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Navigating the Curves

Internship Guides IBBME Student in Translating Ideas Into Innovation

Amir Manbachi with spinal anatomy model at Stryker

Updated January 22, 2012

When asked what he was doing with his summer, Amir Manbachi had a great answer.

"I'm developing a theoretical model of a device meant to transform the quality of care in spinal surgeries by providing an easier, more accurate means of navigation for surgeons."

In Germany.

Manbachi, who completed the second year of his PhD in Biomedical Engineering in the Clinical Engineering option at IBBME, interned at the research and development headquarters of the Stryker Leibinger GmbH & Co. in Freiburg, Germany. Known as one of the one of the world's top five medical device companies that design, produce and market products in the field of surgical navigation, the internship at Stryker offers Manbachi the opportunity to put his research into practice.

The Clinical Engineering PhD option is brand new—Manbachi is one of the first five students ever to enroll in the program, which began in 2011. Unique in Canada, the degree option brings together distinct elements from engineering and medicine; students enrolled in the PhD option are co-supervised by faculty members from health sciences and engineering, marking a true collaboration between the two disciplines towards the creation of innovative solutions to biomedical problems.

Translating an idea to an object, on the other hand, is nothing new for Manbachi.

For his PhD research, Manbachi is studying spinal surgery navigation systems using a novel new ultrasound technique. Spinal surgeries are notoriously difficult, relates Manbachi, since seeing the delicate spinal tissues being operated on has been a long-standing problem for surgeons.

"It's been blind so far," Manbachi says, but the problems associated with more typical guidance systems for spinal surgeries are also daunting: computer-assisted surgeries (GPS), for instance, tend to cost a great deal of money, while patients are nonetheless subjected to the potentially-dangerous levels of radiation involved with CT scans.

Amir's research extends to the "long term," says Professor Emeritus Richard Cobbold , one of Manbachi's co-supervisors, "yet it's clearly clinically applicable, as it has the potential for reducing the number of surgical errors."

Manbachi's research has nevertheless already entered the real world--even before his internship with Stryker. Cobbold and Manbachi filed a patent application with the Uof T Innovations Office for their surgical navigation technology earlier this year.

"Amir is a dynamic individual," Cobbold says of his student. "He works extremely hard to develop new ideas and thoughts."

Despite the hard work, Manbachi still enjoyed side benefits from his summer internship. "I'm learning about Germany's approach to a clean and environmentally-friendly lifestyle, another language, and all about the efficiency of German engineers!"

This is the first in a series of profiles on Clinical Engineering students who are employed as summer interns.

Read more about the Clinical Engineering program and internships here .

image of Freiburg, Germany
The "Green" city of Freiburg, Germany

Images courtesy of Amir Manbachi and Hans Schoepp

University of Toronto Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering

Navigating the Curves

Internship Guides IBBME Student in Translating Ideas Into Innovation