Taiwan's electronic medicine outperforms drugs

 R Colin Johnson 5/30/2013 12:43 AM EDTTAIPEI--Taiwan is perhaps best known for its expertise in consumer electronics, but by pioneering solutions to pressing problems in medicine, the island country hopes to take the lead in medical electronics too. At its National Taiwan Hospital located on the campus of National Taiwan University (NTU), Taiwan's national aspirations to become a medical electronics leader are taking shape.Clinical trials at NTH--a teaching hospital for the Taipei Imperial University Medical School--have become the proving ground for NTU's medical electronics. Many medial diagnostics advances have been proven out at NTH already, but perhaps its most synergistic accomplishment to date is a wireless sensor pod, including an electrocardiograph (EKG) sensor, that will spearhead a nation-wide wireless medical monitoring facility that is currently in clinical testing at NTH. Designed by principle investigator Shey-Shi Lu, the inconspicuous sensor pod is monitored by medical staff 24/7, and can also be accessed from any smartphone, allowing both doctors and concerned family members to monitor the heart-health, activity level and pharmaceutical conformance of elderly loved ones who often "forget" to take their pharmaceutical-and exercise-regimes seriously.NTU's pain-relieving medical implant is a system-on-chip (SoC) that accepts radio frequency (RF) input from outside the body, which powers a micro-controller that uses digital signal processing to immediately stop pain without drugs or their side effects.

 At the beginning of the innovation cycle is Lu's latest prototype--an experimental wireless medical implant that cures chronic pain with a system-on-chip (SoC) that injects electrical signals into the affected nerves on-demand. Once implanted at the base of the spine, the patient stops pain with a handheld activator--about the size of a smartphone--that sends radio frequency (RF) to an antenna on the implant. The RF energy wakes-up a micro-controller which injects the appropriate anti-pain signal directly into the nerve, stopping the pain instantly without the need for drugs."Today this type of therapy requires a surgical procedure that exposes the nerve so that doctors can inject the pain relieving signal into it," said Lu. "Unfortunately, relief only lasts a few months at most, after which the procedure has to be repeated. With our pain-relieving SoC a patient can administer the same therapy themselves whenever they have pain."The pain-relieving SoC, which can be left in the patient indefinitely (since it has no battery) is currently being passivated to keep the body from rejecting it. After receiving medical approval from Taiwan's equivalent of the FDA, it will enter clinical testing at NTH and eventually be licensed to a Taiwan medical electronics company for marketing worldwide.Hi-resolution ultra-sound Another non-invasive therapy using ultrasound instead of electricity, is being pioneered by IEEE Fellow Pai-Chu Li, who has worked with medical equipment giant Genesis Logic to refine ultrasound to 30 micron resolution enabling cheap accurate noninvasive realtime diagnostics. By harnessing the computational power of graphics processor units (GPUs) already resident in laptops and tablets, Li has created image analysis tools capable of measuring the size of tumors as wells as map out their exact location in 3-D space. However Li's most novel research project to date uses ultrasound to realize wireless power transfer to implants, such as neural stimulators that mitigate the effects of Alzheimer's, epilepsy and, like professor Lu's implants, theelimination of chronic pain with digital signal processing."The advantage of ultrasound over radio frequencies is that ultrasound can be focused very precisely in order to transfer more energy in a shorter amount of time," said Li. Ultrasound can be focused to a depth of about eight inches, enabling it to directly stimulate an implant, or to recharge the batteries of a pacemaker without surgery. Li's lab has also developed a microchip that can receive coded ultrasound signals that program attached micro-controllers, so that smart implants can be reprogrammed thought the skin.

Hi-resolution MRI'sMagnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is already higher resolution than ultrasound, but requires a million-dollar room-filling device to make it work. Unfortunately, all that bulk and expense is being powered by 20th century electronics, according to NTU professors Jyh-Horng Chen and Tzi-Dar Chiueh. By upgrading the encoding of the MRI signal from narrow-band amplitude-modulation (AM) to wide-band frequency-modulation (FM)--where different types of tissues resonant at different frequencies, Chen and Chiueh, have been able to increase the resolution of MRI's by 10-times while simultaneously reducing the scan times by 4-to-8 times.

Endoscope in a pillAnther non-invasive technology being pioneered at NTU puts an endoscope--a tiny video camera for inspecting the inside of the stomach, intestines and veins--inside a pill that can be swallowed. Other endoscopes-in-a-pill have been designed elsewhere, but their effectiveness is hit-or-miss, since they cannot be controlled once swallowed. However, NTU professors Chih-Wen Liu, Cheng-Long Chuang and Joe-Air Jiang, have designed a magnetic wand that allows it to turn, twist and perform fine navigation manipulations of their endoscope-in-a pill, allowing physicians to hunt down tumors, ulcers and other medical problems while watching on monitors in realtime. The team has also adapted the method to navigate tethered encoscopes during colonoscopies, thus cutting down the examination time and increasing the reliability of results.