To make medical training better and more effective, scientists have developed the world’s first simulation of a human leg. The leg is designed to replicate an injury caused by flying shrapnel, as might occur on a battlefield or following a terrorist attack. The simulation of the wound has spurting blood and twisted movements.
The scientists, from University of California, Los Angeles, have previewed the invention in a video. Be warned, it isn’t for the squeamish.
Speaking with New Scientist magazine, Dr. Jeff Eldredge, who led the project, stated: “We’re genuinely hopeful that our simulations will enhance the educational experience for medical trainees.” He also added: “But I’m really pleased just to get visceral reactions from my kids. That probably makes me a horrible father.” If the kids are impressed, it must be good.
Creating a bloody leg is not straightforward. While movie production companies achieve realistic looking severed limbs for war and horror films, for trainee medics the way the blood flows needs to be as near-exact as possible. To get this right, the scientists spent considerable time crunching equations relating to fluid dynamics and tissue mechanics. To add to this they had to get the projectile wound just right. The basis of the simulated hemorrhage was a scientific technique called Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH), based on particle technology.
The resultant simulation includes bone, muscle and skin, along with the simulation of a functional vascular system. It has been presented at a meeting of the American Physical Society, exhibited as “Numerical simulation of hemorrhage in human injury.”
The aim of the blood-equipped artificial leg is is to train combat medical staff so they will have a better understanding of what happens when the real thing occurs in practice.
