PhD Studentship: Towards Digital Evaluation of Patient-Specific Wrist Repair

Key Skills

Effective communication skills, Mathematical modeling

Job Description

Eligibility: UK Applicants only

Funding

School of Mechanical Engineering Studentship offering the award of full academic fees, together with a tax-free maintenance grant of £19,237 per year for 3.5 years.

Lead Supervisor: Dr Marlene Mengoni – m.mengoni@leeds.ac.uk 

Co-supervisor name: Professor Sophie Williams – s.d.williams@leeds.ac.uk

Project summary

A funded PhD is available to develop patient-specific evaluation of custom wrist repairs, in collaboration with industry partner Attenborough Medical.

In this PhD project, you will access unique computational and experimental facilities and know-how from the institute of Medical and Biological Engineering at Leeds. You will also work in close collaboration with Attenborough Medical, a leading company for patient-specific implants in the UK, located in Nottingham.

Surgical fixation after a distal radius fracture can result in both flexor and extensor tendons complications in over one in six patients treated surgically, with tendon rupture occurring in a quarter of them. Complications are mostly due to tissue-devices interaction (tissue irritation, adhesion or direct laceration); as such their occurrence may be reduced with patient-specific implant designs.

You will aim to develop a combination of in silico and in vitro models of wrist repair that can assess the risk of tissue damage following surgery.

The PhD project will first assess the type of movements likely to create tissue damage following wrist repair: you will create computational and experimental models to identify the type of movement generating tissue-device contact. The project will then explore one of two avenues:

• Assess the tissue-level damage propagation for the tendons of the wrist. This will require the development of new lab-based and computational methods, to enable comparing the possible damage created by off-the-shelf devices and patient-specific devices from Attenborough Medical
• Explore design optimisation with participant or patient data. This will require collecting motion data from participants and patients and use that data either in combination with their own medical imaging or with generic imaging to develop a computational model which can account for person-specific movement when assessing the risk of damage following wrist repair.

You will have a background in Mechanical or Biomedical Engineering, with a keen interest in Mathematical Modelling or Finite Element Analysis, and in Experimental testing. You will learn practical aspects of project management, scientific writing for technical or non-technical dissemination, and gain presentation skills through international conferences and group meetings. You will gain specific technical skills and training in computational modelling, 3D image analysis, and experimental testing of tissues. During the project, you may be expected to prepare and test human cadaveric tissue specimens; previous experience in handling human or animal tissue would be beneficial, but not essential - full training will be provided.

References: None

Please state your entry requirements plus any necessary or desired background

First or Upper Second Class UK Bachelor (Honours) or equivalent

Subject Area: Biomedical Engineering

Keywords: Modelling, Biomechanics, Experimental Design, In-silico Prediction