BME undergraduate Christian Blough receives research award from College of Engineering

Christian Blough, undergraduate student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded a one-year research scholarship from the Undergraduate Honors Committee in the College of Engineering at The Ohio State University. When completed, Christian’s project will be titled “Developing Transfer Functions of Lumbar Puncture Needles." Christian’s mentors are Dr. Cynthia Roberts, Professor, Ophthalmology, BME, and Robert Small, MD, PE, Physician and Professor, Department of Anesthesiology and Graduate Faculty, Biomedical Engineering. 

The motivation for his project stems from research being done about glaucoma. Often in glaucoma research, the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pressure is often taken. Up until the last few years this pressure was commonly taken using a lumbar puncture needle connected to a fluid manometer. A fluid manometer is just a measurement tool that allows for a vertical column of water to form and has length printed on the side to determine pressure in terms of the height that the fluid reaches. To take a CSF pressure reading the lumbar puncture needle is inserted into the spinal column and the CSF flows through the needle and into the manometer. The pressure reading is taken when the fluid stops rising. The time that it takes for the fluid to stop rising depends on a multitude of factors including the size and type of the needle and the CSF pressure. It is theorized that physicians may not always wait long enough to get accurate pressure measurements. The trials that Blough is running look to see how long it takes to obtain an accurate reading based on the type and size of the needle and the CSF pressure.