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Battery-Free Pacemaker Is Powered by Microwaves

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Millions of people have benefited from pacemakers since the first one was implanted in 1958, but the basics facets of the design have remained unchanged. These devices are still battery-operated, with leads running from the device itself to the heart. Now, researchers from Rice University have developed a battery-free pacemaker that can be implanted directly in heart. If the design is adopted, it could eliminate many of the common complications associated with pacemaker implantation.

The battery-free pacemaker was designed in the lab of electrical and computer engineering professor Aydin Babakhani. Just like other pacemakers, this one uses electrical signals to regulate the patient's heartbeat. However, the power for that activity is delivered wirelessly via a device worn by the patient outside the body. Power comes in the form of microwaves in the 8 to 10 gigahertz range. This wireless pacemaker only has a range of several centimeters, but that completely changes the way it's implanted and designed.

Without a bulky internal battery, the overall device is just 4 millimeters wide and 16mm tall. A traditional pacemaker needs to be implanted someplace where it is easily accessible for occasional battery replacement. Thus, leads are required to actually make contact with the heart. These leads are one of the main causes of complication — they can become dislodged, resulting in bleeding or infection.

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In the case of the pacemaker designed at Rice University, there's no need to surgically replace the battery inside (because there isn't one). That's why doctors are able to connect it directly to the heart where it's less accessible. The chips receives energy over the microwave link, storing it in a capacitor until it reaches a predetermined threshold. At that point, it discharges into the cardiac muscle. One limitation of the design is that the patient needs to have the power supply on their person at all times to keep the pacemaker working.

Researchers implanted a prototype device in a pig, and showed that it was able to regulate the heart rate from 100 to 172 beats per minute. The team says this cardiac stimulation would be completely imperceptible to the patient. The new pacemaker design was presented at an IEEE symposium recently, and a full paper is still on the way. So, it's still a long way from ready for human testing. Even when it moves beyond an early prototype, it will take years of animal testing before the FDA will allow it to be implanted in a human.