Micro Sensors and Actuators Laboratory

Self-powered Implantable Micro Pressure Sensor for Congestive Heart Failure

Congestive heart failure is a serious public health problem due to its prevalence, high mortality, and high cost of therapy. This disease affects more than 350,000 Canadians. One important strategy to manage congestive heart failure is to constantly monitor the pressure inside the left atrium of the heart. Currently, this can only be done by inserting a catheter into the heart, via an artery in the arm or leg. Beside the high cost and the considerable inconvenience, this method can not realize continuous monitoring of patients’ left atria pressure during their daily activities.

The present project is to develop a self-powered implantable micro pressure sensor for continuous ambulatory monitoring of left atria pressure for congestive heart failure patients without interrupting their daily activities. The micro pressure sensor is developed based on the Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology. Using microfabrication technology the pressure sensor integrates a pressure sensing unit, a data transmission circuitry and a micro power generator on a small chip. The micro power generator harvests the vibration energy from patients’ body motions and converts it to electricity to power both the sensing and the data transmission units, such that no battery is needed. The self-powered micro pressure sensor can be permanently implanted inside the left atrium of the heart using the minimally invasive cardiac catheterization procedure. A palm size external unit being worn by the patient continuously retrieves the measured pressure data, which is used by doctors to provide a better management of congestive heart failure. The self-powered implantable micro pressure sensor will give doctors a long-awaited advantage over congestive heart failure and will greatly reduce costly, urgent and repeated hospitalizations.