Deep-Body Wireless Bioelectronics Enabled by Physics-Based Bioadaptive Wave Control

Introduction

Wireless medical devices can be implanted in the body to monitor health and to deliver therapies. Recent advances in biosensors, neural interfaces, biotechnology, microelectronics, and improved surgical techniques enable a vision of minimally invasive battery-free bioelectronic implants that can perform a wide range of medical and research tasks.

Applications

Examples include:

• Biosensing for early detection of health anomalies
• Recording and precision stimulation of central and peripheral nervous systems
• Implantable labs-on-a-chip
• Surgical microbots

Challenges

A key scientific challenge lies in how these devices can be powered and controlled from outside of the body. Existing wireless solutions remain limited in their ability to transfer energy and data. These limitations result from the difficulty in controlling electromagnetic waves in the human body, a dynamic, heterogeneous, and lossy medium.

Objectives

The objective of this proposal is to develop bio-adaptive wave control technologies that overcome these challenges to enable efficient powering and precise control of mm/m-scale deep-body bioelectronics. To accomplish this, we will:

1. Focus on the fundamental studies of waves and their control in complex and dynamic anatomical media.
2. Develop new reconfigurable architectures of conformal radiating surfaces for the practical implementation of the developed wave control methodologies.
3. Demonstrate clinical utility by fully wireless recording and modulation of the pancreatic nerve activity in an anesthetized porcine model through dynamic wave control.

Interdisciplinary Approach

The proposal relies on the interdisciplinary track record of the PI in:

• Bioelectronics and neural interfaces
• Wave physics and computational electromagnetics
• Conformal radiating structures and wireless power transfer

BESSEL consolidates these skills and enables conducting research on highly capable deep-body wireless bioelectronics with high translational potential.