The 1966 Sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage was something wasn’t it? A shrink ray let a CIA agent and a pilot enter the human body to perform a life saving procedure to remove a clot.  Miniature rays and pilots willing to get shrunk to get inside the human body are likely to remain in science fiction, but electronic implants, tiny enough to be able to travel through the blood stream, may become a common thing in the near future.

The biggest hurdle which held back scientists from exploring the limitless possibilities of such devices was a power source tiny enough to go with the micro-mini implant and reliable enough to power it while inside the human body.

Engineers at Stanford University have managed to overcome this hurdle. They have developed a prototype of a tiny, self-propelled device which is powered wirelessly from outside the body.  Technology, which allows miniaturizing of electronic and mechanical components has been there for a while. Scientists were however handicapped by one major hurdle, a reliable power source.

Earlier, implants such as pacemakers were stationary. But energy source was a major concern for these devices too as battery occupied the bulk of their architecture limiting the space for electronics required for them to do their intended job. Regular battery changes were the order of the day, inconvenient for both the patient and the physicians.

Stanford engineers have removed the battery out of the equation altogether and are using wireless electromagnetic power transfer.   Untill now scientists were held back by the notion that the human body doesn’t conduct high frequency waves that well. The higher the frequency the smaller the antennas for transferring it would be. This is where Stanford electrical engineer Ada Poon made her ground breaking discovery. She realized that the human body conducted high frequency waves much better than previously thought and she then focused her work on developing an antenna which was tiny enough to fit into a device small enough for a voyage through the blood vessel.

“When we extended things to higher frequencies we realized that the optimal frequency for wireless powering is actually around one gigahertz, about 100 times higher than previously thought,” said Poon, who developed an antenna of coiled wire 100 times smaller but capable of receiving power from a radio transmitter outside the body.

The research indeed throws open a lot of possibilities in the medical field. It promises to arm doctors with devices which can be directed through to blood stream to specific areas where life saving procedures like removing clots can be performed.

The voyage has just begun and a fantastic one it promises to be.

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The researchers at the University of Bern and the Bern University of Applied Sciences claim that the heart produces around 1 or 1.5 watts of hydraulic power, and the device would need only one milliwatt. They conducted a trial in which a tube is designed to mimic the internal thoracic artery, a millimeters-wide vessel that surgeons often use for coronary artery bypass grafting. The prototype was tested in the tube and managed to produce around 800 microwatts. It could run devices that require much more power than a pacemaker, which only needs around 10 microwatts.

The turbine could power blood-pressure sensors, drug-delivery pumps, or neurostimulators. These devices are already implanted in some people, but require a replaceable battery or a cable to keep the power flowing. A major concern, as with any device implanted in the heart, is avoiding blood clots due to the turbulence caused by the device. The researchers will go back to the lab to tweak and rework the design to prevent the risk of blood costs. Hopefully they can improve the current design to prevent the need for patients to take clot-reducing drugs that often have serious side effects.

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