Duduta’s team from L to R: Nour Dowedar, MASc student, Masoud Moghani, PhD student, Dr. Mihai “Mishu” Duduta, Dhruvi Parekh, MASc student, Haleh Shahsa, PhD student, Ang Li, MASc student, Siyoung Lee, Postdoctoral Fellow. Image from Banting Foundation website.
Professor Mihai “Mishu” Duduta (MIE) is among the recipients of the Banting Research Foundation’s 2022 Discovery Award. The Discovery Award provides new researchers at Canadian universities and research institutes with a one-year grant of up to $30,000 for innovative health and biomedical research projects. Duduta is among the six award recipients for 2022.
Duduta’s research project is entitled Smart micro-catheters based on electro-mechanical artificial muscles was awarded the University of Toronto 100th Anniversary Discovery of Insulin Banting Award.
The following excerpt from the Banting Research Foundation website describes Duduta’s research project:
Professor Duduta’s team is working to develop solutions to unmet needs with soft robotics, including sensate prosthetics, mechano-therapy, artificial limbs, and endovascualr intervention tools. Smart micro-catheters address a significant clinical need: long endo-vascular interventions because of slow navigation through tortuous anatomy.
With the device, and in collaboration with clinicians, the team will test a medical hypothesis: that the duration of an endovascular intervention can be reduced significantly if the clinician can steer the micro-catheter to navigate sharp turns. The team has also developed a novel fabrication method.
This project will produce a novel steerable catheter and demonstrate functionality in a tortuous anatomy phantom model. The device and performance in relevant anatomy will be used to engage clinicians and apply for additional funding for in vivo testing.
