Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080221673 | MEDICAL IMPLANT WITH REINFORCEMENT MECHANISM - An improved medical implant for treating mitral regurgitation is provided. The medical implant comprises proximal and distal anchors connected by a bridge. The medical implant is configured to be delivered into a coronary sinus using a minimially invasive procedure. The bridge is preferably made of a shape memory material which is biased to contract after the implant is delivered. The medical implant further comprises a reinforcement mechanism configured to limit stresses and strains along the length of the bridge. In a preferred embodiment, the reinforcement mechanism is fixed to a plurality of attachment points along the bridge, thereby preventing excessive elongation between any two attachment points. A resorbable material is preferably disposed within gaps along the length of the bridge to temporarily maintain the bridge in an elongated condition. After the proximal and distal anchors are secured in the coronary sinus, the resorbable material gradually resorbs, thereby creating tension in the bridge which applies a force along the mitral valve annulus. The reinforcement mechanism ensures that stresses and strains and distributed evenly while the bridge is in tension. | 09-11-2008 |
20130317598 | RAPID DEPLOYMENT PROSTHETIC HEART VALVES - A heart valve prosthesis that can be quickly and easily implanted during a surgical procedure is provided. The prosthetic valve comprises a support structure that is deployed at a treatment site. The prosthetic valve further comprises a valve member configured to be quickly connected to the support structure. The support structure may take the form of a stent that is expanded at the site of a native valve. If desired, the native leaflets may remain and the stent may be used to hold the native valve open. In this case, the stent may be balloon expandable and configured to resist the powerful recoil force of the native leaflets. The support structure is provided with a coupling means for attachment to the valve member, thereby fixing the position of the valve member in the body. The valve member may be expandable or a non-expandable type. | 11-28-2013 |
20140343670 | PROSTHETIC HEART VALVE DELIVERY APPARATUS - Certain embodiments of the present disclosure provide a prosthetic valve (e.g., prosthetic heart valve) and a valve delivery apparatus for delivery of the prosthetic valve to a native valve site via the human vasculature. The delivery apparatus is particularly suited for advancing a prosthetic heart valve through the aorta (i.e., in a retrograde approach) for replacing a diseased native aortic valve. The delivery apparatus in particular embodiments is configured to deploy a prosthetic valve from a delivery sheath in a precise and controlled manner at the target location within the body. | 11-20-2014 |
20150105856 | RAPID DEPLOYMENT PROSTHETIC HEART VALVE - A heart valve prosthesis that can be quickly and easily implanted during a surgical procedure is provided. The prosthetic valve comprises a support structure that is deployed at a treatment site. The prosthetic valve further comprises a valve member configured to be quickly connected to the support structure. The support structure may take the form of a stent that is expanded at the site of a native valve. If desired, the native leaflets may remain and the stent may be used to hold the native valve open. In this case, the stent may be balloon expandable and configured to resist the powerful recoil force of the native leaflets. The support structure is provided with a coupling means for attachment to the valve member, thereby fixing the position of the valve member in the body. The valve member may be expandable or a non-expandable type. | 04-16-2015 |
20150157455 | PROSTHETIC HEART VALVE AND DELIVERY APPARATUS - The present disclosure is directed to embodiments of catheter-based prosthetic heart valves, and in particular, prosthetic heart valves having sealing members configured to seal the interface between the prosthetic valve and the surrounding tissue of the native annulus in which the prosthetic valve is implanted. The present disclosure also discloses new methods of making an introducer sheath with an inner liner for percutaneous insertion of a medical device into a patient. | 06-11-2015 |
Patent application number | Description | Published |
20120095676 | ON DEMAND TTS VOCABULARY FOR A TELEMATICS SYSTEM - A driving directions system loads into memory a limited subset of prerecorded, spoken utterances of geographic names from a mass media storage. The subset of spoken utterances may be limited, for example, to the geographic names within a predetermined radius (e.g., a few miles) of the driver's present location. The present location of the driver may be manually entered into the driving directions system by the driver, or automatically determined using a global positioning system (“GPS”) receiver. As the vehicle moves from its present location, the driving directions system loads into memory new names from the mass media storage and overwrites, if necessary, those which are now geographically out of range. Based on the current location of the driving, the driving directions system can audibly output geographic names from the run-time memory. | 04-19-2012 |
20140058734 | SYSTEM FOR TUNING SYNTHESIZED SPEECH - An embodiment of the invention is a software tool used to convert text, speech synthesis markup language (SSML), and/or extended SSML to synthesized audio. Provisions are provided to create, view, play, and edit the synthesized speech, including editing pitch and duration targets, speaking type, paralinguistic events, and prosody. Prosody can be provided by way of a sample recording. Users can interact with the software tool by way of a graphical user interface (GUI). The software tool can produce synthesized audio file output in many file formats. | 02-27-2014 |
20150242387 | AUTOMATED TEXT ANNOTATION FOR CONSTRUCTION OF NATURAL LANGUAGE UNDERSTANDING GRAMMARS - Aspects described herein provide various approaches to annotating text samples in order to construct natural language grammars. A text sample may be selected for annotation. A set of annotation candidates may be generated based on the text sample. A classifier may be used to score the set of annotation candidates in order to obtain a set of annotation scores. One of the annotation candidates may be selected as a suggested annotation for the text sample based on the set of annotation scores. A grammar rule may be derived based on the suggested annotation, and a grammar may be configured to include the annotation-derived grammar rule. | 08-27-2015 |