Biodegradable sensor offers in-body monitoring and diagnosis

Dedicated sensors are a cornerstone of industrial processes, helping operators understand what is happening in the equipment and alerting to any possible problems before they happen. In medicine, sensors are also widely used, but mainly outside the body; implantable sensors have been developed but have the important drawback of needing to be removed, which increases recovery times and poses risks of infection. Engineers from the University of Connecticut have now developed an implantable sensor made from materials already approved by the Food and Drug Administration that can measure even very small changes in pressure inside organs.

"Medical sensors are often implanted directly into soft tissues and organs," noted biomedical engineer Thanh Duc Nguyen, senior author on a paper describing the research in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Taking them out can cause additional damage. We knew that if we could develop a sensor that didn't require surgery to take it out, that would be really significant."