A battery-less wireless implant for the continuous monitoring of vascular pressure, flow rate and temperature

Kyeongha Kwon; Jong Uk Kim; Sang Min Won; Jianzhong Zhao; Raudel Avila; Heling Wang; Keum San Chun; Hokyung Jang; Kun Hyuck Lee; Jae-Hwan Kim; Seonggwang Yoo; Youn J Kang; Joohee Kim; Jaeman Lim; Yoonseok Park; Wei Lu; Tae-Il Kim; Anthony Banks; Yonggang Huang; John A Rogers

doi:10.1038/s41551-023-01022-4

A battery-less wireless implant for the continuous monitoring of vascular pressure, flow rate and temperature

Nat Biomed Eng. 2023 Oct;7(10):1215-1228. doi: 10.1038/s41551-023-01022-4. Epub 2023 Apr 10.

Authors

Kyeongha Kwon^#¹, Jong Uk Kim^#^{2

3}, Sang Min Won^#⁴, Jianzhong Zhao^#^{5

6

7

8}, Raudel Avila⁸, Heling Wang^{5

6

7

8}, Keum San Chun⁹, Hokyung Jang¹⁰, Kun Hyuck Lee¹¹, Jae-Hwan Kim¹², Seonggwang Yoo³, Youn J Kang¹³, Joohee Kim³, Jaeman Lim³, Yoonseok Park¹⁴, Wei Lu³, Tae-Il Kim^{2

15}, Anthony Banks^{3

16}, Yonggang Huang^{3

5

6

7}, John A Rogers^{17

18

19}

Affiliations

¹ School of Electrical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea. kyeongha@kaist.ac.kr.
² School of Chemical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea.
³ Querrey-Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
⁴ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea.
⁵ Laboratory of Flexible Electronics Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
⁶ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
⁷ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
⁸ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
⁹ Electrical and Computer Engineering, the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA.
¹¹ ImpriMED, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, USA.
¹² Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA.
¹³ Department of Ocean System Engineering, Jeju National University, Jeju, Republic of Korea.
¹⁴ Department of Advanced Materials Engineering for Information and Electronics, Kyung Hee University, Yongin, Republic of Korea.
¹⁵ Biomedical Institute for Convergence at SKKU (BICS), Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea.
¹⁶ Wearifi, Inc., Evanston, IL, USA.
¹⁷ Querrey-Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA. jrogers@northwestern.edu.
¹⁸ Wearifi, Inc., Evanston, IL, USA. jrogers@northwestern.edu.
¹⁹ Department of Biomedical Engineering, Neurological Surgery, Chemistry, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA. jrogers@northwestern.edu.

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 37037964
DOI: 10.1038/s41551-023-01022-4

Abstract

Devices for monitoring blood haemodynamics can guide the perioperative management of patients with cardiovascular disease. Current technologies for this purpose are constrained by wired connections to external electronics, and wireless alternatives are restricted to monitoring of either blood pressure or blood flow. Here we report the design aspects and performance parameters of an integrated wireless sensor capable of implantation in the heart or in a blood vessel for simultaneous measurements of pressure, flow rate and temperature in real time. The sensor is controlled via long-range communication through a subcutaneously implanted and wirelessly powered Bluetooth Low Energy system-on-a-chip. The device can be delivered via a minimally invasive transcatheter procedure or it can be mounted on a passive medical device such as a stent, as we show for the case of the pulmonary artery in a pig model and the aorta and left ventricle in a sheep model, where the device performs comparably to clinical tools for monitoring of blood flow and pressure. Battery-less and wireless devices such as these that integrate capabilities for flow, pressure and temperature sensing offer the potential for continuous monitoring of blood haemodynamics in patients.