Recently, more and more developers of medical technology are conducting research in the field of creating diagnostic implants and robots that move inside the human body. But with all the advantages of such technologies, there is a problem: these "microscopic diagnosticians" are very difficult to keep track of. It is for these purposes that experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a way to track microbots and small implants inside the human body.
The new system is called ReMix, and it works very elegantly: the method is based not on the emission of a signal by the implant and its registration, but on the reflection of low-power wireless signals. To test the technology, a group of scientists led by Professor Dina Katabi implanted a small marker in laboratory animals that moved along the bloodstream. With the help of reflective technology, it was possible to quite clearly track the position of an object in the body of an animal in the heart, along the vessels, in the liver, and so on. After receiving the reflected signal, a special computer algorithm, based on the "anatomical map" of the carrier, calculates the exact location of the marker.
It is expected that the ReMix system can be used not only to diagnose various conditions of the blood and gastrointestinal tract, but also as a means for targeted therapy in the treatment of cancer. In addition, experts say that ReMix can provide an opportunity not only to monitor the microbot, but also to give it commands.
Vladimir Kuznetsov
