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SUMMARY:Injectable wireless microstimulators based on electronic rectifica
 tion: eAXONs
DTSTART:20160225T150000
DTEND:20160225T160000
DTSTAMP:20260407T091151Z
UID:3928f7feed125800138c5d7cbc4b6a2dcd70ede216ac9d6799d83502
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Antoni Ivorra\, Universitat Pompeu Fabra\, Barcelona\nI
 mplantation of most electrical stimulation systems requires complex surger
 ies which hamper their use for neuroprosthetics. In particular\, previous
 ly developed systems based on central stimulation units wired to the stim
 ulation electrodes are not adequate for applications in which a large num
 ber of sites must be individually stimulated over large and mobile body pa
 rts\, thus hindering neuroprostheses for patients suffering from paralysi
 s due to spinal cord injury or other neurological disorders. A solution t
 o these challenges could consist in developing addressable single-channel
  wireless microstimulators which could be implanted with simple procedures
  such as injection. And\, indeed\, such approach has been proposed and tr
 ied in the past. However\, previous attempts have not achieved success be
 cause the developed implants were stiff and too bulky. Further miniaturiz
 ation has been prevented until now because of the use of inductive coupli
 ng and batteries as energy sources.\nAs an alternative\, we are exploring 
 a method in which the implanted microstimulators operate as rectifiers of
  bursts of innocuous high frequency currents supplied through skin electr
 odes shaped as garments (J Neural Eng. 2015\; 12(6): 066010\, PLoS One. 2
 015\, 10(7): e0131666). This approach has the potential to allow the deve
 lopment of ultrathin (< 0.5 mm) elongated microstimulators mostly built wi
 th flexible and stretchable materials. Because of such feature\, and beca
 use of their intended functionality\, we coined the name “Electronic Ax
 ons” (eAXONs) for them. \nBio: Tenured Associate Professor and Serra H
 únter Fellow at the Department of Information and Communication Technolog
 ies (DTIC) of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). Before obtaining tenure 
 in December 2014\, he benefited from a Ramón y Cajal fellowship and a Mar
 ie Curie grant at the UPF for five years.\nPrior to joining the UPF\, he e
 njoyed a three-year postdoctoral position at the University of California 
 at Berkeley (2005-2008) followed by an appointment as Assistant Research E
 ngineer at the same institution for a year. He then moved to Villejuif\, F
 rance\, for an eight-month postdoctoral position at the Centre National de
  la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) - Institut Gustave Roussy. During 1998-2
 005\, he was with the Biomedical Applications Group of the Centre Nacional
  de Microelectrònica\, Bellaterra\, Spain. He received a PhD in Electroni
 cs Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya\, Barcelona\
 , Spain\, in 2005.\nHis main research topics are electroporation\, particu
 larly for cancer treatments\, electrical bioimpedance for medical diagnosi
 s and electrical stimulation for neuroprosthetics.
LOCATION:SV1717a
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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