This month, I had the pleasure of speaking with Wilhelm Smith, a junior bioengineering major (Cohort 42). Currently a researcher at the University of Maryland’s Global Medical Devices Lab, Smith is working on creating a portable low-cost laparoscopy device for use in low and middle-income countries.
A laparoscopy is a surgical procedure that uses a camera embedded in a thin tube, a laparoscope, to examine the organs in a person’s abdomen. Laparoscopic surgeries are commonly used because they decrease scarring, shorten a patient’s hospital stays, and reduce the possibility of an infection occurring at the surgical incisions. However, the medical equipment that’s instrumental to the procedure is expensive, thus posing a barrier to people from low and middle income countries who need surgery.
When asked why he chose to join this research project, Smith explained, “My entire goal is to be able to make a difference, not just here, but in another place where they don’t have the resources.”
This is the problem that Smith is trying to solve. Since February of 2024, Smith and Dr. Jenna Mueller have been designing and creating a portable testing chamber and image analysis software for an existing low-cost laparoscope that only needs to be plugged into a computer to view images during a surgery, thus making laparoscopic surgeries more accessible. Their team is partnering with Uganda’s Makerere University. Through this partnership, Smith has held online training sessions to train Ugandans on how to best use their laparoscope and the associated software.
Smith’s main role is creating the software programs for the laparoscope. He’s focusing on streamlining the image quality analysis applications. Smith does this through understanding existing software, making his own version of them in MATLAB, and then testing it with the laparoscope on the portable testing chamber to ensure that his code works well alongside the physical device. Smith is currently working on transitioning the software’s programming language from MATLAB into Python.
When asked about the biggest takeaway from his research experience, Smith reflected on the mindset it requires: “You really have to love learning—and be ready to fail more than once along the way.” Creating devices and software normally takes years to do at the industry level. So, to be able to make considerable progress in only a couple of months requires perseverance and a strong understanding of the fact that “learning as you go” is the whole point of research. Developing this software has been a fulfilling experience: “I get to be flexible about what I want to do, and the project’s all dependent on what I do which gives me a lot of accountability,” Smith said.
One experience that stood out to him the most was when he spent the half of his summer working 40 hours a week to create an app that no one has made before. Smith built an image resolution analysis application from the ground up, a reformatted version of its expensive counterpart. “Failure is part of the process,” Smith said. From writing the script to creating the user interface to running experiments on it, Smith explained that he was able to succeed because “[he] had a space where [he] can fail and bounce back, with the encouragement and help from [his] lab and teammates.”
The investment of time and effort Smith put into his research that summer led to him getting the opportunity to do an undergraduate talk at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) National Conference. In addition, he co-authored a paper about the portable testing chamber he and his team built.
This summer, Smith plans on doing research at Purdue University’s Cardiovascular Imaging Research Laboratory. He looks forward to being able to go into hospitals and work alongside doctors and technicians. The QUEST community is all rooting for you!