Robotics and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

On the morning third day of the project I was able to meet Tamara Marquardt who graciously shared her project and lab with me. She has her bachelors in Biomedical engineering and is planning on going back to school to get her MBA.  Her lab was not the stereotypical lab with breakers, chemicals and lots of hazardous chemical signs. In her lab she experiments with human motion in 3-D space through the use of many different devices. Currently she is working on proving  a hypothesis that putting pressure on the outside of the wrist will transform the carpal tunnel from an ellipse to a circle, thereby creating more area for the nerve to expand, which relieves the pressure on the median nerve. The only way to relieve carpal tunnel syndrome currently is an invasive surgery where the surgeon makes an incision one to two centimeters long and cuts the ligament that controls tension in the fingers. This relieves the patient of pain, but it has a largely negative impact on the grip strength of the entire hand. Dr. Marquardt’s work showed me just a small part of the wide spectrum of areas a biomedical engineer can research.