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DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
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DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

     Osteoporosis is a bone disease characterized by a reduction in bone mineral density. It affects 44 million patients in the US in 2011 and the number was predicted to be 61 million by 2020. Unfortunately, current drugs and physical therapy for osteoporosis show either side effects or low efficacy respectively. Over the last decade, researchers seeking to improve the treatment of osteoporosis have pinpointed the ability of mechanical stimuli to promote osteogenesis. Among the mechanical stimuli studied, low magnitude and high frequency whole body vibrations (WBV) have demonstrated an effect in improving bone density in animal studies as well as in small scale human trials. However, the lack of evidence at the cellular level holds back wide application of WBV. A highly precise vibration device is necessary to study the effect of vibration at the cellular level. Currently uni-directional vibration plates have been developed, but they lack the ability to work in three dimensions, either sequentially or simultaneously. Furthermore, the device must be able to generate high frequency (10 – 100 Hz) and low magnitude (< 1 micron) vibrations. Herein, we present our designed solution of a multi-dimensional vibration system. We evaluated its performance at various device set points and tested out the optimal user setting based on the customer-defined task. The ultimate goal of this device is to help understand mechanisms of how vibrations elicit anabolic biochemical response from the cells, which will in turn support the wide application of WBV.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.