Timothy Bigelow
Iowa State University, IA·Biomedical Engineering
After hernia repair, the synthetic mesh used to reinforce the abdominal wall can become infected. Bacteria form a biofilm, a protective slime layer, on the implant, and treatment often means invasive, costly surgery to remove the mesh.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Engineering
- Topics
histotripsy
therapeutic ultrasound
cavitation
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Test whether adding lower-amplitude pulses to histotripsy, an ultrasound technique that creates bubble clouds to mechanically destroy cells, reduces cavitation memory and shortens treatment of infected hernia mesh, and measure how exposures affect mesh properties.
- Improve how visible polypropylene hernia mesh is on ultrasound by combining shear-wave and pulse-echo imaging and by adding glass microspheres to the mesh fibers, and test whether stronger reflections boost therapy pressure near the mesh.
- Evaluate whether histotripsy can safely and effectively destroy bacterial biofilms on hernia mesh implanted at varying locations and depths in a swine model, while carefully assessing surrounding tissue for unintended damage.
More about the research
This project aims to develop a way to clear these infections from outside the body with ultrasound, leaving the mesh in place.
Why it matters
Thousands of hernia repair patients each year develop mesh infections that often require surgery to remove the implant. An ultrasound-based histotripsy treatment could give them a noninvasive alternative, with fewer surgeries and complications. Better visibility of mesh on ultrasound could improve care even when no infection develops. The same approach might later be tried on infections of other implanted devices.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Thomas Matula
University of Washington, WA·Biomedical Engineering
Expand an animal model of skin and soft tissue abscesses to include MRSA, a drug-resistant bacterium, for testing focused ultrasound treatment.
Kenneth B. Bader
University of Chicago, IL·Biomedical Engineering
Develop and characterize a tissue phantom, a tissue-like test material, containing an imprintable mechanophore that changes chemically under force, to record the brief stresses created by ultrasound microbubbles.
Virginie Papadopoulou
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Biomedical Engineering
Optimize phase-change contrast agents, droplets that turn into bubbles under ultrasound, and therapeutic ultrasound settings to boost antibiotics against biofilms of Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterococcus faecalis in vitro.
The school
Iowa State University: 23 labs on PI Pages, $462M a year on research, 327 research doctorates a year.
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