passive markers is presented by which the position and orientation of a surgical instrument can be computed from its ultrasound image using simple image processing. These markers address the problem of imaging instruments and tissue simultaneously in ultrasound-guided interventions. Marker-based estimates of instrument location can be used in augmented reality displays or for image-...

separation of ten sedative- hypnotic drugs was performed by rp-hplc using mixed micellar mobile phase. effect of temperature, type and amount of organic modifier in mobile phase on efficiency (n) and asymmetry factor (b/a) showed that, the appropriate conditions for a good separation were 35°c and 7% (v/v) butanol in mobile phase.  variations of selectivity factor versus butanol concentration, ...

1. INTRODUCTION Rice University has a decades-long tradition of both digital signal processing (DSP) research and education, beginning in 1968. Since that time, Rice University has become a world leader and continued to be a pioneer in the DSP field. This paper will focus on the following three areas of activity at Rice. First, a brief history of DSP education and research at Rice will be prese...

BACKGROUND Advances in minimally invasive surgical techniques will require new types of instrument end-effectors for smaller, longer, and flexible instruments. These include a new class of multifunctional instruments capable of performing more than 1 task with a single set of working jaws. Furthermore, it is desired that multifunctional instruments be designed to provide improved dexterity comp...

-The data-handling sequence for the BFEM has allowed us to verify that the instrument functioned correctly and that the structures put in place provide a useful framework for analyzing the data. Many elements of this sequence will be used to process the data from the flight instrument. Some results of processing the BFEM data are discussed in another paper at this conference [7]. References: