Video Transcript – Kate Benfield Research Video

Video Transcript

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[Kate Benfield, Biomedical Engineering Ph.D student, BSU]: My name is Kate Benfield and I’m a biomedical engineering Ph.D candidate. My work revolves around the wear and tear within the human knee joint. So, around the world, many people may experience knee pain, and that knee pain might be brought on by injury or overuse. What if I told you there could potentially be a way to eliminate that knee pain or prevent it. Well, that’s what my work is essentially trying to do. So, I’m looking into the wear and tear within a specific portion of the knee joint, which is a soft tissue structure called a meniscus. And so what I am trying to do is I’m trying to essentially measure how much wear occurs within that soft tissue structure as a result of increased forces on the knee joint. This project is rather novel in the sense that I am using a 3D optical scanner to generate 3D models of actual human meniscus tissue. And this in itself is pretty unique because 3D optical scanners are usually used for reverse engineering processes in industry, and so by taking this technology I am able to combine it with mechanical loading in order to induce a wear pattern. I’m able to generate 3D models of that meniscus tissue and essentially measure the wear off of those models and so for the first time we are really able to characterize how certain physiological activity can impact meniscus wear and degeneration. As this project progresses, I really hope to make an impact on the medical community as far as helping foresee preventative strategies to alleviate some of that meniscus pain and to decrease the amount of meniscus wear that occurs over time.

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