Abstract
Advanced Functional Materials 2023, 34,
Sensing Mucus Physiological Property In Situ by Wireless Millimeter-Scale Soft Robots
Xiao BY, Xu YL, Edwards S, Blakumar L, Dong XG
The physiological property of mucus is an important biomarker for monitoring the human health conditions and helping understand disease development, as mucus property such as viscosity is highly correlated with inflammation and other diseases. However, it remains challenging to sense mucus viscosity using pure medical imaging. Collecting and analyzing mucus sample in vitro using flexible endoscopes and capsule endoscope robots is also challenging due to their difficulty of accessing very confined, tortuous, and small spaces, and the sample may not reflect the real mucus property. Here a novel method is proposed to enable sensing mucus viscosity in situ by wireless miniature sensors actuated by magnetic fields and tracked by medical imaging. These miniature viscosity sensors can be delivered with minimal invasion using a novel sensor delivery mechanism by controlling a magnetically actuated millimeter-scale soft climbing robot. As the soft robot can access confined and narrow spaces, and reliably deploy the sensor on soft tissue surfaces, multiple sensors can be delivered on soft biological tissues to sense biofluid viscosity spatiotemporally. The proposed minimally invasive robotic delivery and viscosity sensing method thus paves the way toward sensing biofluid properties deep inside the body for future disease monitoring and early diagnosis functions.
This work proposes novel wireless miniature sensors that can be delivered by miniature soft robots to sense mucus properties on biological tissue surfaces deep inside the organs. The proposed minimally invasive robotic delivery mechanism and viscosity sensing devices can potentially allow sensing biofluid properties deep inside the body with minimal invasion for disease monitoring and diagnosis functions in the future.image