In Canada, 25,500 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2011, and 4,100 will die of the disease. New approaches are required to predict clinical outcome and personalized management of patients. Drs. Mai and Cayre will combine their two newly developed technologies and work towards obtaining a new solid biomarker that enables the assessment  of a patient’s clinical outcome from the start. With the use of special filters, circulating tumour cells (CTC) will be isolated from prostate cancer patients’ blood.

Women with breast cancer often undergo mastectomy, or removal of the breast. Afterwards, they may elect to reconstruct their breast using one of several methods. One of these methods is by implantation with a permanently adjustable prosthesis which may show a smaller budgetary impact.

This project aims at developing a computerized system for spine diagnosis. This system will improve the efficiency and efficacy of radiologists to diagnose patients’ spine problems. The development of the system involves devising a set of tailor-made mathematical formulation. These formulation are grounded on the state-of-the-art computer vision algorithms and they are capable of capturing the knowledge required during spine diagnosis. The computerized system employing these mathematical formulations will be able to mimic the human expert to perform basic image-based diagnosis of spine.

Listeria monocytogenes is a common food-borne pathogen that is the causative agent of listeriosis, a severe and potentially fatal condition. Current methods for detection of L. monocytogenes in food samples require multiple days due to lengthy amplification steps to aid in microbe detection. Due to the recent emergence of nanoparticle technology, however, new options are emerging for removing and concentrating microbes from complex samples and providing extremely sensitive detection.

In the spinal cord injured population, inactivity is wide-spread, and most causes of death in those with spinal cord injury can be improved by increasing physical activity.  Current electric wheel-chairs exacerbate inactivity in this population by performing all the work required for transportation. The new openPAW device uses bio and environmental feedback (ie. current arm strength, weight, slope) from the wheelchair to alter how much power is mechanically provided to the wheels on each arm crank.