Ultra-High to Ultra-Low: MRI Goes to Extremes.

Two of the hottest areas in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are at the extremes.

Solving an Unmet Need: Effective, Inexpensive Diagnostics for Resource-Limited Settings.

The Most Advanced diagnostic technologies may be amazing, but they often do not make it to resource-limited settings, including those places where particularly dangerous pathogens are more prevalent, crowded conditions make outbreaks more likely, or medical facilities are less available.

Enhancing Therapeutic Delivery Using Micro- and Nanorobots.

"The traditional way of delivering drugs has a very low efficiency. For instance, with solid tumors, drug delivery efficiency is reported to be lower than 1% [1], which means that 99% of the drug is elsewhere in the body causing side effects instead of actually fighting the cancer. This is where micro- and nanorobots can come into play, because they can swim or otherwise move to the target location in a controllable way. This is the hope."-Tian Qiu, Ph.D., biomedical robotics developer.

NIH/NIBIB Introduces New Center for Biomedical Engineering Technology Acceleration.

In Late January 2023, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) launched a new center designed to accelerate biomedical discovery and therapeutics, in part by pulling together expert, multidisciplinary teams from throughout the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to quickly respond when national or global health crises strike. The inaugural director of this Center for BME Technology Acceleration, or BETA Center, is biomedical engineer Manu Platt, Ph.D., (Figure 1) who is also taking on the role of NIBIB associate director for scientific diversity, equity, and inclusion. Platt previously held appointments as professor, Wallace H. Coulter distinguished faculty fellow, and diversity director of the Center on Emergent Behaviors of Integrated Cellular Systems and Cellular Manufacturing and Technologies at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University.

New Center Primes the Extended Reality Frontier.

Extended reality has reached a critical point in biomedicine. The technology is accelerating and excitement about potential health care benefits is mounting but bridging the gap between envisioning what could be and actually making it happen is still a work in progress. Part of the challenge is coordinating all the major players to ease the development pipeline so virtual, augmented, and mixed reality can reach their potential in everything from diagnostics and surgeries to clinician training and telemedicine.

Smart Contact Lenses Keep an Eye on Health.

Contact lenses are ideal conduits for continuous health monitoring. They have a long safety record, and they sit on the eye, where they have access to a range of biological signals. Making the transition from vision correction to biological monitoring, however, requires advances in technological development so the lenses not only detect and report signals accurately, but retain the high level of comfort that users have come to expect.

Ultrasound and Microbubbles Combine for Drug Delivery, Detecting Biomarkers.

Microbubbles and ultrasound are no longer teaming up only as a way to enhance images. New technologies are now using the two to create physical pathways into cells for easier drug delivery, even into the cells of highly drug-resistant cancerous tumors and across the blood-brain barrier. Going further, a Texas research group has developed drug-carrying microbubbles that can complete targeted delivery themselves, and another group in Missouri has shown that two-way traffic in channels across the blood-brain barrier also allow biomarkers to flow out, which provides a new window into the brain as well as brain diseases.

Advances in Microscopy Tech Offer Better Views.

Microscopes have come a very long way since the 1600s when Henry Power, Robert Hooke, and Anton van Leeuwenhoek began publishing the first views of plant cells and bacteria. The major inventions of contrast, electron, and scanning tunneling microscopes didn't arrive until the 20th century, and the men behind them all earned Nobel Prizes in physics for their efforts. Today, innovations in microscopy are coming at a fast and furious rate with new technologies providing first-time views and information about biological structures and activity, and opening up new avenues for disease therapies.

Novel Monitoring and Treatment Technologies for the Heart.

Cardiovascular disease may be the world's leading killer of men and women, but new technologies are in development that could help lessen its impact. Among them are a variety of innovative external and internal patches that employ flexible and stretchable materials, machine learning, and other tactics to monitor heart activity and function, and in some cases to provide on-the-spot treatment.

NASA Takes on Climate Change: Focusing Tech From Space to Earth.

When the Voyager 1 spacecraft was hurtling past Neptune to points beyond, its camera swung back to snap an image of Earth, a tiny spot of light in the vast, dark expanse. That 1990 image offered a stark reminder of just how vulnerable our planet is. The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) remains focused on space exploration today, but is also providing an Earth-side role, notably in understanding climate change and how it affects human health, and in inspiring new research and products to help people cope with varying weather patterns and the threats they bring.

Comprehensive Database and Machine Learning Put Focus on Gut Microbiome.

A technology company in Gaithersburg, MD, USA, has developed a three-pronged approach to help researchers analyze microbiome samples. It includes a thorough microbiome database, an algorithm to search it, and a cloud platform to return useful information.

Finding New Ways to Analyze the Microbiome.

The microbiome has a prominent impact on human health, but with microbiomes each comprising trillions of microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and fungi, and microbes differing from one person to another, much is left to learn. That includes everything from identifying the microbiota present to also deciphering their behavioral roles in human health and disease.

Phage Therapy Takes on Broad Applications.

Bacteriophages once were a promising prospect to treat bacterial infections but fell out of favor by the mid-20th century with the advent of highly effective antibiotics. As antibiotic resistance has spiked in recent years, however, interest in phages has risen, particularly following a number of last-resort phage treatments that were able to beat severe antibiotic-resistant strains. New research is now beginning to show that phage therapy may become much more broadly used as treatments for diseases and other infections.

New Efforts in Biomedical Imaging.

Since the invention of the X-ray in 1895, biomedical imaging has come a long way and the pace of advances in the field are only accelerating. Research groups are progressing on many fronts through improvements to existing technologies and the development of novel imaging devices and algorithms that not only deliver better pictures, but also more-and more useful-information from the image data.

Detecting Ion Levels, Changes to Monitor Health.

Ions can say a lot about a baby's health. High levels of chloride in sweat can indicate cystic fibrosis (CF), a disorder that causes respiratory and digestive problems; abnormal sodium levels are signs of increased risk for seizure or muscle problems; and too-high or too-low potassium concentrations can cause heart arrhythmias or other muscle issues. These ions-commonly called electrolytes- are also important throughout life. For instance, too much or too little sodium can lead to confusion, seizures, and muscle weakness or cramping.

COVID-19 in Animals: What to Fear and What to Learn.

While COVID-19 Has been racing through much of the human population, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has also turned up in other mammals. This leads to many questions: Might these animals serve as reservoirs where new variants can emerge and then infect humans? Can animal surveillance identify novel variants before they appear in humans? How dangerous is COVID-19 to nonhuman animals?

Better Tech for Detecting COVID-19.

Earlier, Better Detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection and exposure is a necessary part of battling COVID-19, and many research groups are working on new methods to do it.

AI Tools Poised to Improve Patient Health Care.

Technologies to provide early predictions of breast cancer risk, to identify which hospital patients actually should have their vital signs monitored overnight and which should be left to their restorative sleep, and to swiftly identify rare infant diseases are all joining the ranks of approaches that are powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

AI-Designed, Living Robots Can Self-Replicate.

In 2020, a research group made the stunning announcement that it had built programmable organisms-living robots they called xenobots-out of biological cells, and these xenobots could work together to perform simple tasks. Now, less than two years later, the same group has an even more astonishing announcement: The xenobots can autonomously self-replicate in a way that is completely different from any other living organisms, and their progeny are functional and similarly able to self-replicate [1].

New Biomed-Tech Advances Poised to Change the Future.

Biomedical and health technology is progressing at breakneck speed. From specialty pharmacies to general discount shops, store shelves are packed with a vast assortment of wearable medical devices that measure glucose levels, heart rate, and other health metrics; and over-the-counter test kits are helping to check for a wide array of infections. At the same time, electronic health records and other data-sharing platforms have smoothed the mass shift from in-person to virtual office visits over the past two years, and new imaging technologies are allowing earlier disease detection so treatments can begin sooner when they are more effective.