Antennas Inside Us

These are diminutive antennas intended for running in complicated conditions of a human organism. Such antennas will be able to provide uninterrupted radio communication between devices implanted in the patient’s organism (including cardiostimulators) and physicians. If the researchers manage to implement the intended concepts, this will make life of some patients much more comfortable, and lives of other patients will be saved.

The information about this development is available at the advanced research section of the International Science and Technology Center site (www.istc.ru).

“Recently, electronic devices for medical purposes, including various physiological sensors, insulinic pumps, cardiostimulators and defibrillators have become not simply small, but diminutive, says Lydia Lvova, senior staff scientist, Ph. D. (Engineering). Surgeons introduce the devices into the patient’s organism, and then they run absolutely independently – they watch the work of certain person’s organs or, as may be required, adjust their work according to the program. The information obtained through such a device can be in principle kept in a special storage module, and then analyzed – in case the patient’s condition has changed and the device is to be reprogramed accordingly.

Unfortunately, in the majority of cases, the device is to be extracted from the patient’s body, but this is not always possible. Moreover, the device becomes simply useless in the situation when urgent interference is needed but the program does not provide for this. It's quite another matter if the device operation could be managed remotely – by radio. Then the physician could not only get the information about the patient’s current health status straight from the remote console, but also take measures instantly in needed.”

Consequently, a miniature transmitter and a miniature combined antenna are needed. It turned out to be a complicated task to make a necessary antenna. In contrast to antennas, for example, in cellular phones, they will have to work not in the open air but in a complicated organism environment – roughly speaking, surrounded by blood, bones, muscles, etc., that is in the environment, which is transparent to far from all radio wave bands. And finally, the antenna should possess a sufficiently high electromagnetic energy-transfer coefficient – so that it used resource of energy source as efficiently as possible, thus providing maximum duration of continuous work. In other words, such antenna should be both small and sufficiently powerful – to “break through” the organism tissues and to bring the necessary information loss-free to the physician. It should be kept in mind, that not all frequencies are allowed for medical application – only the 402-405 MHz (MICS standard), 433-434 MHz or 2.45 GHz frequencies are allowed for medical use.

From the point of view of physics, these requirements are highly contradictory. “It is known that the dimensions of an effective antenna are proportional to radiation wave-length in the environment surrounding the antenna and they are approximately equal to its quarter, explains L. Lvova. Apparently, the antenna with the 2.45 GHz working frequency will possess the minimal dimensions. But electromagnetic radiation of this band highly attenuates in such a conducting medium as the living organism tissues. At the 400-450 MHz frequency, the dimensions of a traditional microstrip antenna, given contraction in the environment, will make approximately 6-7 centimeters, which is certainly too much.”

How to produce such a small but effective antenna? Apparently, the task comes down to modeling the antenna implanted in the human body, determining (via calculations or measurements) its efficiency and selecting the optimal antenna type, its geometry and materials. Is it within the capabilities of researchers from the Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics to cope with this task? Neither the researchers nor experts of the International Science and Technology Center have doubts about that. On the one hand, development of the miniature antenna will involve leading specialists of the Federal State unitary Enterprise “Russian Federal Nuclear Center – Academician Zababakhin Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics”, who have the 50-year experience of work in antenna engineering. On the other hand, the Institute has the necessary technical base: the anechoic room, the automated test bench for antenna measurements, production and technology base for antenna production.

There is required software both developed in-house and acquired one. The researchers already have a certain “backlog”, both theoretical and practical. All these components allow to hope for success, that a miniature antenna for cardiostimulators and other implanted devices will be produced in Ural – at the Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics.

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