Chicago Council on Science and Technology

Courtesy: Medill Reports Chicago

The doctor drove the scalpel into the man’s head exposing the flesh beneath. He anchored a sling on either side of the eye, then secured it to the eyelid with sutures, powered it with electricity and, suddenly, the cadaver blinked.

It sounds like a scene out of “Frankenstein.” But plastic surgeons Travis Tollefson and Craig Senders at the University of California recently performed this procedure to prove that artificial muscle potentially could be used to restore movement for thousands living with facial paralysis. A report on their work appears in the January-February issue of the Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery.

The inability to blink leaves the eyes of people living with facial paralysis vulnerable to corneal ulcers and blindness. If the artificial muscle technology ultimately works as the researchers hope, the rehabilitated eyelid movement would be synchronized and natural looking, said Senders.

The approach is a major advance over current methods of restoring blinking, which includes weighting the eyelid and allowing gravity to shut the eye or transplanting muscle from one part of the body to the other.

The doctors have successfully implanted the artificial muscle into gerbils using an external power supply, but they hope to one day develop a long lasting power source that could also be contained within the human body. In concept it would be a battery similar to what is used in cochlear implants and there would be some way to turn it off and on.

“We are excited about seeing the artificial muscle maintained in animal models without having major problems,” Tollefson said. “We need to see how long we can keep the implants working.”

Beyond rehabilitating the ability to blink, the artificial muscle technology may have applications for other parts of the face and even prove beneficial in relieving incontinence and acid reflux.

“Our goal here is to get it to where it works well in, say, the face and then you can take that same technology and move it to other areas,” said Senders.

SRI International in California developed artificial muscle in the 1990s for use in robotics. It mimics human muscle by contracting and relaxing in response to electrical impulses. In the University of California study an external device, rather than implanted artificial muscle, was used to provide the force needed to close the eye.

The purposes of the research were to determine the eyelid sling placement, the force needed to control it and the best material from which to construct it. One of the researchers’ main concerns was that the power needed to move the sling would exceed the capabilities of the artificial muscle.

“The current technology for this we don’t think has a role for large muscles, like a leg or arm,” Senders said. “The power generated seems more fitting for things like faces and eyelids.”

In the animal testing, the researchers have gotten the power source to last for four to six weeks. They stress that the ability to seal and implant a lasting power source into a human body is one of the major milestones to making artificial muscles practical.

“We want to have it be long standing and durable and repeatable,” said Tollefson. “Adding all those factors together it will be at least five years before we would be doing clinical applications.”

The doctors have been working on this application for four years but say this study was one baby step on a journey to future innovations.

“Some day I’m sure we’ll have all kinds of robotic things.” Tollefson said.“It’s like the $6 million dollar man. Remember that old TV show? In nowadays terms it costs lots more than $6 million.”