Applying Moore’s Law to accelerate medical device design

Conventional device development is time consuming and expensive, as designers must make guesses about the relationship between design inputs and output, then slowly refine those guesses in a limited sequence of building and testing prototypes. The exponential increase in computational power realized by Moore’s Law makes realistic virtual simulation of medical implants increasingly feasible, substantially reducing time and cost relative to the conventional build and test model of development.

Combining analytical models and finite element analysis with boundary conditions derived from clinical 3D CT/MR or angiography data sets, it is possible to simulate in-vivo device performance, conduct detailed testing and analysis, DOE’s and reliability assessments, and iterate design parameter inputs to achieve desired performance outputs, without ever making a physical prototype.

Proximal Design excels at developing realistic models tailored to specific clinical or device requirements, and developing simulation strategies to prospectively explore a design space and accelerate cost effective discovery of optimal design strategies.

Some examples are posted on the Resources page, including:

• Extracting coronary anatomy from a CT dataset
• Angioplasty balloon pleating and wrapping
• Balloon expansion of a tortuous vessel