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Facilities
The Institute of Biomedical Engineering has an excellent facility and equipment to facilitate research into many aspects of Biomedical Engineering. The IBME facility includes:
- Complete prosthetics fitting facility
- Gross motor observation room
- Functional assessment kitchen
- Client training room
- Electronics shop
- Motion analysis laboratory
- Prima EMG 16
- Bio signals laboratory
- Noraxon wireless EMG system
- Dynamic balance platform system
- Eye gaze monitoring system
- Cybex system
- Computer room
- Data analysis capabilities
- CA*net4 high bandwidth connectivity
Complete prosthetics fitting facility
More information to be added soon
Gross motor observation room
The Gross Motor Room is a child’s dream. Full of large playground, sport and rough/tumble play activities, children that visit the clinic are able to play (and practice) a variety of activities using their prosthesis.
The room is equipped with a pool table, basketball net, climbing gym/slide, tent, mini golf, t-ball, as well has a variety of ride on toys, bicycles and scooters.
Functional assessment kitchen
The Functional Assessment Kitchen is a fully equipped kitchen used primarily for client assessment and training for use of their prosthesis during typical day to day activities such as meal preparation, baking and cleaning. The kitchen is meant to typify all the amenities of a home kitchen and has both large and small appliances and plenty of cook/bake wear to practice any kitchen task. Height adjustable work surfaces are available to accommodate clients of varying heights.
Client training room
This room is equipped with a height adjustable table and movable mirror and is where many of the fitting appointments take place. The cupboards are full of bimanual and fine motor activities intended for clients to practice the opening and closing of their prosthesis while participating in a number of activities of daily living. This is also the room where site selection and training is completed on our Ottobock MyoBoy Software, a computer program that gives the clinical team valuable information regarding the client’s muscle signals and the client’s ability to activate the prosthesis using myoelectric controls.
Electronics shop
The electronics shop is fully functional with all the regular electronic equipment usually found in a University electronics laboratory including oscilloscopes, soldering stations, frequency generators, power supplies, multimeters, computers, data acquisition systems, and a good stock of common electronic components for building circuitry. The electronics shop has a number of benches where electronic project can be developed.
The IBME has a circuit board milling unit, LPKF ProtoMat® S62, which provides the capability for in-house rapid PCB prototyping. The ProtoMat® S62 is capable of a resolution as fine as 0.01 mils (0.25 µm). The plotter can mill and drill all types of PCBs with extremely fine traces, including multilayer, RF and microwave boards. Its milling head travel speed of 6" (150 mm) per second and high-performance 62,000 RPM spindle motor makes it a high-speed performer for producing quality in-house PCBs. One interesting feature is the 10-position tool changer that automatically switches milling and drilling tools as needed while the board is being produced. An integrated acoustic cabinet reduces the noise and allows for use in the electronics laboratory. The system is used with the LPKF CircuitCAM and BoardMaster software for importing PCB data from any CAD package and for controlling the operation of the plotter.
Motion analysis laboratory
The Institute of Biomedical Engineering's Motion Analysis Lab is a 10m x 7m room equipped with a Vicon 512 motion analysis system. One of the main components of the Vicon system is the eight M1 infrared cameras which allow the digital recording of the positions of reflective markers placed on a subject. The Vicon software converts the eight 2D images into one 3D image. Marker position is accurate to within a few millimeters.
Researchers at IBME typically take the data of raw 3D marker coordinates and process it with code written specifically for their application to produce body motion data. In addition to recording motion, the lab is also equipped with 4 Kistler piezo-electric force plates mounted in the center of the floor. The force plates' analogue signals are sent to the Vicon system through 32 channels of our 64 channel A/D board. The remaining 32 channels can be used for EMG, other force sensors, etc.
Digital movie camera data can also be recorded and is often found useful especially in clinical analysis. The Vicon software synchronizes the A/D signals and digital movie data with the marker coordinate data for a detailed representation of the motion.
The IBME Motion Analysis Lab is used extensively by members of several UNB faculties such as Kinesiology, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Forestry Engineering (Ergonomics). Faculty researchers, graduate students, and undergraduate students use the lab for a variety of studies such as those involving gait, assessment of hand motion, design of upper limb motion measurement tools, determining the correlation between shoulder and elbow motion for eventual myoelectric control strategies, total knee replacement prostheses, assessment of upper limb prostheses use, prosthetic wrist design, and prosthetic foot design.
Prima EMG16
The prima EMG 16 is a 16-channel acquisition system for surface EMG signals, useable with one or more electrode arrays. It can detect monopolar and single differential signals, with a selectable gain, independently for each array.
An additional channel is available for the acquisition of biomechanical parameters (i.e. force, torque or joint angle), or as a general purpose input.
EMG signals are sent to an external PC equipped with EMGACQ software for real-time display, acquisition, storing and processing, by means of an acquisition board.
Bio signals laboratory
The IBME Bio signals laboratory is the location of choice for conducting EMG and nerve conduction experiments. The laboratory includes an eight channel mobile, rack mounted, EMG data acquisition system and other complimentary equipment and apparatus (bed, arm positioning systems, force measurement systems, etc.) to facilitate research activities.
Noraxon wireless EMG system
The Noraxon EMG system includes two eight channel TeleMyo 2400T transmitters and a 16 channel receiver that are used to capture EMG signals. The TeleMyo 2400T system sends real-time EMG and other analog signals up to 100 meters by wireless transmission allowing for unencumbered data-collection in various settings.
Dynamic balance platform system
The Balance Quest platform essentially floats on a spring suspension allowing dynamic motion with 6 degrees of freedom of movement. This dynamic freedom mimics natural conditions that disturb proprioceptive information.
The platform allows linear movement in X (forward/backward); Y (side to side); and Z (up/down) planes. In addition, there are three axes of angular movement allowed: Yaw (twist clockwise / counterclockwise); Pitch (tilt forward / backward); Roll (tilt left / right). The Balance Quest software measures center of pressure in the X, Y, and Z planes plus pitch and roll axes for information about the direction and amplitude of sway.
The information allows the identification of fall risk factors, work related disequilibrium, and malingering in addition to assessing whether a balance disorder is due to misinformation or misinterpretation of sensory and motor inputs or the ability to suppress information that is inaccurate.
Eye gaze monitoring system
More information to be added soon
Cybex system (offsite)
More information to be added soon
Computer room
The IBME houses a computer room for graduate students where they can access high end computers and software needed for their research.
A printer is located in the room and all computers are connected to the UNB networks including the CA*net 4 high speed research network.
Data analysis capabilities
The IBME has access to state of the art signal processing computing facilities, including access to high performance computing facilities at ACRL: http://acrl.cs.unb.ca/php/index.php.
CA*net 4 high bandwidth internet connectivity
CANARIE is Canada's advanced Internet development organization and they have developed an ultra high-speed optical Internet research and education network across Canada. This research and education network is currently called CA*net 4, and is capable of transmitting at speeds up to 10 Gbps. In addition to the high-speed ethernet network, the NB GigaPoP also has access to an optical light path which is capable of speeds of 10 Gbps. This optical light path supports UCLP or User Controlled Light Path technology.