The Rocky Mountain Collegian

Issue date: 9/25/07 Section: News

Junior Dan Woldtvedt, a biomedical sciences major, uses a diamond-tipped band saw to slice through a cow bone in a lab on the Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences campus on Saturday, September 22, 2007. Woldtvedt, along with graduate student Wes Womack, not pictured, created a three-dimensional model of the cartlidge in the human spinal cord. It is used to predict the reactions to stress placed on that cartlidge.

Cutting human vertebrae into 1 millimeter slices with a very precise diamond-bladed band saw is just another day in the life of biomedical researchers Dan Woldtvedt and Wes Womack.

Woldtvedt, a junior mechanical engineering and biomedical science double major, collaborated with Womack, a doctoral student researching spinal biomechanics, to research the flexibility of the human spine and the impacts that affect it. Their work won Woldtvedt the 2007 Biomedical Engineering Society Undergraduate Research and Design Award.

"This is a stepping stone to developing better disk replacement and providing the data for others to do more research," Woldtvedt said.

Woldtvedt won after submitting his biomedical engineering research and paper on "Three-dimensional Cartilage Thickness Mapping of Cervical Facet Joints."

According to the CSU School of Biomedical Sciences' Web site, "biomedical engineering … advances knowledge in engineering, biology and medicine, and improves human health through cross-disciplinary activities that integrate the engineering sciences with the biomedical sciences and clinical practice."

A biomedical engineer uses traditional engineering expertise to analyze and solve problems in biology and medicine, providing an overall enhancement of health care.

Woldtvedt and Womack studied facet joints, which link vertebrae together and allow flexibility in the spine, and were the first to create a three-dimensional map of the cartilage between the cervical facet joints by using mathematical algorithms.

To make the three-dimensional map of the cartilage, Woldtvedt and Womack took seven spines from human cadavers and sliced each vertebrae into 1-millimeter pieces. Woldtvedt then photographed each slice.

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