Alekya’s work on “Catheter to sense obstruction in airways” covered in Times of India

• Post by: beeslab
• April 24, 2021
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Stenosis is a condition when the effective lumen (interior) area is reduced in the tracheal and bronchial segments of the respiratory tract or airway due to obstructions. Diagnosis of such anomalies is usually based on clinical suspicion due to the non-specificity of the associated clinical
symptoms.

Alekya and her team developed a steerable intubation catheter that can quantitatively measure air velocity across various segments of the tracheobronchial tree. The catheter comprises a three-layer flexible printed circuit board integrated with thermal flow sensors based on micro-electro- mechanical systems (MEMS) and sub-millimeter helical-shaped memory actuators. Such a catheter can be used to identify stenosis at the pre-clinical stages.