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NEW RESEARCH COULD MAKE GETTING A PROSTHETIC LEG A WHOLE LOT EASIER

In India, the Jaipur Foot Organization handles many patients every day in each of its local centers. This charitable organisation is the world's largest provider of prosthetics and has worked with about a million patients since being founded in 1975. The JFO, also known as Bhagwan Mahavir Viklang Sahyata Samiti, is based in Jaipur, a city of more than three million people that is the capital of Rajhastan in northern India. The artificial legs they provide, based on a locally developed design, cost about $40.

A team of MIT students has been working on a new device that could greatly simplify the process of fitting these legs, producing a better fit while eliminating some steps in the process and reducing waste materials. The hand-powered system, which requires no external power, would also greatly simplify the fitting of legs in rural areas, where the present electrically powered fitting system requires bringing along a bulky generator. The first step in fitting a leg is to make a mold of the person's stump to provide a precise fit. This is done by placing the stump into a container filled with tiny glass beads and covered with soft silicone rubber, and then creating a vacuum so that the beads seal tightly around the limb. This "negative" mold is filled with more glass beads (referred to as "sand") to form a positive mold--an exact replica of the stump--and the socket of the prosthetic leg is made to fit that replica. Alternatively, the two steps can be done with plaster of paris instead of the sand--a process that doesn't require electricity but does use heavy, non-reusable plaster.

The MIT system is now designed under the auspices of the D-Lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. by a students Philip Garcia, Maria Luckyanova and Tess Veuthey, physics student Jessica Schirmer, and D-Lab instructor Goutam Reddy have been working on the project--some of them for more than a year. The new fitting system they devised uses a hand crank to produce the vacuum, eliminating the need for electric power. And the same device can be used to produce both the initial negative mold and the positive mold that replicates the shape of the stump.

Garcia, Luckyanova, Reddy and Schirmer spent time at the Jaipur facility.The project is supported by grant from MIT's Public Service Center. The new system produces less waste, requires no electricity and produces a better fit that might lead to a longer-lasting prosthetic. That's because the plaster of paris in the traditional method shrinks slightly as it hardens, making the fit less exact.