Transforming medicine, one discovery at a time. From groundbreaking medical devices to transformative new treatments, Hopkins BME researchers are engineering the future of medicine and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Here’s a glimpse into our latest findings and insights.
Keep up with all our research discoveries on the Research Hub page.
— NATALIA TRAYANOVA, Murray B. Sachs Professor of Biomedical Engineering
The shape of the heart’s left atrial appendage (LAA) —a tiny pouch in the heart— is closely linked to a patient’s risk of stroke. Doctors currently lack a standard, objective way to measure and categorize the LAA shape, making it difficult to accurately predict a patient’s risk based on this vital clue. To solve this, Natalia Trayanova’s team built a new computational framework that combines elastic shape analysis with unsupervised machine learning to reliably categorize LAA morphology into robust shape clusters. By identifying specific high-risk shapes that are more likely to create blood clots, the system provides a more precise and consistent way to understand the link between LAA shape and stroke risk, paving the way for more accurate stroke prevention tools in the clinic.
In a new perspective paper, Derek Cummings and collaborators explain that an individual’s immune system is determined by three things: your genes, the unique changes your immune cells make throughout your life, and how your body responds to its environment. By continuing to explore and map these three factors across diverse populations, the researchers argue that medicine can finally move past the current one-size-fits-all approach and towards truly personalized healthcare. Unlocking this knowledge will pave the way for treatments that are precisely tailored to an individual’s immune system.
Treating Superior Canal Dehiscence Syndrome (SCDS)—an inner ear disorder that triggers constant dizziness and balance issues—has always been a challenge. But now, Kathleen Cullen and her team have conducted the first study that used wearable motion sensors to objectively measure how SCDS affects daily life. They discovered that SCDS patients unconsciously adopt a clever trick to cope: holding their heads rigidly still when navigating complex environments like walking in the dark or on stairs. The researchers suggest this reduced head motion is a protective adaptation aimed at minimizing stimulation of the affected inner ear canal. The study provides the first quantitative roadmap linking the inner ear problem to real-world movement, setting the stage for more targeted and effective balance therapy to help patients regain confidence and stability in their daily lives.
— KATHLEEN CULLEN, Raj and Neera Singh Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Johns Hopkins engineers, led by Nicholas Durr, have built a state-of-the-art eye camera that makes diagnosing serious eye diseases like glaucoma easier and faster. Current eye cameras require perfect focus, which is difficult if a patient has strong prescriptions or poor vision. This new device solves that by taking a picture of the fundus—the back interior surface of the eye, which contains the retina—using a special digital lens. The camera captures data that can be digitally refocused after the picture is taken—it can “fix” blurry images for people with severe nearsightedness or farsightedness. This new approach allows doctors to get crystal-clear images of the retina every time, greatly improving the speed and reliability of screenings for conditions like glaucoma.
Biophotonics Discovery | October 2025
The growing demand for genetic testing often forces Genetic Counselors (GCs) to spend valuable time on administrative tasks instead of patient care. To tackle this challenge, a collaborative study led by Casey Taylor unveiled the potential of natural language processing (NLP) to precisely track time spent in counseling sessions across diverse clinical specialties, with the core goal of optimizing the time GCs can devote to patients. “This study not only sheds light on real-world evidence of time spent in genetic counseling visits, it provides a strategy for healthcare providers to understand, and ultimately improve their processes,” says co-author and genetic counselor Carolyn Applegate. By applying advanced models to a substantial, seven-year dataset of genetic counseling notes, the researchers found that the median time spent in a session was 50 minutes, with noticeable variations based on clinical specialty, time periods (pre-COVID and during the COVID pandemic), delivery modes (in-person and telehealth) and phases of counseling (pre- and post- genetic testing). Promising methods developed from this study are being validated in the Sequence of Cardiovascular Genetic Counseling and Testing clinical trial led by Cynthia James (RESEQUENCE-GC, NCT05422573).
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association | November 2025
— MICHELLE NGUYEN, lead author and BME PhD student
The biggest obstacle to creating reliable, long-term brain-machine implants is the body’s rejection of the stiff, foreign material, which causes the device to fail. In a new perspective paper, Johns Hopkins researcher Xiao Yang and student Junpeng Li (MSE ’26) chart the future of neurotechnology designed to eliminate this rejection problem. Made of flexible and stretchable electronics that mimic soft brain tissue, these devices are designed to co-evolve and regenerate with the body, enabling the implant to last a long time. By combining this seamless integration with technologies like AI for real-time decoding and organoid intelligence (OI) for hybrid computing, these advanced neurotechnology devices will be far more than passive sensors. They are envisioned as active, living, and learning extensions of the nervous system, promising long-lasting and effective treatments for countless neurological conditions.
MRS Communications | October 2025
