Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

A battery-less wireless implant for the continuous monitoring of vascular pressure, flow rate and temperature

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 7, pages 1215–1228 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Devices for monitoring blood haemodynamics can guide the perioperative management of patients with cardiovascular disease. Current technologies for this purpose are constrained by wired connections to external electronics, and wireless alternatives are restricted to monitoring of either blood pressure or blood flow. Here we report the design aspects and performance parameters of an integrated wireless sensor capable of implantation in the heart or in a blood vessel for simultaneous measurements of pressure, flow rate and temperature in real time. The sensor is controlled via long-range communication through a subcutaneously implanted and wirelessly powered Bluetooth Low Energy system-on-a-chip. The device can be delivered via a minimally invasive transcatheter procedure or it can be mounted on a passive medical device such as a stent, as we show for the case of the pulmonary artery in a pig model and the aorta and left ventricle in a sheep model, where the device performs comparably to clinical tools for monitoring of blood flow and pressure. Battery-less and wireless devices such as these that integrate capabilities for flow, pressure and temperature sensing offer the potential for continuous monitoring of blood haemodynamics in patients.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Implantable, wireless cardiac haemodynamics monitor.
Fig. 2: Implantable, biocompatible sensors for the monitoring of physical parameters of blood flow.
Fig. 3: Subcutaneous implants for wireless power and data transmission.
Fig. 4: Arterial pressure and flow monitoring in artificial heart systems.
Fig. 5: Demonstrations on large animals.
Fig. 6: Comparisons against clinical standard devices on the ovine model.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The main data supporting the results in this study are available within the paper and its Supplementary Information. Source data for Figs. 2–6 are provided with this paper. The raw and analysed datasets generated during the studies are too large to be publicly shared, yet they are available for research purposes from the corresponding author on reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

Custom-developed firmware for BLE SoCs and Android applications (UIs) for use on smartphones are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. All requests for source code will be reviewed by the corresponding author to verify whether the request is subject to any intellectual property or confidentiality obligations.

References

  1. Abbafati, C. et al. Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. Lancet 396, 1204–1222 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Mensah, G. A., Roth, G. A. & Fuster, V. The global burden of cardiovascular diseases and risk factors: 2020 and beyond. J. Am. Coll. Cardiol. 74, 2529–2532 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Vincent, J. L. et al. Perioperative cardiovascular monitoring of high-risk patients: a consensus of 12. Crit. Care 19, 224 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  4. Kamel, H., Hegde, M., Johnson, D. R., Gage, B. F. & Johnston, S. C. Cost-effectiveness of outpatient cardiac monitoring to detect atrial fibrillation after ischemic stroke. Stroke 41, 1514–1520 (2010).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Vennemann, B., Obrist, D. & Ro, T. A smartphone-enabled wireless and batteryless implantable blood flow sensor for remote monitoring of prosthetic heart valve function. PLoS ONE 15, e0227372 (2020).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  6. Boutry, C. M. et al. Biodegradable and flexible arterial-pulse sensor for the wireless monitoring of blood flow. Nat. Biomed. Eng. 3, 47–57 (2019).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Hu, S. et al. A wireless passive extra-arterial implantable blood pressure monitoring sensing system for rats. Microsyst. Technol. 27, 2595–2603 (2021).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Murphy, O. H. et al. Continuous in vivo blood pressure measurements using a fully implantable wireless SAW sensor. Biomed. Microdevices 15, 737–749 (2013).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  9. Laver, R. D., Wiersema, U. F. & Bersten, A. D. Echocardiographic estimation of mean pulmonary artery pressure in critically ill patients. Crit. Ultrasound J. 6, 9 (2014).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  10. Garcia, J. et al. Distribution of blood flow velocity in the normal aorta: effect of age and gender. HHS Public Access 47, 487–498 (2019).

    Google Scholar 

  11. Sharman, J. E., Smart, N. A., Coombes, J. S. & Stowasser, M. Exercise and sport science australia position stand update on exercise and hypertension. J. Hum. Hypertens. 33, 837–843 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Bordes, S., Cichowski, E. & Homan, T. Physiology, Pulse Pressure (StatPearls, 2020).

  13. Mebazaa, A., Karpati, P., Renaud, E. & Algotsson, L. Acute right ventricular failure—from pathophysiology to new treatments. Intensive Care Med. 30, 185–196 (2004).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  14. Hadinnapola, C., Li, Q., Su, L., Pepke-Zaba, J. & Toshner, M. The resistance–compliance product of the pulmonary circulation varies in health and pulmonary vascular disease. Physiol. Rep. 3, e12363 (2015).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  15. Kwon, K. et al. Miniaturized, light-adaptive, wireless dosimeters autonomously monitor exposure to electromagnetic radiation. Sci. Adv. 5, eaay2462 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  16. Hearse, D. J. & Sutherland, F. J. Experimental models for the study of cardiovascular function and disease defining the question and identifying the model. Pharmacol. Res. 41, 597–603 (2000).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  17. Lukács, E. et al. Overview of large animal myocardial infarction models (review). Acta Physiol. Hung. 99, 365–381 (2012).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  18. Milani-Nejad, N. & Janssen, P. M. L. Small and large animal models in cardiac contraction research: advantages and disadvantages. Pharmacol. Ther. 141, 235–249 (2014).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  19. Camacho, P., Fan, H., Liu, Z. & He, J. Q. Small mammalian animal models of heart disease. Am. J. Cardiovasc. Dis. 6, 70–80 (2016).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  20. Argueta, E. E. & Paniagua, D. Thermodilution cardiac output: a concept over 250 years in the making. Cardiol. Rev. 27, 138–144 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  21. Stevens, J. H., Raffin, T. A., Mihm, F. G., Rosenthal, M. H. & Stetz, C. W. Thermodilution cardiac output measurement: effects of the respiratory cycle on its reproducibility. JAMA 253, 2240–2242 (1985).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  22. Rajani, R., Hancock, J. & Chambers, J. B. The art of assessing aortic stenosis. Heart 98, 14–22 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Won, S. M. et al. Multimodal sensing with a three-dimensional piezoresistive structure. ACS Nano 13, 10972–10979 (2019).

