On the development of equivalent medium for active implantable device radiofrequency safety assessment.

PURPOSE: To develop the equivalent medium theorem that can be used to perform accurate evaluation of implantable device safety under MRI exposure. METHODS: Numerical methods were used to determine the equivalent medium parameters along clinically relevant trajectories inside a human body model. Additionally, numerical and experimental investigations were performed using both a computational human body model and an inhomogeneous phantom to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. RESULTS: The equivalent medium parameters, which are determined from a simplified lead configuration, are independent of the lead types and lead design parameters and only depend on the lead trajectories. Experimental investigations using an inhomogeneous phantom showed excellent agreement between the computational predicted values and the direct measured temperature rises indicating the effectiveness and accuracy of this method. CONCLUSION: For the models based on multiple patient trajectories studied, it demonstrates that the equivalent medium theorem is valid for leads of different types and designs, as long as the lead trajectories are determined.

Moisture-triggered physically transient electronics.

Physically transient electronics, a form of electronics that can physically disappear in a controllable manner, is very promising for emerging applications. Most of the transient processes reported so far only occur in aqueous solutions or biofluids, offering limited control over the triggering and degradation processes. We report novel moisture-triggered physically transient electronics, which exempt the needs of resorption solutions and can completely disappear within well-controlled time frames. The triggered transient process starts with the hydrolysis of the polyanhydride substrate in the presence of trace amounts of moisture in the air, a process that can generate products of corrosive organic acids to digest various inorganic electronic materials and components. Polyanhydride is the only example of polymer that undergoes surface erosion, a distinct feature that enables stable operation of the functional devices over a predefined time frame. Clear advantages of this novel triggered transience mode include that the lifetime of the devices can be precisely controlled by varying the moisture levels and changing the composition of the polymer substrate. The transience time scale can be tuned from days to weeks. Various transient devices, ranging from passive electronics (such as antenna, resistor, and capacitor) to active electronics (such as transistor, diodes, optoelectronics, and memories), and an integrated system as a platform demonstration have been developed to illustrate the concept and verify the feasibility of this design strategy.

Determination of several sugars in serum by high-performance anion-exchange chromatography with pulsed amperometric detection.

In this paper, a sensitive, simple and direct method for simultaneous determination of glucose, ribose, isomaltose and maltose in serum sample by high-performance anion-exchange chromatography coupled with integrated pulsed amperometric detection was developed. The four target analytes were easily and completely separated on an anion-exchange column at a flow-rate of 0.25 mL/min by binary step gradient elution in about 16 min and the two eluents were deionized water and 500 mM sodium hydroxide, respectively. The separated four analytes were detected directly by using a gold electrode and quadruple-potential waveform integrated pulsed amperometry without derivatization. Under the optimized conditions, when the injection volume was 25 microL, the detection limits (signal-to-noise ratio equal to 3) for glucose, ribose, isomaltose and maltose were 0.92, 7.50, 12.9 and 10.3 ng/mL, respectively. The calibration graphs of peak area for the four analytes were linear over two to three orders of magnitude with correlation coefficients greater than 0.998. R.S.D. of peak areas of the four analytes for five determinations were no more than 5.6%. The analytical method had been applied to the determination of glucose, ribose, isomaltose and maltose in real serum samples and good results with low relative standard deviation not more than 5.3% were obtained. The accuracy of the proposed method was tested by recovery measurements on spiked samples and good recovery results (98.1-107.9%) were obtained.