An Inductively-Powered Wireless Neural Recording System with a Charge Sampling Analog Front-End

Freeing the Animal Model: A Modular, Wirelessly Powered, Implantable Electronic Platform

SUMMARY

Fully implantable electronic devices in freely roaming animal models are useful in biomedical research, but their development is prohibitively resource intensive for many laboratories. The advent of miniaturized microcontrollers with onboard wireless data exchange capabilities has enabled cost-efficient development of myriad do-it-yourself electronic devices that are easily customizable with open-source software ( https://www.arduino.cc/ ). Likewise, the global proliferation of mobile devices has led to the development of low-cost miniaturized wireless power technology. The authors present a low-cost, rechargeable, and fully implantable electronic device comprising a commercially available, open-source, wirelessly powered microcontroller that is readily customizable with myriad readily available miniature sensors and actuators. The authors demonstrate the utility of this platform for chronic nerve stimulation in the freely roaming rat with intermittent wireless charging over 4 weeks. Device assembly was achieved within 2 hours and necessitated only basic soldering equipment. Component costs totaled $115 per device. Wireless data transfer and wireless recharging of device batteries was achieved within 30 minutes, and no harmful heat generation occurred during charging or discharging cycles, as measured by external thermography and internal device temperature monitoring. Wireless communication enabled triggered cathodic pulse stimulation of the facial nerve at various user-selected programmed frequencies (1, 5, and 10 Hz) for periods of 4 weeks or longer. This implantable electronic platform could be further miniaturized and expanded to study a vast array of biomedical research questions in live animal models.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE STATEMENT

The clinical relevance of electrical stimulation in neural recovery remains controversial, and long-term neural stimulation in small animal models is challenging. We have developed a low-cost, fully implantable, wirelessly powered nerve stimulation device to facilitate further research in nerve stimulation in animal models.

A Novel Method for Angioscopic Imaging and Visualizing the Skull Base Using Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor Cameras

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) electrode arrays are a novel technology for miniaturized endoscopes; however, its use for neurointervention is yet to be investigated. In this proof-of-concept study, we aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of CMOS endoscopes in a canine model by providing direct visualization of the endothelial surface, deploying stents and coils, and accessing the spinal subdural space and skull base.

METHODS

Using 3 canine models, standard guide catheters were introduced into the internal carotid and vertebral arteries through the transfemoral route using fluoroscopy. A 1.2-mm CMOS camera was delivered through the guide catheter to inspect the endothelium. Next, the camera was introduced alongside standard neuroendovascular devices including coils and stents to provide direct visualization of their deployment within the endothelium during fluoroscopy. One canine was used for skull base and extravascular visualization. A lumbar laminectomy was performed, and the camera was navigated within the spinal subdural space until the posterior circulation intracranial vasculature was visualized.

RESULTS

We successfully visualized the endothelial surface and performed several endovascular procedures such as deployment of coils and stents under direct endovascular, angioscopic vision. We also demonstrated a proof of concept for accessing the skull base and posterior cerebral vasculature using CMOS cameras through the spinal subdural space.

CONCLUSION

This proof-of-concept study demonstrates the feasibility of CMOS camera technology to directly visualize endothelium, perform common neuroendovascular procedures, and access the base of the skull in a canine model.

Seamless Capacitive Body Channel Wireless Power Transmission Toward Freely Moving Multiple Animals in an Animal Cage

Unstable wireless power transmission toward multiple living animals in an animal cage is one of the significant barriers to performing long-term and real-time neural monitoring in preclinical research. Here, seamless capacitive body channel (SCB) wireless power transmission (WPT) along with power management integrated circuit (PMIC) is designed using a standard 65 nm CMOS process. The SCB WPT enables stable wireless power transmission toward multiple 35 mm×20 mm×2 mm sized receivers (RXs) attached to freely moving animals in a 600 mm×600 mm×120 mm sized animal cage. By utilizing fringe-field capacitance and a body channel for wireless power link between the cage and RXs, the maximum difference in all measured power efficiencies in diverse scenarios is only 6.66 % with a 20 mW load. Even with a 90 ^° RX rotation against the cage, power efficiency marks 17.76 %. Furthermore, an in-vivo experiment conducted with three untethered rats demonstrates the capability of continuous long-term power delivery in practical situations.

