Created to bridge the gap in the advancement of prosthetic technology for amputee patients, MIT’s Media Lab has been working tirelessly to perfect a new alternative approach to increased precision called magnetomicrometry (MM). This revolutionary method theorizes the insertion of magnetic beads into muscle tissue found within the amputated residuum will provide exact muscle length measurements, which can later be relayed to a bionic prosthesis almost instantly.  As one of the most persistent issues facing amputees, MM brings patients one step closer to unlocking the ability to control their prosthetic limb to behave like a natural limb. Although it may sound like science fiction, the MIT team has already seen initial success in animal trials. 

Unlocking A Brighter Future For Amputees 

Existing prosthetic technology, brilliant in its own right, has certain flaws that MIT hopes to improve upon. Electromyography (EMG), the most common device in use, is limited to offering information pertaining to the electrical activity of the muscle, but offers no such information about its speed or length. Highly invasive and painful procedures are currently being used to measure a person’s muscle length via external electrodes or those surgically implanted. But what if sensors could measure the behavior of the muscle? That’s what Dr. Taylor from MIT is proposing - painless precision.  Once placed, researchers use external magnetic sensors to accurately feed the magnet’s placement within the limb into a computer model, providing never before seen insight as to where the patient’s phantom limb would exist if he or she had never lost it.  The implications of this groundbreaking technology are vast, with applications in functional electrical stimulation for spinal cord injuries and guiding robotic skeletons to improve mobility for stroke patients or others suffering from muscle weakness. While traditional medical implanted devices have a “shelf life”, researchers note that magnetic beads have the capability to last the patient’s entire life. While still in the early testing stages, the success of this technology would translate into amputee patients gaining not only increased mobility and freedom, but also a new quality of life. 

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