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BIOELECTRONIC DEVICES

Transmitting location

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 1, pages 684–685 (2017)Cite this article

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Microchips embedding a magnetic sensor and a radiofrequency transmitter can be localized in the body of a mouse at submillimetre resolution when under a magnetic field.

Emami and colleagues designed the circuits — which they refer to as addressable transmitters operated as magnetic spins (ATOMS) — so that they modulate their RF output on the basis of the local magnetic field (this mimics the behaviour of nuclear spins in magnetic nuclear resonance; the spins resonate at a magnetic-field-dependent frequency). First, the devices measure and store the applied magnetic field at their respective locations. Then a RF pulse is generated and the devices oscillate at the same frequency. Finally, the RF excitation is turned off and the devices emit a shifted frequency that is proportional to the magnetic field. The shifted frequency can then be converted back to the magnetic field on the basis of a calibrated relationship, and therefore used to determine a device’s relative position in the magnetic-field gradient.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Yong Lin Kong & Giovanni Traverso

  2. Division of Gastroenterology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Giovanni Traverso

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  1. Yong Lin Kong
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  2. Giovanni Traverso
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Correspondence to Giovanni Traverso.

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Kong, Y.L., Traverso, G. Transmitting location. Nat Biomed Eng 1, 684–685 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-017-0135-4

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