I-Corps: Networking Medical Implants Through Ultrasounds

Northeastern University, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

As of today, existing wireless medical implants are connected through radio frequency (RF) electromagnetic waves. RF-based solutions tend to almost blindly scale down traditional wireless technologies (e.g., Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee) to the intra-body environment, with little or no attention to the peculiar characteristics and safety requirements of the human body. The human body is in fact composed up to 65% of water, a medium through which RF waves do not propagate well. In addition, the RF frequency spectrum is scarce and already crowded with many devices interfering with one another. Therefore, RF-based technologies raise serious concerns about potential interference from existing RF communication systems that can unintentionally undermine the reliability and security of the implantable network, and ultimately the safety of the patient. This team has developed the ultrasonic wideband (UsWB) technology, a networking platform that enables wireless communications through ultrasounds (i.e., acoustic waves at non-audible frequencies). Ultrasonic wireless communications and networking technology (i.e., based on acoustic waves at non-audible frequencies) is proven to have significant advantages with respect to radio-frequency (RF)-based solutions in the human body. Ultrasounds propagate better than RF waves in human tissues, leading to (i) lower energy consumption and (ii) reduced heating of tissues. Ultrasounds have also been long used for medical imaging and are proven to be safe. And, unlike RF waves, ultrasonic waves do not penetrate from outside-the-body to inside-the-body, and vice versa, at low transmission powers. Therefore, ultrasonic communication links are potentially more secure as they are less prone to unintentional or malicious interference. At this stage, the team has developed the first, non-integrated and non-implantable UsWB prototype that uses off-the-shelf high-frequency ultrasonic transducers to enable transmission and reception of ultrasonic waves, through media that emulate with high fidelity acoustic propagation in biological tissues, i.e., so-called ultrasonic phantoms.