LaparoVision in the news

Across the nation, female engineering students face the daunting issue of being in the minority. However, at BYU, mechanical engineering student Amanda Lytle Bartschi produces inspiring results for other women in engineering as she defeats the odds and wins awards for her work.

Imagine driving through a storm without your windshield wipers. Your view is fogged up and obscured with water droplets. That’s what often happens to surgeons during laparoscopic surgery, a common way to operate. Using creativity, a Brigham Young University student is hoping to make surgery less risky.

A BYU graduate student has created a miniature windshield wiper for cleaning laparoscopy camera lenses, allowing surgeons to focus on patients without having to remove and reinsert laparoscopes constantly during surgery. Laparoscopes have to be pulled out and wiped clean every 5–8 minutes, posing a risk to patients as well as increasing doctoral expense times. Jacob Sheffield developed this technology in the Compliant Mechanisms Research Lab on campus with help from BYU professor Larry Howell and mechanical engineering undergraduate Amanda Lytle. The device is called LaparoVision and is so small it can rest on the end of a finger. The device is inspired by origami mechanisms.

One of the coolest modern medical innovations is the laparoscope, a slender rod with a camera tip that allows doctors to see inside a body during surgery. Laparoscopes have made surgery easier for surgeons and patients, but the device does have a problematic drawback: it must be removed, cleaned, and reinserted multiple times during surgery.

The BYU College of Engineering and the Marriott School of Business hosted the 11th Student Innovator of the Year competition this semester.