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Patrick E. Crago is the Allen H. and Constance T.Ford Professor and Chairman of Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Crago is a biomedical engineer currently serving as a Principal Investigator at the Cleveland FES Center.
Patrick Crago received the B.S.E.E. from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1967, and the M.S. and Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Case Western Reserve University, in 1970 and 1973 respectively, followed by post-doctoral studies in neuromuscular physiology at Johns Hopkins University.
He returned to Case as a Senior Research Associate in 1976. He served as acting co-director for the Applied Neural Control Laboratory (currently Neural Engineering Center) at Case Western Reserve University from 1977 to 1978. He joined the BME faculty in 1982. In 1985, he received an appointment as a Biomedical Engineer at the Cleveland VA Medical Center. In 1996, Dr. Crago served as an organizer for the Engineering Foundation Conference in Biomechanics and Neural Control of Movement. He was a member of the NIH-NICHD Subcommittee on Medical Rehabilitation Research from 1996 to 2000, for which he served as chairman from 2000 to 2001. In 1999 he was appointed the Allen H. and Constance T. Ford Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and chairman of the department. He served as co-director of the NSF IGERT on Neuromechanical Systems at Case Western Reserve University from 2000-2003. He served as BioDirector for The Institute for Management and Engineering (TiME) at Case Western Reserve University in 2002, and received an appointment as associate staff at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in 2003. He was part of the steering committee for the five-year plan for NIDRR from 2003 to 2004. From 2004 to 2005 Prof. Crago was the chairperson for the Council of chairs of Programs in Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering. He currently serves in the Policy Committee for the MSTP Program at Case Western Reserve University.
Dr. Crago received fellowship awards from the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and from the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2000 and 2005, respectively.
His major research interests are in the area of movement control and regulation of posture, particularly the restoration of movement by neuroprostheses employing neuromuscular stimulation. This research emphasizes the role of feedback, muscle mechanical properties of the limbs in the execution and regulation of movements. Current research projects include the control of wrist flexion/extension and elbow extension in patients with spinal cord injuries. Other projects involve the clinical implementation and evaluation of closed-loop stiffness regulation for hand grasp, and the development of muscle models suitable for use in the stimulations with neuronal models.
Crago is a member of the Society for Neuroscience, American Society for Biomechanics, IEEE/Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, International FES Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Society for Engineering Education, and Biomedical Engineering Society.
Biomedical engineering (BME) or medical engineering is the application of engineering principles and design concepts to medicine and biology for healthcare applications. BME is also traditionally logical sciences to advance health care treatment, including diagnosis, monitoring, and therapy. Also included under the scope of a biomedical engineer is the management of current medical equipment in hospitals while adhering to relevant industry standards. This involves procurement, routine testing, preventive maintenance, and making equipment recommendations, a role also known as a Biomedical Equipment Technician (BMET) or as a clinical engineer.
Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is a technique that uses low-energy electrical pulses to artificially generate body movements in individuals who have been paralyzed due to injury to the central nervous system. More specifically, FES can be used to generate muscle contraction in otherwise paralyzed limbs to produce functions such as grasping, walking, bladder voiding and standing. This technology was originally used to develop neuroprostheses that were implemented to permanently substitute impaired functions in individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI), head injury, stroke and other neurological disorders. In other words, a person would use the device each time he or she wanted to generate a desired function. FES is sometimes also referred to as neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES).
Neuroprosthetics is a discipline related to neuroscience and biomedical engineering concerned with developing neural prostheses. They are sometimes contrasted with a brain–computer interface, which connects the brain to a computer rather than a device meant to replace missing biological functionality.
Neural engineering is a discipline within biomedical engineering that uses engineering techniques to understand, repair, replace, or enhance neural systems. Neural engineers are uniquely qualified to solve design problems at the interface of living neural tissue and non-living constructs.
In physiology, motor coordination is the orchestrated movement of multiple body parts as required to accomplish intended actions, like walking. This coordination is achieved by adjusting kinematic and kinetic parameters associated with each body part involved in the intended movement. The modifications of these parameters typically relies on sensory feedback from one or more sensory modalities, such as proprioception and vision.