Advances in Neural Recording and Stimulation Integrated Circuits

In the past few decades, driven by the increasing demands in the biomedical field aiming to cure neurological diseases and improve the quality of daily lives of the patients, researchers began to take advantage of the semiconductor technology to develop miniaturized and power-efficient chips for implantable applications. The emergence of the integrated circuits for neural prosthesis improves the treatment process of epilepsy, hearing loss, retinal damage, and other neurological diseases, which brings benefits to many patients. However, considering the safety and accuracy in the neural prosthesis process, there are many research directions. In the process of chip design, designers need to carefully analyze various parameters, and investigate different design techniques. This article presents the advances in neural recording and stimulation integrated circuits, including (1) a brief introduction of the basics of neural prosthesis circuits and the repair process in the bionic neural link, (2) a systematic introduction of the basic architecture and the latest technology of neural recording and stimulation integrated circuits, (3) a summary of the key issues of neural recording and stimulation integrated circuits, and (4) a discussion about the considerations of neural recording and stimulation circuit architecture selection and a discussion of future trends. The overview would help the designers to understand the latest performances in many aspects and to meet the design requirements better.

Fabrication of Injectable Micro-Scale Opto-Electronically Transduced Electrodes (MOTEs) for Physiological Monitoring

In vivo, chronic neural recording is critical to understand the nervous system, while a tetherless, miniaturized recording unit can render such recording minimally invasive. We present a tetherless, injectable micro-scale opto-electronically transduced electrode (MOTE) that is ~60μm × 30μm × 330μm, the smallest neural recording unit to date. The MOTE consists of an AlGaAs micro-scale light emitting diode (μLED) heterogeneously integrated on top of conventional 180nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) circuit. The MOTE combines the merits of optics (AlGaAs μLED for power and data uplink), and of electronics (CMOS for signal amplification and encoding). The optical powering and communication enable the extreme scaling while the electrical circuits provide a high temporal resolution (<100μs). This paper elaborates on the heterogeneous integration in MOTEs, a topic that has been touted without much demonstration on feasibility or scalability. Based on photolithography, we demonstrate how to build heterogenous systems that are scalable as well as biologically stable - the MOTEs can function in saline water for more than six months, and in a mouse brain for two months (and counting). We also present handling/insertion techniques for users (i.e. biologists) to deploy MOTEs with little or no extra training.

A Dual-Band Wireless Power Transmission System for Evaluating mm-Sized Implants

Distributed neural interfaces made of many mm-sized implantable medical devices (IMDs) are poised to play a key role in future brain-computer interfaces because of less damage to the surrounding tissue. Evaluating them wirelessly at preclinical stage (e.g., in a rodent model), however, is a major challenge due to weak coupling and significant losses, resulting in limited power delivery to the IMD within a nominal experimental arena, like a homecage, without surpassing the specific absorption rate limit. To address this problem, we present a dual-band EnerCage system with two multi-coil inductive links, which first deliver power at 13.56 MHz from the EnerCage (46 × 24 × 20 cm3) to a headstage (18 × 18 × 15 mm3, 4.8 g) that is carried by the animal via a 4-coil inductive link. Then, a 60 MHz 3-coil inductive link from the headstage powers up the small IMD (2.5 × 2.5 × 1.5 mm3, 15 mg), which in this case is a free floating, wirelessly powered, implantable optical stimulator (FF-WIOS). The power transfer efficiency and power delivered to the load (PDL) from EnerCage to the headstage at 7 cm height were 14.9%-22.7% and 122 mW; and from headstage to FF-WIOS at 5 mm depth were 18% and 2.7 mW, respectively. Bidirectional data connectivity between EnerCage-headstage was established via bluetooth low energy. Between headstage and FF-WIOS, on-off keying and load-shift-keying were used for downlink and uplink data, respectively. Moreover, a closed-loop power controller stabilized PDL to both the headstage and the FF-WIOS against misalignments.

