Awarded in 2006
Home Department: Bioengineering, Medicine
Faculty Advisors: Charles Taylor (Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering) and David Liang (Cardiovascular Medicine)

Research Title: Using Diagnostic Ultrasound to Detect internal Bleeding and Therapeutic Ultrasound to Treat the Bleed

Research Description: Development of a novel portable ultra-sound cuff with an automated bleed detection algorithm would be useful for medics in the field. The goal of Aaron’s study was to evaluate a detection strategy for internal bleeding that employed a well-established theoretical biofluid model, the power law. This law characterizes normal blood flow rates through an arterial tree by its bifurcation geometry. By detecting flows that deviate from the model, they hypothesized that vascular abnormalities could be localized. Their bleed detection metric demonstrated good sensitivity and specificity in computational bleed simulations, in vivo rabbit bleed models, and human case studies in dialysis patients.

WHERE IS HE NOW?

Aaron is part of a private practice in Pittsburgh, Penn- sylvania, as a corneal specialist. He is working on commercializing a new ophthalmic imaging device, for which he recently obtained a patent. He is also developing new surgical instruments.