A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

VivoMetrics (Ventura, California) reported that its LifeShirt system will be used in a new study on human visual attention, to be conducted by researchers at the University of Waterloo (Waterloo, Ontario).

The study, “A Portable Laboratory for Studying Human Attention in the Real World,” is expected to be the first to shed light on how human attention operates and fails in everyday situations.

Noting the importance of the data expected to be gathered by the research, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (Ottawa, Ontario) has issued a grant in support of the project valued at almost $78,000.

Though much is known about the overall topic of human attentiveness and its importance to overall health and performance, the portable LifeShirt system will play a role in enabling researchers to conduct experiments in the field, while subjects are going about daily activities such as driving a car or working in a state of fatigue.

As the study’s goal is to understand how physiological processes correlate with a person’s focus, the system will be able to non-invasively provide data on subjects’ vital signs, including EEG and respiratory function. Other equipment, including tools designed to track subjects’ eye movement and focus, will be incorporated into the research design.

“We are excited to undertake this important research on human attention in realistic settings,” said Dr. Daniel Smilek, professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo and director of the study. “The statistics we hope to gain from the research will play a valuable role in the future development of policy regarding safety in several areas that require a high level of direct attention from an individual.”

Smilek said he expects to have the LifeShirt and other equipment necessary to begin the study early next year, with the first results anticipated next summer.

Bruker Daltonic (Bremen, Germany), the University of Goettingen (Goettingen, Germany) and biotech company PANATecs GmbH (Tuebingen, Germany), founded in 2004 as a spin-off from the University of Tuebingen, reported entering into a new collaboration in protein bio-marker discovery and molecular diagnostics research based on mass spectrometry.

In the joint project, funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research, new tests for the molecular diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis are expected to be developed by a combination of immunological and biochemical techniques with a mass spectrometry read-out, the companies said.

PANATecs will apply Bruker Daltonics’ Clinprot tools for biomarker discovery, profiling and identification in the field of rheumatoid arthritis research and development. In addition, PANATecs will offer services for biomarker identification using Bruker Daltonics’ mass spectrometry equipment.