Georgia Tech and Emory Biomedical Engineering Team Wins Top Prize
An interdisciplinary team of biomedical and mechanical engineering seniors won People's Choice in the 2011 GA Tech Inventure Prize Competition and top prize in the 2010 Mechanical Engineering Capstone Design Expo with their design for a surgical instrument for cataract surgery. Advised by Emory's Timothy Van Johnson, MD, the team invented The AutoRhexis to perform the most difficult, risky, and time-consuming step during cataract removal surgery. This step, called capsulorhexis, is a process during which an ophthalmologist makes a circular incision in the eye in order to access the cataract. The team developed a design solution with rotating dual-arc blades which improves consistency in capsulorhexis size, circularity, centering, and time to completion when compared to existing products. The AutoRhexis will make cataract surgery safer, more cost-effective, and easier to learn and master by ophthalmologists.
Emory Health Now Blog Coverage
Design teams are available to ACTSI investigators.