Electronics could ease cardiac treatments

The work was carried out in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Northwestern University and could lead to biocompatible silicon devices that mark the beginning of a new wave of surgical electronics.

Co-senior author John Rogers, the Lee J Flory-Founder Chair in Engineering Innovation and a professor of materials science and engineering at Illinois, and his team will publish their findings in the 24 March issue of Science Translational Medicine.

Several treatments are available for arrhythmic hearts, ranging from pacemaker implants to cardiac ablation therapy, a process that selectively targets and destroys clusters of arrhythmic cells.

Current techniques require multiple electrodes placed on the tissue in a time-consuming, point-by-point process to construct a patchwork cardiac map. In addition, the difficulty of connecting rigid, flat sensors to soft, curved tissue impedes the electrodes’ ability to monitor and stimulate the heart.

Rogers and his team say they have built a flexible sensor array that can wrap around the heart to map large areas of tissue at once. The array contains 2,016 silicon nanomembrane transistors, each monitoring electricity coursing through a beating heart.