Dava J. Newman is an American aerospace engineer. She is the director of the MIT Media Lab and a former deputy administrator of NASA. Newman is the Apollo Program Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been a faculty member in the department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and MIT's School of Engineering since 1993.
Neurorobotics is the combined study of neuroscience, robotics, and artificial intelligence. It is the science and technology of embodied autonomous neural systems. Neural systems include brain-inspired algorithms, computational models of biological neural networks and actual biological systems. Such neural systems can be embodied in machines with mechanic or any other forms of physical actuation. This includes robots, prosthetic or wearable systems but also, at smaller scale, micro-machines and, at the larger scales, furniture and infrastructures.
Targeted reinnervation enables amputees to control motorized prosthetic devices and to regain sensory feedback. The method was developed by Dr. Todd Kuiken at Northwestern University and Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Dr. Gregory Dumanian at Northwestern University Division of Plastic Surgery.
Preflexes are the latent capacities in the musculoskeletal system that auto-stabilize movements through the use of the nonlinear visco-elastic properties of muscles when they contract. The term "preflex" for such a zero-delay, intrinsic feedback loop was coined by Loeb. Unlike stabilization methods using neurons, such as reflexes and higher brain control, a preflex happens with minimal time delay; however, it only stabilizes the main movements of the musculoskeletal system.
The space mapping methodology for modeling and design optimization of engineering systems was first discovered by John Bandler in 1993. It uses relevant existing knowledge to speed up model generation and design optimization of a system. The knowledge is updated with new validation information from the system when available.
As humans move through their environment, they must change the stiffness of their joints in order to effectively interact with their surroundings. Stiffness is the degree to a which an object resists deformation when subjected to a known force. This idea is also referred to as impedance, however, sometimes the idea of deformation under a given load is discussed under the term "compliance" which is the opposite of stiffness . In order to effectively interact with their environment, humans must adjust the stiffness of their limbs. This is accomplished via the co-contraction of antagonistic muscle groups.
A peripheral nerve interface is the bridge between the peripheral nervous system and a computer interface which serves as a bi‐directional information transducer recording and sending signals between the human body and a machine processor. Interfaces to the nervous system usually take the form of electrodes for stimulation and recording, though chemical stimulation and sensing are possible. Research in this area is focused on developing peripheral nerve interfaces for the restoration of function following disease or injury to minimize associated losses. Peripheral nerve interfaces also enable electrical stimulation and recording of the peripheral nervous system to study the form and function of the peripheral nervous system. For example, recent animal studies have demonstrated high accuracy in tracking physiological meaningful measures, like joint angle. Many researchers also focus in the area of neuroprosthesis, linking the human nervous system to bionics in order to mimic natural sensorimotor control and function. Successful implantation of peripheral nerve interfaces depend on a number of factors which include appropriate indication, perioperative testing, differentiated planning, and functional training. Typically microelectrode devices are implanted adjacent to, around or within the nerve trunk to establish contact with the peripheral nervous system. Different approaches may be used depending on the type of signal desired and attainable.
The Case Western Reserve University Department of Biomedical Engineering launched in 1968 as one of the first biomedical engineering programs in the world. Formally incorporated in both the School of Engineering and School of Medicine, the department provides full research and education programs and is consistently top-ranked for graduate and undergraduate studies, according to U.S. News & World Report.
René Vidal is a Chilean electrical engineer and computer scientist who is known for his research in machine learning, computer vision, medical image computing, robotics, and control theory. He is the Herschel L. Seder Professor of the Johns Hopkins Department of Biomedical Engineering, and the founding director of the Mathematical Institute for Data Science (MINDS).
Milos R. Popovic is a scientist specializing in Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) and neurorehabilitation. As of 2018, he is Director of the KITE Research Institute at UHN Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (TRI), and a Professor with the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto.
Paul Hunter Peckham is a professor of biomedical engineering and orthopedics at the Case Western Reserve University, and holds eight patents related to neural prosthetics. Peckham's research involves developing prostheses to restore function in the upper extremities for paralyzed individuals with spinal cord injury.
Gregory A. Clark is a professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Utah; he is also the Director for the Center for Neural Interfaces at the University of Utah. Dr. Clark’s current research is in neuroprostheses, bioengineering, sensory information processing, and electrophysiological and computational analyses of neuronal plasticity in simple systems.
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