Virtually Pioneer Skin Download

[Marquez Feliciano]

DrBecker and his professional staff invite you to discover our plastic surgery clinic to experience the difference his expertise brings. Beyond our compassionate, kind approach, you can be confident that you will be treated by an acclaimed authority in advanced, less-invasive surgical procedures that produce natural-looking, beautiful and arguably the best outcomes in plastic surgery Boca Raton has to offer.

Dr. Becker is the pioneer of the one-stage breast reconstruction. This procedure is performed at the same time as the mastectomy. Patients often look better after their reconstruction than before, particularly in patients undergoing prophylactic mastectomy where skin sparing and nipple sparing mastectomy is performed. Read his publications

Breast correction may be necessary after complications from an earlier augmentation. Issues may include asymmetry, implants that are too large, too small, or wrongly positioned, or issues such as capsular contracture, muscle distortion, implants that have drooped low on the chest or sag, or issues associated with excessive scarring. Dr. Becker is highly proficient in the correction of breast surgery complications. He has invented and patented several breast implants and teaches his techniques around the world.

He has developed skin care products that are based on concentrated active ingredients that have scientifically proven benefits. His products contain effective ingredients without added potentially harmful chemicals.

Our philosophy is to provide every patient with the opportunity to enhance body, breast, or face with the most advanced surgical techniques. We believe that a successful procedure is a customized procedure. Dr. Becker and his staff treat every patient as a valued individual, with discretion, dignity, and compassion. Dr. Becker is dedicated to assisting patients who require reconstructive surgery or have chosen to enhance or rejuvenate face or body. We take pride in our ability to create natural-looking, beautiful results in a range of plastic surgery procedures.

Discover Dr. Becker as an international lecturer for a range of plastic surgery topics presented to others in his field of practice. Look over his many articles, publications, and lecture topics presented to plastic surgeons around the globe.

Dr. Becker serves as an instructor at plastic surgery meetings throughout the United States, and has been invited to lecture and perform surgery around the world, teaching others his highly sought-after techniques.

Nothing is more important to us than your health and safety. In alignment with local and federal guidelines we have suspended all elective surgical services are temporarily suspending operations. We will continue to see post-operative patients for their follow up visits and any patients with medical emergencies. We have a Registered Nurse available to answer any questions.

We are pleased to offer virtual consultations and this has provided the opportunity to make them as streamlined and easy as possible for you. Our office is open as usual for any email, telephone, or video inquiries. Schedule a virtual consultation today to explore your options and receive expert recommendations from our board-certified world-recognized plastic surgeon, Dr Hilton Becker.

Northwestern University researchers have developed a new thin, wireless system that adds a sense of touch to any virtual reality (VR) experience. Not only does this platform potentially add new dimensions to our long-distance relationships and entertainment, the technology also provides prosthetics with sensory feedback and imparts telemedicine with a human touch.

Referred to as an "epidermal VR" system, the device communicates touch through a fast, programmable array of miniature vibrating actuators embedded into a thin, soft, flexible material. The 15-centimeter-by-15-centimeter sheet-like prototypes comfortably laminate onto the curved surfaces of the skin without bulky batteries and cumbersome wires.

"People have contemplated this overall concept in the past, but without a clear basis for a realistic technology with the right set of characteristics or the proper form of scalability. Past designs involve manual assemblies of actuators, wires, batteries and combined internal and external control hardware," said Northwestern's John A. Rogers, a bioelectronics pioneer. "We leveraged our knowledge in stretchable electronics and wireless power transfer to put together a superior collection of components, including miniaturized actuators, in an advanced architecture designed as a skin-interfaced wearable device -- with almost no encumbrances on the user. We feel that it's a good starting point that will scale naturally to full-body systems and hundreds or thousands of discrete, programmable actuators."

"We are expanding the boundaries and capabilities of virtual and augmented reality," said Northwestern's Yonggang Huang, who co-led the research with Rogers. "By comparison to the eyes and the ears, the skin is a relatively underexplored sensory interface that could significantly enhance experiences."