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  24. Kim, H.-S. et al. Self-assembled nanodielectrics and silicon nanomembranes for low voltage, flexible transistors, and logic gates on plastic substrates. Appl. Phys. Lett. 95, 183504 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

K.K. acknowledges support by the National Research Foundation (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP; Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning; no. 2021R1F1A106387111, no. 2022R1C1C1010555 and no. 2020R1A5A8018367). J.U.K. and T.K. were supported by the NRF funded by the Korean government (MSIT; NRF-2019M3C7A1032076 and NRF-2020M3H4A1A03082897). S.M.W. acknowledges support by the NRF grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP, ICT & Future Planning; no. NRF-2021R1C1C1009410 and no. IITP-2020-0-01821). R.A. acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF grant number DGE-1842165) and Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. J.A.R. acknowledges support from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH R43AG067835). We acknowledge funding from Wearifi Inc., and the Querrey-Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics at Northwestern University for support of this work. This work made use of the NUFAB facility of Northwestern University’s NUANCE Center, which has received support from the Soft and Hybrid Nanotechnology Experimental (SHyNE) Resource (NSF ECCS-1542205), the MRSEC programme (NSF DMR-1720139) at the Materials Research Center, the International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN), the Keck Foundation and the State of Illinois, through the IIN.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Kyeongha Kwon, Jong Uk Kim, Sang Min Won, Jianzhong Zhao.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electrical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

    Kyeongha Kwon

  2. School of Chemical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea

    Jong Uk Kim & Tae-il Kim

  3. Querrey-Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Jong Uk Kim, Seonggwang Yoo, Joohee Kim, Jaeman Lim, Wei Lu, Anthony Banks, Yonggang Huang & John A. Rogers

  4. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea

    Sang Min Won

  5. Laboratory of Flexible Electronics Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Jianzhong Zhao, Heling Wang & Yonggang Huang

  6. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Jianzhong Zhao, Heling Wang & Yonggang Huang

  7. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Jianzhong Zhao, Heling Wang & Yonggang Huang

  8. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Jianzhong Zhao, Raudel Avila & Heling Wang

  9. Electrical and Computer Engineering, the University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Keum San Chun

  10. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    Hokyung Jang

  11. ImpriMED, Inc., Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Kun Hyuck Lee

  12. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Jae-Hwan Kim

  13. Department of Ocean System Engineering, Jeju National University, Jeju, Republic of Korea

    Youn J. Kang

  14. Department of Advanced Materials Engineering for Information and Electronics, Kyung Hee University, Yongin, Republic of Korea

    Yoonseok Park

  15. Biomedical Institute for Convergence at SKKU (BICS), Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea

    Tae-il Kim

  16. Wearifi, Inc., Evanston, IL, USA

    Anthony Banks & John A. Rogers

  17. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Neurological Surgery, Chemistry, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    John A. Rogers

Authors
  1. Kyeongha Kwon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jong Uk Kim
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Sang Min Won
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Jianzhong Zhao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Raudel Avila
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Heling Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Keum San Chun
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Hokyung Jang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Kun Hyuck Lee
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Jae-Hwan Kim
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  11. Seonggwang Yoo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  12. Youn J. Kang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  13. Joohee Kim
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  14. Jaeman Lim
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  15. Yoonseok Park
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  16. Wei Lu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  17. Tae-il Kim
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  18. Anthony Banks
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  19. Yonggang Huang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  20. John A. Rogers
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

K.K. and J.A.R. conceived the idea and designed the research. K.K., J.U.K. and J.A.R. analysed data and wrote the manuscript. K.K. designed the hardware for the wireless electronic system. K.K. and K.S.C. performed software design and software validation. J.U.K. and S.M.W. performed and were involved in the manufacturing of the sensor modules. J.Z., R.A., H.W. and Y.H. performed mechanical modelling. K.K. and J.U.K. performed research and led the experimental works with support from H.J., K.H.L., J.-H.K., S. Y., Y.J.K., J.K., J.L., Y.P., W.L., T.K. and A.B.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Kyeongha Kwon or John A. Rogers.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

A.B. and J.A.R. are co-founders of Hemorhythmics Inc., which has potential commercial interest in the technology described in this work. A.B. and J.A.R. are co-founders of the company. A.B is an employee of Wearifi Inc., which may wish to pursue commercialization of this technology in future. The other authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Biomedical Engineering thanks Jun Chen and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary notes, figures and references.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Video 1

Movement of the sensing module inside the PA of porcine hearts recorded by a borescope.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 2

Source data.

Source Data Fig. 3

Source data.

Source Data Fig. 4

Source data.

Source Data Fig. 5

Source data.

Source Data Fig. 6

Source data.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Kwon, K., Kim, J.U., Won, S.M. et al. A battery-less wireless implant for the continuous monitoring of vascular pressure, flow rate and temperature. Nat. Biomed. Eng 7, 1215–1228 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-023-01022-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-023-01022-4

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing