Recurring Meeting of Cleveland Clinic Core Team

Date: January 7, 2014

Time: 10:30 AM EST

Means: In person meeting

Attendees:

1. Ahmet Erdemir
2. Jason Halloran
3. Snehal Chokhandre
4. Robb Colbrunn
5. Tara Bonner

Agenda:

1. Discuss tasks progress.
2. Discuss immediate action items from last two meetings.
3. Reassign Snehal's responsibilities to team members for the next month.
4. Decide tasks for the next meeting.
5. Other.

Immediate Action Items:

• Jason
  • Make a list of all Tekscan related components (and their prospective price) for purchase through cost sharing with other groups.
  • Evaluate coordinate system alignment between different imaging protocols of the same cadaver knee.
  • Provide notes for the meeting minutes during Snehal's absence.
  • Setup second imaging test session.
• Ahmet
  • Provide notes for this meeting minutes.
  • Review draft of tissue preparation sections of specimen preparation page.
• Tara
  • Follow up with specimen pre-order evaluation and purchases.
• Robb
  • Make a list of testing accessories to build for support of prospective testing machine.
• Robb and Tara
  • Utilize previous knee joint testing to quantify the influence of skin and surrounding tissue on joint kinematic-kinetic response.
  • Provide general description of testing equipment along with sampling frequency, resolution, range, etc.
• Craig
  • Complete velcro installation on transportation device prototype and provide pictures.
  • Update and organize imaging specifications page.
• Craig and Jason
  • Evaluate the transportation device prototype.
• All
  • Review specimen preparation and registration page.
  • Review joint experimentation page.

Notes:

1. Discuss tasks progress.
   • See discussions on last two meetings' immediate action items (provided below).
2. Discuss immediate action items from last two meetings.

   • Jason received a quote from Tekscan, Inc. for software ($2,500, updated version). Tekscan, Inc. also provided documentation for external triggering but they did not provide pricing. Jason also asked details of a calibration device. Current system is owned by Morgan Jones. Matt Kuklis from his group will be approached for cost sharing. Sensors are assumed to be about $400. BioRobotics Testing Core can also help share costs. Jason will make a list of what we need and ask specific quotes for each of these, including external trigger capability. The trigger can be as simple as an auxiliary channel sending or receiving 5V input.

   • All components of the transportation device is ready for trial imaging. The Velcro fitting needs to be conducted. Craig may need to take pictures and place them in the wiki. Jason will setup the test session. He will follow up with Snehal to locate the trial knee and material samples. The transportation device is under Snehal's desk. All material test pieces are in the BioRobotics Core robotic testing room. Tara can locate these materials and Snehal will send Jason a picture with the labeling of the materials. In regard to imaging, Jason may need to follow up with Carl Winalski. It may be wiser to get the second round of trial images before a meeting with him. Jason also needs to follow-up with coordinate system alignment of images. An urgent need is the organization and additional documentation in imaging specifications page.

   • Robb raised the issue of the timing of manufacturing components for placing Optotrak (Northern Digital Inc.) markers during joint testing. The material has not been decided yet, awaiting for the second round of trial imaging.
   • Timing of manufacturing tissue testing components were discussed. The team needs to make sure that all these should be manufactured or acquired while waiting for the delivery of tissue testing machine (8 weeks from order). Robb will make a list of all necessary accessories. For temperature control of the environment, there is a controller box to maintain temperature by heating the bath. A circulation system is a possibility for convection induced heating.
   • Snehal and Tara met and discussed preparation of tissue samples and updated the wiki page on specimen preparation. This provides adequate documentation on harvesting of tissues and preparation of tissue samples. Tara will support the page with images. Others were asked to review the document and provide feedback. Currently no information was provided on placing the tissue samples on clamps. This can be part of tissue testing procedures or may be inserted in the specimen preparation specifications page. Ahmet will review this document. In following, Tara and Snehal can elaborate on it and the rest of the team can review.
   • Ahmet pointed out that the tissue samples should be listed in the specimen specifications page. He asked Snehal and Tara to check the list, and insert sample numbers.
   • Jason did not have a chance to do the comparison of joint mechanics of intact and dissected (removal of skin and surrounding tissue) specimens under same loading conditions. Tara has access to the data. Plots of six kinematic and six kinetic metrics need to be delivered to assess raw data. This may be documented in the wiki and may result in a conference abstract for submission. Tara noted that there are four specimens tested in another project in this regard. If there is a need, we may need to do additional tests. The goal is to answer if we should we keep the skin and surrounding tissue Open Knee(s) related testing and specimen preparation.
   • Infrastructure page needs to be updated to provide testing machine specifications for reference. About the document on data structures, abridged document refers to the descriptions of data structures that only have relevance to the knee. Robb will provide the document in full form as it is updated. Ahmet can help shorten the document for Open Knee(s) by removing parts that are not relevant. The abridged version is aimed to be more accessible by easing navigation.
   • Ahmet reorganized the front page of the wiki to guide users and developers separately. Ahmet described this organization to the team.
   • Joint testing specifications had some remaining questions for the team members to address. Tara updated the wiki to provide additional information on joint experimentation data. Ahmet needs to provide links in the joint testing specifications page to direct the reader to data structure documents in the infrastructure page, which also incorporate Optotrak related information. The document is ready for final review by team members. Ahmet will disseminate the page in a similar fashion as the specimen specifications page. Along with specimen and imaging specifications, he is planning to submit the links to Biomch-L for community review.
3. Reassign Snehal's responsibilities to team members for the next month.
   • Specimen acquisition will be followed up by Tara. There are a few candidate specimens that need to be evaluated for purchase.
   • Purchasing process of tissue testing device will be followed up by Ahmet through Izzy Delgado-Dembie of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Cleveland Clinic.
   • Also see Immediate Action Items above.
4. Decide tasks for the next meeting.
   • See Immediate Action Items above.
5. Other.
   • Naming conventions for knee specimens and tissue samples were discussed. Fundemental issues are establishing the relation between tissue samples and knee specimens and managing multiple knees. Snehal pointed out the need for documentation to track specimens. The moment we decide to use a knee specimen, the specimen will be numbered, e.g., OKS 001, and there will be a specific wiki page to describe the specimen. All child tissue samples may be listed in there as well. Tissue labels may need to be associated with metadata describing what type of specimen they are, maybe in separate wiki pages, similar to the knee specimen. The labeling should not be strongly associated with certain location of the tissue. The metadata should link the label to detailed information. Whenever there is a specimen, a wiki page can host all the specimen metadata. The documentation of the specimen should evolve in the wiki as the experimentation goes on. Utmost importance is the labeling of the sample and a note in the wiki describing specimen in association with the label. Specification of tissue samples may need to include taking of pictures. These pictures can be included in the wiki as part of specimen/sample page. Every sample should have adequate metadata in specimen/sample wiki page describing where that sample came from, which anatomical data, and pictures. The metadata for specimens should also include where the remains of the samples are so that one can conduct additional tests, e.g. histology.
   • Specifications for data management seem to be necessary. A link for such a page exists in the roadmap page for prospective development of this information. How do we label the specimen? How do we put metadata for the specimen? How do we associate the data with specimens/samples? How all these activities fit into management of source code repository or a data server to host the data?