John G. Webster Professor Emer. Address/E-mail Program Affiliations Courses Education Fields of Interest Publications Summary Files and Links

Contact Information

2148 Engineering Centers Building 1550 Engineering Drive Madison, WI 53706

Tel: 608/263-1574 Fax: 608/265-9239 E-mail: webster@engr.wisc.edu

Program Affiliations

• Biomedical Engineering

• Biomedical Engineering Center for Translational Research

Courses

• BME 200: Biomedical Engineering Design
• BME 310: Introduction to Biomedical Instrumentation
• BME 462: Medical Instrumentation
• BME 762: Biomedical Instrumentation

Education

• PhD 1967, University of Rochester

Fields of Interest

• medical instrumentation
• radio-frequency and microwave hepatic ablation
• safety of less-lethal electromuscular incapacitation device (EMD): stun guns and Tasers
• biopotential amplifiers and interference
• bioelectrodes

Publications

• View publications on file with the National Library of Medicine.

Summary

My graduate students and I are involved in the following research.

Implantable intracranial pressure monitor

We are working with Department of Neurological Surgery Professor Joshua Medow to develop a permanently implanted passive pressure sensor to measure intracranial pressure (ICP). At anytime, the hydrocephalic patient, care taker, or physician can hold an external display device over the internal sensor coil and display the ICP and waveform to determine if the ICP has increased due to shunt obstruction which can require surgical intervention. Pressure will (1) deform the membrane and (2) move interior inductor coils closer together to (3) cause changes in resonant frequency. The external display device coil will link inductively to the internal sensor coil to measure the change in resonant frequency and convert it to pressure.

Miniature sternal skin-attached hot flash monitor

Hot flashes cause loss of sleep and workplace disruptions in some menopausal women. In testing potential therapies, subjective diaries are unreliable. Present objective recorders of skin conductance changes are bulky. We have developed a miniature recorder to collect objective data. We are developing signal processing algorithms that best detect our objectively recorded hot flashes as compared with subjectively recorded hot flashes. See hot flash below.

Files and Links of Interest

• A miniature monitor automatically detects number of hot flashes for a week on ambulatory subjects: 2007 Annual Meeting North American Menopause Society
• A miniature skin-attached hot flash recorder: IFMBE Proc., 15, 1-4, 2006
• A miniature sternal skin-attached hot flash recorder: IFMBE Proc. 2006 14:577-580.
• Analog signal processing
• Bioinstrumentation
• Calendar
• Can Tasers directly cause ventricular fibrillation?: IFMBE Proc, 2006, 14: 3307-3310.
• Community of Science profile
• Dart-to-heart distance when Taser causes ventricular fibrillation in pigs: IFMBE Proc., 15, 578-583, 2006.
• Design of Cardiac Pacemakers: J. G. Webster, ed., IEEE Press, 1995.
• Electrical measurement, signal processing, and displays
• Electromuscular incapacitating device VF: Will et al. (2006) 2006 Experimental Biology Meeting. Abstract #327
• Electromuscular incapacitating device safety: IFMBE Proc. 2005 11(1)
• Electromuscular incapacitating devices: IFMBE Proc. 2005:9
• Encyclopedia of medical devices and instrumentation, 2nd edition
• Encyclopedia of medical devices and instrumentation, 2nd edition: Table of contents
• Expert witness consulting: in Career Development in Bioengineering and Biotechnology
• Finding employment in medical device companies
• ISI Highly Cited: Search on Webster
• Medical ablation technology group
• Medical instrumentation: application and design, 4th ed.
• Minimally invasive medical technology
• Resume
• Robotic assisted prostatectomy
• Safety of pulsed electric devices
• Sensors and signal conditioning, 2nd ed
• Taser Braidwood Inquiry: for Webster view presenter, view transcript
• Taser blunt probe dart-to-heart distance causing ventricaul fibrillation in pigs: IEEE Trans Biomed Eng 55, 2768-2771, 2008
• Taser thesis: by Hongyu Sun
• Taser thesis: by Amit Nimunkar
• The Measurement, Instrumentation, and Sensors Handbook
• Wiley encyclopedia of electrical and electronics engineering: 24 volumes

Date last modified: 21-Nov-2011 Content by: webster@engr.wisc.edu Accessibility Web services Copyright 2011 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System SEND AN UPDATE REQUEST.