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BIOELECTRONIC DEVICES

Catheters gain arrays of sensors and actuators

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 4, pages 939–940 (2020)Cite this article

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Flexible multilayer electronic arrays impart endocardial balloon catheters with enhanced sensing and actuation functionality.

Intracardiac and intravascular catheters are flexible tubes used in a range of minimally invasive therapeutic and diagnostic cardiovascular procedures such as stent placement, valve placement and the acquisition of electrophysiological measurements. Catheter systems can be instrumented with electronic sensing and actuation elements, but the rigidity of the electronics — and thus their lack of conformability to soft tissue — has limited the catheters’ functionality1 and has led to excessive catheter probing and increased procedural times, even when operated by skilled interventionalists. Reporting in Nature Biomedical Engineering, John Rogers, Igor Efimov and Yonggang Huang now describe methods for the incorporation of flexible arrays of multilayer electronics onto endocardial balloon catheters2. In both in vitro and ex vivo hearts, the devices’ conformability to curved tissue enabled the high-resolution spatiotemporal mapping of temperature, pressure and electrocardiogram signals, as well as the use of electrical stimulation for radiofrequency ablation and electroporation.

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Fig. 1: Integration of flexible multilayer electronic arrays into cardiac catheters.
Fig. 2: A balloon catheter instrumented with multilayer flexible electronic arrays with sensing and actuation functionality would offer clinically relevant advantages.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Ellen T. Roche

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Ellen T. Roche

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  1. Ellen T. Roche
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Correspondence to Ellen T. Roche.

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Competing interests

E.T.R. is a consultant for Holistick Medical, and holds equity in the company.

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Roche, E.T. Catheters gain arrays of sensors and actuators. Nat Biomed Eng 4, 939–940 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-020-00636-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-020-00636-2

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