Rogers is the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Biomedical Engineering in Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering, professor of neurological surgery in the Feinberg School of Medicine and director of the Center for Bio-integrated Electronics.

Rogers and Huang's most sophisticated device incorporates a distributed array of 32 individually programmable, millimeter-scale actuators, each of which generates a discrete sense of touch at a corresponding location on the skin. Each actuator resonates most strongly at 200 cycles per second, where the skin exhibits maximum sensitivity.

"We can adjust the frequency and amplitude of each actuator quickly and on-the-fly through our graphical user interface," Rogers said. "We tailored the designs to maximize the sensory perception of the vibratory force delivered to the skin."

The patch wirelessly connects to a touchscreen interface (on a smartphone or tablet). When a user touches the touchscreen, that pattern of touch transmits to the patch. If the user draws an "X" pattern on the touchscreen, for example, the devices produce a sensory pattern, simultaneously and in real-time, in the shape of an "X" through the vibratory interface to the skin.

When video chatting from different locations, friends and family members can reach out and virtually touch each other -- with negligible time delay and with pressures and patterns that can be controlled through the touchscreen interface.

The actuators are embedded into an intrinsically soft and slightly tacky silicone polymer that adheres to the skin without tape or straps. Wireless and battery-free, the device communicates through near-field communication (NFC) protocols, the same technology used in smart phones for electronic payments.

"With this wireless power delivery scheme, we completely avoid the need for batteries, with their weight, size, bulk and limited operating lifetimes," Rogers said. "The result is a thin, lightweight system that can be worn and used without constraint, indefinitely."

Everyone can imagine how this type of technology could be combined with a VR headset to create more interactive and immersive gaming or entertainment experiences. But for U.S. Army veteran Garrett Anderson, epidermal VR might provide a much-needed solution to a real-life problem.

Anderson recently tried Northwestern's system, integrated with his prosthetic arm. When wearing the patch on his upper arm, Anderson could feel sensations from his prosthetic fingertips transmitted to his arm. The vibrations felt more or less intense, depending on the firmness of his grip.

"Say that I'm grabbing an egg or something fragile," said Anderson, who is now the outreach coordinator at the University of Illinois' Chez Veterans Center. "If I can't adjust my grip, then I might crush the egg. I need to know the amount of grip that I'm applying, so that I don't hurt something or someone."

"Users develop an ability to sense touch at the fingertips of their prosthetics through the sensory inputs on the upper arm," Rogers explained. "Overtime, your brain can convert the sensation on your arm to a surrogate sense of feeling in your fingertips. It adds a sensory channel to reproduce the sense of touch."

Rogers views the current device as a starting point. "This is our first attempt at a system of this type," he said. "It could be very powerful for social interactions, clinical medicine and applications that we cannot conceive of today, beyond the obvious opportunities in gaming and entertainment."

He and Huang are already working to make the current device slimmer and lighter. They also plan to exploit different types of actuators, including those that can produce heating and stretching sensations. With thermal inputs, for example, a person might be able to sense how hot a cup of coffee is through prosthetic fingertips.

The Northwestern team believes the overall engineering framework can accommodate hundreds of actuators with dimensions significantly smaller than those used currently, which have diameters of 18 millimeters and thicknesses of 2.5 millimeters.

Eventually, the devices could be thin and flexible enough to be woven into clothes. People with prosthetics could wear VR shirts that communicate touch through their fingertips. And along with VR headsets, gamers could wear full VR suits to become fully immersed into fantastical landscapes.

"Virtual reality is a very important emerging area of technology," Rogers said. "Currently, we're just using our eyes and our ears as the basis for those experiences. The community has been comparatively slow to exploit the body's largest organ: the skin. Our sense of touch provides the most profound, deepest, emotional connection between people."

The study, "Skin-integrated wireless haptic interfaces for virtual and augmented reality," was mostly funded through the Center for Bio-integrated Electronics, as part of the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics, which was made possible by Northwestern University trustees Louis A. Simpson ('96 P) and Kimberly K. Querrey ('20 P).

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