Project Overview

Endoscopy is an important clinical and research tool to visualize the upper airway and to assess an individual’s airway protection, breathing, voice, and swallow function. For example, endoscopy is used to view the vocal folds, pharynx, and larynx during a variety of task conditions. In addition, endoscopic somatosensory stimulus delivery can be used to deliver pressure calibrated air pulses to the airway through a transnasal endoscope to assess the integrity of airway sensory function. The ability to determine and control the distance between an endoscope and the airway structure of interest is important to provide a consistent examination across participants, and would be useful to judge the approximate size of structures and potential lesions. However, industry has yet to develop a device to enable the clinician and researcher to accurately determine and maintain a constant distance between the endoscope and the airway structure of interest. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to design and develop a device to determine and control the distance between an endoscope and the airway tissue/structure of interest. It is desirable to develop a device that can be attached to an existing endoscope. The device should be constructed of a material that can be cold sterilized for repeated use, and the device should be of a sufficiently small size to pass easily through the nasal cavity while attached to the endoscope.



Team members from left to right: Gerhard van Baalen, Nick Ladwig, Kevin Hanson, Michelle Tutkowski

Contact Information

Team Members

• Nick Ladwig - Team Leader
• Kevin Hanson - Communicator
• Michelle Tutkowski - BSAC
• Gerhard Van Baalen - BWIG

Advisor and Client

• Prof. Paul Thompson - Advisor
• Michael Hammer - Client