Hi guys! It’s Rohan here with my first blog post as part of the SEED Program at the OEDK. We’ve just finished the third week of the program, and I can’t wait to share some of the details with y’all.

A little background about me – I am a Cell Biology and Genetics major with a minor in Global Health Technologies. Ultimately, my goal is to go to medical school and become a physician. I got to know about the SEED internship through Rice360 – I was interested in pursuing an internship in which I would be creating medical technologies for low-resource settings. On the first day, I realized that I was the only non-engineer in the internship. I was slightly apprehensive about this fact at first. How would I be able to keep up with my colleagues without much engineering experience? However, I pushed these feelings aside and leapt out of my comfort zone.

I ended up choosing a project proposed by Dr. Alfredo Gei, an obstetrician-gynecologist in the Texas Medical Center. He was having trouble visualizing the length of the cervix in pregnant women, a metric that is directly related to the likelihood of preterm birth. He wanted us to come up with an imaging method that would better allow him to see the external opening of the cervix during a transvaginal ultrasound, as well as a model to test this method.

This project was right up my alley! I am interested in the medical field, and this would be a great way to incorporate that interest into my work with SEED. Through this project, I met my teammates – Brooke, Precious, and Alinafe. Brooke is a mechanical engineer, Precious is a petroleum engineer, and Alinafe is a biomedical engineer. We have a group that is extremely diverse in disciplines, so we have a great opportunity to work together with our diversity of thought.

During our first week, we mainly did background research on our problem. We researched the mechanisms of transvaginal ultrasounds, previous cervical models, previous contrast agents for ultrasounds, and many other things. Ultimately, we decided to focus on the model of the vagina, cervix, and uterus first – without this model, it would be impossible to actually test our gel. Thus, we got to brainstorming, with a focus on our model.

We came up with many ideas during our brainstorming phase. We proposed 3D-printing a mold for the organs, which we would fill with silicone. We also proposed creating a cube of silicone, and then simply carving out the organs. We proposed making a negative mold of the organs and pouring silicone around them. Then, we found something that would make the whole process easier. There exists a material that can be used in a 3D resin printer that mimics human tissue better than many silicones. Being able to 3D print the organs would make the process much easier.

We then consulted with Dr. Meaghan Bond and Professor Jackie Foss from the Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies – my wheelhouse :). They gave us several ideas from other teams that created ultrasound models – they used different types of silicones, augmenting them with other materials to make them more echogenic in ultrasounds. They also gave us the advice to simultaneously work on two methods of production, in case one of them doesn’t work. With that in mind, we decided to work on these two methods:

1. Create a 3D model of the vagina, cervix, and uterus and print it out of the resin material
2. Create a negative of those organs, 3D print that, fill it with silicone, and pull the negative out

With a clear direction in mind, we set off. According to our research, we created models out of gelatin using the negatives that we were going to use in the future with silicone. Several articles claimed that a 17% gelatin mixture mimics human tissue well. Unfortunately, upon testing in Dr. Gei’s office, this turned out not to be true. We scrapped that idea and continued to iterate using other methods. We made a silicone model out of Dragon Skin Skin FX Silicone, meant to mimic human skin. 

Now, we are in our (hopefully) final stages of creating our model. We’re waiting for final edits from Dr. Gei before we print using our desired material and start assembling the model. From there, we can start working on the other part of our design – creating a better transvaginal ultrasound imaging protocol.

Thanks for reading everyone!