Tiny sensor could guide needles through the body, monitor health from afar

Go for a biopsy these days and chances are your doctor will have to knock you out, slice part of you open, and fish around for the needed tissue. But what if a tiny sensor could guide a needle instead, mapping out your insides as it goes, all while you (and your doctor) watch on a video screen? That’s the promise of a new device, the size of a grain of sand, that can transmit a wireless signal up to 25 centimeters away. The work could also have implications for measuring blood pressure and tracking how medications metabolize inside the body, researchers say. The device is “really exciting,” says Nako Nakatsuka, a chemist who develops miniature biosensors to measure brain compounds at ETH Zürich and who was not involved with the study. The ability to maneuver inside the body with minimal disruption, she says, “is very cool.” The new sensor, whose workings are described today in Science , is made up of two magnets: One is fixed to a plastic casing, the other can twist and oscillate. An external device uses electromagnetic coils to create a magnetic field, which moves the second magnet. The device then gathers readings, such as temperature and pressure, by measuring changes in this second magnet. “The design of the sensor is really smart and quite creative—it thinks outside the box,” says Montserrat Calleja Gómez, a physicist who develops nanomechanical sensors at the Institute of Micro and Nanotechnology in Madrid who...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news