The institute
FEMTO's news

You are here

A European project to prevent perineal tears

PELVITRACK offers a predictive tool for patricians as part of an interdisciplinary European consortium involving FEMTO-ST.

PELVITRACK has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101186212.

This project, which brings together 11 partners from 7 European countries (France, Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Portugal, United Kingdom, Switzerland) is one of 45 new projects selected from over 1100 applications, of which only 3 are coordinated in France.

The project is led by the Institut Mines-Télécom (IMT) Alès, and will run for 48 months (official launch scheduled for April 8, 2025), with EIC Pathfinder funding from the Horizon Europe program to the tune of €3.2 million.

Better anticipation of perineal tears

In Europe today, 32% of women and 16% of men are affected by perineal dysfunction.

These disorders can be linked to traumatic childbirth, hormonal factors, lifestyle or the practice of high-impact sports. In most cases, however, early detection means better treatment.
With a view to improving women's health, and in particular preventing serious perineal tears during childbirth, the PELVITRACK project was supported by the dynamics carried out by the BiomecaT team in the FEMTO-ST Institute's Applied Mechanics Department, in collaboration with FEMTO-ST's AS2M Department and Besançon University Hospital (Nicolas Mottet, obstetric surgeon): in particular, the thesis work of Marine Lallemant (now an obstetric surgeon at Lille University Hospital) and Tiguida Kadiaké, whose thesis is due to be defended on May 14, 2025

The aim of the project is to improve early diagnosis, refine prognosis and optimize patient care. To achieve this, PELVITRACK aims to develop a solution in a medical environment enabling real-time monitoring of perineal tears during childbirth, thanks to a hybrid approach combining experimentation and numerical modeling. This work includes experimental tests on animal models (pigs and sheep), numerical modeling of the clinical situations observed, and a multi-center clinical study in women.

In this context, the FEMTO-ST BiomecaT team (Patrick Sandoz, Arnaud Lejeune, Jérôme Chambert and Emmanuelle Jacquet) is working in particular on an ex vivo experimental campaign on porcine tissues and whole perineum. The team will also be involved in simulation work to reproduce the various clinical situations encountered during childbirth. Finally, the team will collaborate with Lille University Hospital on the in vivo acquisition of mechanical data fields. This project is in line with the team's ongoing interest in pelvic stability and protection of the female perineum during childbirth.

Partners (countries) :

Coord. CNRS (Emmanuelle Jacquet) including (FEMTO-ST, LMGC (FR), LMA (FR)) : Institut des Mines-Telecom (FR), LamCUBE (FR), CHUs (FR), : EPFL (Switzerland), University of Zaragoza (Spain), Polytechnic of Turin (Italy), University of Bohemia (Czech Republic), INEGI (Portugal), university hospitals and hospitals in Switzerland, and 2 private partners Virtual Care (UK) and Superviseme (Switzerland).

Contact : Emmanuelle JACQUET (FEMTO-ST)

N.B : Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

  • IEEE ICEMS Conference : Best paper award

    Researchers from SHARPAC team/ENERGY department of FEMTO-ST institute received the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Electrical Machines and Systems for their work on the influence of electrical conductivity on eddy-current losses in electrical machines.

    Read more
  • Joint laboratories CNRS-Companies 2021

    FEMTO-ST and AUREA Technology honored at the LAB COM CNRS event in Paris on November 29 and 30

    Read more
  • Nanorobotics of the future: FEMTO-ST enters the 4th dimension

    For the first time, nanorobotic structures have been realized by folding in 3 dimensions a multilayer membrane and proposing their actuation by an electro-thermo mechanical principle.

    Read more
  • Chaos and rogue waves in a supercontinuum laser

    In collaboration with the Universities of Tampere, Aston and ICB laboratory, FEMTO-ST researchers have made significant headway in the ongoing effort to understand the ultrafast chaotic nature of lasers, elucidating for the first time their noise-like pulse operation.

    Read more
  • Julio Andrés Iglesias Martínez receives the Best Student Award at IEEE Ultrasonic Symposium

    His work consists in achieving three-dimensional phononic crystals at the micro-scale with record band-gap width.

    Read more
  • Lessons on textile history and fibre durability from a 4,000-year-old Egyptian flax yarn

    Published in the journal Nature Plants, work involving FEMTO-ST scientists is helping to propose ever more efficient and resistant materials based on flax fibers.

    Read more
  • Programmable matter: world record attempt

    A FEMTO-ST research team is trying to get the record for the largest number of autonomous light blocks assembled in a structure approved by the "Guiness World Record".

    Read more
  • Rodolphe Boudot receives the 2020 EFTF Young Scientist Award

    The IEEE EFTF-IFCS 2021 is a joint conference of the European Frequency and Time Forum and the IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium. The 2021 joint conference, originally planned for Paris in April, has been converted to a virtual conference from 7th to 17th July, 2021

    Read more
  • Giacomo Clementi, grand prize i-PhD

    For his work on Lithium Niobate (LiNbO3), which has led to the design of original and efficient devices for the recovery of vibratory energy by the piezoelectric effect, in particular for connected objects.

    Read more
  • Understanding energy transfers during photosynthesis

    Using three pigments manipulated by scanning tunneling microscopy, researchers from IPCMS and FEMTO-ST are studying energy transfers between molecules to gain a finer understanding of the photosynthesis mechanism in plants. This work is published in Nature Chemistry.

    Read more

Pages