Julio Muñoz-García

Development of Personalized Annuloplasty Rings: Combination of CT Images and CAD-CAM Tools

Although the use of personalized annuloplasty rings manufactured for each patient according to the size and morphology of their valve complex could be beneficial for the treatment of mitral insufficiency, this possibility has been limited for reasons of timelines and costs as well as for design and manufacturing difficulties, as has been the case with other personalized implant and prosthetic developments. However, the present quality of medical image capture equipment together with the benefits to be had from computer-aided design and manufacturing technologies (CAD-CAM) and the capabilities furnished by rapid prototyping technologies, present new opportunities for a personalized response to the development of implants and prostheses, the social impact of which could turn out to be highly positive. This paper sets out a personalized development of an annuloplasty ring based on the combined use of information from medical imaging, from CAD-CAM design programs and prototype manufacture using rapid prototyping technologies.

Active Annuloplasty System for Mitral Valve Insufficiency

Active materials are capable of responding in a controlled way to different external physical or chemical stimuli by changing some of their properties. These materials can be used to design and develop sensors, actuators and multifunctional systems with a large number of applications for developing medical devices.

Stress - Strain Simulations for Optimising the Design of Shape - Memory Polymer Based Annuloplasty Rings

Shape-memory polymers are active materials that provide a mechanical response to temperature changes. They have a high capability for recovering from deformations (much greater than shown by shape-memory alloys) which combined with a lower density and cost has favoured the appearance of numerous applications for manufacturing actuators, especially for the aeronautics, automobile and medical industries.

The Evolution and Development of Mechanical Engineering through large cultural areas

Mechanical Engineering is probably the forerunner of many branches of Engineering and has persistently been their companion up to the present. For this reason, the History of Machines embraces a very broad period of the History of Mankind, and can be studied from many perspectives. This paper attempts to link progress in Mechanical Engineering to the great cultures that have arisen throughout the History of Mankind.

The Beginnings of a Subject on the “Development of Medical Devices” within the “European Higher Education Area” Framework

The subject “Development of Medical Devices” first appeared in Spain as part of the Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering of Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, as a way of responding to the needs of industry in matters concerning the development of diagnostic and therapeutic devices, and was first taught on the 2007-08 and 2008-09 academic courses.

The Twenty-One Books of Devices and Machines: An Encyclopedia of Machines and Mechanisms of the 16th Century

Progress in Engineering and Architecture has been decisive in the birth and duration of empires throughout History, and Mechanical Engineering has always played an important role. For long periods of the 16th and 17th centuries the Spanish Crown became the World’s leading political and economic power, so extensive that in the domains of King Philip II, “the Sun never set”.