A Stent-Based Power and Data Link for Sensing Intravascular Biological Indicators

Safe and effective electronic intravascular implants have the potential to become ubiquitous. Stents are a common biomedical device used to treat atherosclerosis but they are typically passive and employ no electronics. This work details the design, fabrication and testing of a miniaturised circuit board capable of telemetry via a stent antenna. The circuit is less than 1.1 mm in diameter making it sufficiently miniaturised to be delivered via a catheter. Experiments in porcine tissue achieved a data rate of 277 kbits/s with a 280 Mhz carrier. The implant was tested at depths of 3 mm, 6 mm and 9 mm, requiring a transmitter power of 44 mW, 48 mW and 63 mW respectively to operate. These measurements confirm that stents incorporating a power and data link could be used to monitor biological indicators such as blood pressure, blood glucose or even neural signals.