You'll probably arrive in the form of limbs and other pieces and, once there, amid the din of techno music, a group of very young and very smart researchers will chop you into smaller parts and use them to test new orthopedic devices or determine whether existing products can be used in better ways.

Researchers at UCSF's Biomechanical Testing Facility evaluate promising orthopedic technologies and work to create the first-ever set of standards for testing on cadaveric specimens. The lab is part of UCSF's new Orthopaedic Trauma Institute at SF General, the largest, most comprehensive public musculoskeletal research center in the country, and possibly, the world.

"Basically, it's robots and dead people," said the lab's research director, Jenni Buckley, a mechanical engineer who, at 29, is one of the more seasoned members of the staff.

The testing facility uses about half of the bodies available through UCSF's Willed Body Program. Researchers conduct 50 to 60 testing projects each year, with about 20 going on at any one time. In two years, the lab's staff has grown from two people to 15, many of whom are students.

Prototypes tested

The lab routinely tests products by device makers prior to their approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Sometimes, orthopedic surgeons will come into the lab with an idea or a makeshift prototype to adapt or improve upon an existing device.

Then it's up to the lab's staff to engineer a setup to test the device on cadaver bone, simulating the motion or pressure it would endure in daily living. While cadaver bones can't heal and the tissue may have degraded, they provide a more realistic environment than synthetic material.

On a recent afternoon, Buckley reached into one of several industrial freezers to pull out an arm, severed below the shoulder. "We call this an armsicle," she quipped. She immediately recognized the arm's musculature as matching another tattooed arm the lab had previously used in a test. "We take a head from a person, and a little while later, the arms will come through."

Despite the morbid humor, which helps diffuse the most gruesome aspect of the job, Buckley and her crew are passionate about the lab's mission and grateful for the anatomic gifts that make their work possible. "We're respectful and appreciative of every piece of material that comes through here," she said.

Body parts tracked

The parts are closely tracked by the Willed Body Program, which notifies families when their loved one's complete body has been returned and cremated.

While clearly a scientific environment, this is a place that uses erector sets, a food saver, bicycle parts, kitchen knives, a butcher saw (a meat slicer is on order) and even a tree pruner.

At one end of the lab, a woman's arm lay palm up on a table. Fishing line had been tied to tendons exposed by a neat incision. In turn, the fishing line was hooked up to an apparatus rigged using a bicycle chain and motor.

Project manager Tom Chu explained that the setup is a prototype for a machine that eventually will test how irritating implanted metal plates can be on tendons over time. Lab members had tried a number of different motors - including one from a pasta maker, which blew up, and another from a blender - before purchasing a more powerful electric motor.

"We try to simulate the most realistic motion possible," Chu said. After he switched on the motor, the fishing line pulled on alternate tendons, making the arm eerily come alive and flex its index finger intermittently. He said thin sensor strips would be placed under the tendons to measure the pressure.

Another experiment involved a skull - well, half a skull, sawed off above the jaw - and partial spine.

The donor's skull and neck already had gone through a post-mortem surgical procedure that implanted the screws and rods typically needed to stabilize the head after tumors or infectious disease are removed from the site.

The engineers had created a setup to flex the skull and ultimately determine the minimal amount of metal necessary. "Orthopedic surgeons like to throw in as much hardware as possible," Buckley explained, but the larger the device, the greater the risk of nicking an artery.

In an unrelated test, the lab conducted what's called "migration testing" - or how a device performs when movement is involved - on a disk replacement created by Sunnyvale startup Spinal Kinetics Inc. The 6-year-old company, which has received approval to market two devices in Europe, has completed feasibility studies for U.S. clinical trials for its cervical device.

Michael Reo, Spinal Kinetics' senior director of engineering, said he was pleased by the quality of the lab, as well as the results of the tests.

Reo said the lab is well positioned to handle the growing number of orthopedic devices being developed by Bay Area companies. "Her (Buckley's) lab is a natural evolution for what's going on in the Bay Area in the development of spinal devices," he said.

$1 million budget

The testing facility operates on a $1 million budget, largely funded by orthopedic companies. The companies have no control over the outcome of testing, and about 70 percent of all results are published, whether positive or negative.

Last month, the lab received a $50,000 grant from the Lucasfilm Foundation, George Lucas' nonprofit philanthropy. "We told him we do really cool things with robots," Buckley said.

The lab spends about $400,000 a year to purchase some 500 body parts from about 200 donors. The lab deals exclusively with UCSF's Willed Body Program, which does not make a profit on the remains.

"You're worth about $2,500 whole, about $8,000 distributed," said Buckley, meaning disarticulated or dissected. The time and expertise involved in processing, storing, tracking and eventually disposing of unpreserved body parts adds to the expense.

Buckley said she orders body parts with very specific requirements - say, legs from men under the age of 65 who died preferably of cardiac arrest, not cancer (chemotherapy tends to alter bones). The parts are identified only by number.

All of the body parts are unpreserved, and how long one can be used in testing depends on how often it's frozen and thawed. Typically, a part can stay out at room temperature for about 48 hours (refrigerated between uses) before it needs to be refrozen and can spend up to six months in the freezer. The integrity of the specimen eventually will break down.

Buckley admitted the lab can get pretty odiferous at times. "We're constantly yelling about who-left-whatever in the freezer," she said.

Find out more about UCSF's Willed Body Program at anatomy.ucsf.edu/WBP/index.html.

E-mail Victoria Colliver at vcolliver@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle