Interface Pressure Sensors for Plaster Cast and Other Biomedical Applications

This proposal will be awarded using funds made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5), and meets the requirements established in Section 2 of the White House Memorandum entitled, Ensuring Responsible Spending of Recovery Act Funds, dated March 20, 2009. I also affirm, as the cognizant Program Officer, that the proposal does not support projects described in Section 1604 of Division A of the Recovery Act.

The research objective of this project focuses on sub-centimeter sized battery-less wireless interface pressure sensors for biomedical application. Compartment Syndrome is a very serious complication that occurs in a cast due to swelling and can cause ischemia, necrosis and serious nerve injuries. With the sensor systems investigated and developed in this project, Compartment Syndrome can be prevented by monitoring the skin surface pressure inside the cast.

The proposed wireless sensors also have a significant number of other biomedical applications, including their use in knee implants, hip implants, prosthesis design, their use for measurement of footprint pressures in diabetic patients with neuropathy and for prevention of bed sores in patients confined to beds or wheelchairs.

MEMS interface pressure sensors will be developed with a novel inductive coupling strategy in which frequency domain based algorithms compensate for varying distance and orientation between the sensor and remote interrogator. The research tasks include design and fabrication of the wireless MEMS sensors, evaluation of frequency domain and adaptive estimation algorithms, wireless telemetry studies and experimental evaluation of the wireless sensors inside a simulated cast that includes a blood pressure cuff.

The educational phase of the project include incorporation of class projects focused on medical sensor systems for school students from the Highland Park High School. The project will also recruit minority and women undergraduate students through a specialized summer REU program, providing them an opportunity to work on cutting edge research and motivating them to pursue graduate studies.