A Study on RF Radiation Effect and Signal Efficiency of Wireless Medical Devices

 Sponsored by Shun Hing Institute of Advanced Engineering

Max Q.-H. Meng, Yuan-Ting Zhang, Ke-Li Wu

Department of Electronic Engineering

and

Justin Wu

Department of Medicine and Therapeutics

Introduction

Recent advances in medical, computing and information technologies have amplified the desire and possibility to develop and apply advanced wireless medical devices to improve medical and healthcare service quality, possibility and accessibility. Examples include wireless capsule endoscopes for painless examination of gastrointestinal tract and body area network (BAN) of wireless bio-sensors for patient monitoring in hospital clinic or home environments. Current efforts on wireless medical devices are concentrated on the studies of the device design, reliable communications and innovative applications. During our research on wireless medical devices and our literature search, we found that little work has been reported on systematic studies of RF radiation effect and RF signal efficiency of wireless medical devices in interaction with human body, which is a fundamentally important issue for wireless medical devices, especially for wearable and in-vivo wireless medical devices. As a result, we propose that in this research we will forge the complementary expertise of biomedical engineering, RF communications and clinical medicine to systematically study the RF radiation effect and RF signal efficiency of wearable wireless medical devices such as BAN of bio-sensors on human body and in-vivo wireless medical devices such as the wireless capsule endoscopes from inside the human body. Our overall objective is to carry out a systematic study on this topic and establish a set of design reference metrics on RF radiation effect and RF signal efficiency of wireless medical devices in interaction with human body through thorough theoretical investigations and extensive experimental studies.

 

Impact

The success of the proposed research will lay a solid and critical corner stone for future bio-effect research efforts and will generate a set of comprehensive quantitative design metrics in wireless medical device design and clinical applications with minimal effect to the patients. This research project offers a great opportunity for the co-investigators to take advantage of their complementary expertise to initiate the efforts in accomplishing this important, challenging and benchmark research project and to enhance the CUHK’s leading international position in wireless medical device research and development.

 

Members of the research team:

Max Q.-H. Meng - Professor, Department of Electronic Engineering

Yuan-Ting Zhang - Professor, Department of Electronic Engineering

Ke-Li Wu - Professor, Department of Electronic Engineering

Justin Wu - Specialist, Department of Medicine and Therapeutics

Li-Sheng Xu - Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Electronic Engineering