PFI-TT: A Novel Wireless Sensor for Continuous Monitoring of Patients with Chronic Diseases

The broader impact of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is in advancing battery-free, wireless, implantable sensors, with a particular focus on monitoring patients with early-stage heart failures. Battery-free implantable sensors have been growing rapidly in clinical uses because they have the advantage of near zero power consumption, potentially allowing for long-lifetime and maintenance-free operation. Several wireless biomedical implants have been developed for dynamic monitoring of physiological parameters in human bodies, enabling the management of chronic diseases (e.g. heart failure, eye disease, or brain injury) and improving patients' quality of life. Despite their potential benefits, implantable sensors face a significant challenge in accurately and reliably detecting physiological parameters using radio-frequency (RF) signals. This project will bring together commercial, research and education efforts across disciplines to develop a high-performance, energy-efficient, and reliable biotelemetric system. The purpose of the research is to enable real-time acquisition and wireless transmission of biological signals from wearable medical devices and bioimplants. This project will develop a parity-time (PT)-symmetric biotelemetry system that provides new ways to use RF interrogation of an implantable microsensor using an ultracompact, portable reader, enabling real-time, continuous wireless monitoring of physiological signs with high accuracy, unprecedented resolution, and good reliability. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the growth of wireless health technologies, and this growth is expected to continue far beyond the pandemic. This PFI project enables miniature and unobtrusive microsensors and bioimplants for future healthcare Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems, which require low-cost, energy-efficient, and ubiquitous operation. The team will translate research on PT-symmetric biotelemetry inspired by non-Hermitian quantum physics into in-vitro/clinical wireless biosensing, and, ultimately, commercialization. Advanced wireless sensors and systems will impact multiple medical electronics and surgical equipment industries, including pulmonary artery monitoring in heart failure, intraocular pressure monitoring for glaucoma management, and intracranial pressure monitoring in the intensive care unit. Additionally, the wearable and bio-implantable wireless sensors can also be connected to heterogeneous 5G and B5G cellular networks, enabling the cloud/edge-based intelligent system to cooperatively sense, collect, and process the information of the sensed data. This project is jointly funded by the Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.