Medical device developments: Therapeutic window to the brain

Transparent skull implant created by UCR-led team will allow doctors to deliver life-saving laser treatments to patients with brain disorders.


Riverside, California - Researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) are bringing their idea for a medical device – a window to the brain transparent skull implant – closer to reality through the findings of two studies that are forthcoming in the journals Lasers in Surgery and Medicine and Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology, and Medicine.

The implant under development, which literally provides a window to the brain, will allow doctors to deliver minimally invasive, laser-based treatments to patients with life-threatening neurological disorders, such as brain cancers, traumatic brain injuries, neurodegenerative diseases and stroke. The recent studies highlight both the biocompatibility of the implant material and its ability to endure bacterial infections.

The Window to the Brain project is a multi-institution, interdisciplinary partnership led by Guillermo Aguilar, professor of mechanical engineering in UCR’s Bourns College of Engineering, and Santiago Camacho-López, from the Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada (CICESE) in Mexico.

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Click here to read the full articley by Sarah Nightingale on UCR Today.