An Inductively-Powered Wireless Neural Recording and Stimulation System for Freely-Behaving Animals

An inductively-powered wireless integrated neural recording and stimulation (WINeRS-8) system-on-a-chip (SoC) that is compatible with the EnerCage-HC2 for wireless/battery-less operation has been presented for neuroscience experiments on freely behaving animals. WINeRS-8 includes a 32-ch recording analog front end, a 4-ch current-controlled stimulator, and a 434 MHz on - off keying data link to an external software- defined radio wideband receiver (Rx). The headstage also has a bluetooth low energy link for controlling the SoC. WINeRS-8/EnerCage-HC2 systems form a bidirectional wireless and battery-less neural interface within a standard homecage, which can support longitudinal experiments in an enriched environment. Both systems were verified in vivo on rat animal model, and the recorded signals were compared with hardwired and battery-powered recording results. Realtime stimulation and recording verified the system's potential for bidirectional neural interfacing within the homecage, while continuously delivering 35 mW to the hybrid WINeRS-8 headstage over an unlimited period.

An Impulse Radio PWM-Based Wireless Data Acquisition Sensor Interface

A sensor interface circuit based on impulse radio pulse width modulation (IR-PWM) is presented for low power and high throughput wireless data acquisition systems (wDAQ) with extreme size and power constraints. Two triple-slope analog-to-time converters (ATC) convert two analog signals, each up to 5 MHz in bandwidth, into PWM signals, and an impulse radio (IR) transmitted (Tx) with an all-digital power amplifier (PA) combines them while preserving the timing information by transmitting impulses at the PWM rising and falling edges. On the receiver (Rx) side, an RF-LNA followed by an envelope detector recovers the incoming impulses, and a T-flipflop reverts the impulse sequence back to PWM to be digitized by a time-to-digital converter (TDC). Detailed analysis and design guideline on ATC was introduced, and a proof-of-concept prototype was fabricated for a capacitive micromachined ultrasound transducer (CMUT) imaging system in a 0.18-μm HV CMOS process, occupying 0.18 mm² active area and consuming 3.94 mW from a 1.8 V supply. The proposed TDC in this prototype yielded 7-bit resolution, while the entire wDAQ achieved 5.8 effective number of bits (ENOB) at 2 × 10 MS/s.

A 250 μm × 57 μm Microscale Opto-electronically Transduced Electrodes (MOTEs) for Neural Recording

Recording neural activity in live animals in vivo with minimal tissue damage is one of the major barriers to understanding the nervous system. This paper presents the technology for a tetherless opto-electronic neural interface based on 180 nm CMOS circuits, heterogeneously integrated with an AlGaAs diode that functions as both a photovoltaic and light emitting diode. These microscale opto-electrically transduced electrodes (MOTEs) are powered by and communicate through an optical interface, simultaneously enabling high temporal-resolution electrical measurements without a tether or a bulky RF coil. The MOTE presented here is 250 μm × 57 μm, consumes 1 μW of electrical power, and is capable of capturing and encoding neural signals before transmitting the encoded signals. The measured noise floor is as low as 15 μV_RMS at a 15 kHz bandwidth.

A Comprehensive Comparative Study on Inductive and Ultrasonic Wireless Power Transmission to Biomedical Implants

This paper presents a comprehensive comparison between inductive coupling and ultrasound for wireless power transmission (WPT) to biomedical implants. Several sets of inductive and ultrasonic links for different powering distances (d 12) and receiver dimensions have been optimized, and their key parameters, including power transmission efficiency (PTE) and power delivered to the load (PDL) within safety constraints, have been compared to find out which method is optimal for any given condition. Two design procedures have been presented for maximizing the PTE of inductive and ultrasonic links by finding the optimal geometry for the transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) coils and ultrasonic transducers as well as the optimal operation frequency (fp ). Our simulation and measurement results showed that the ultrasonic link transcends the inductive link in PTE and somewhat in PDL for a small Rx of 1.1 mm3 (diameter of 1.2 mm), particularly when the Rx was deeply implanted inside the tissue (d 12 ≥ 10 mm). However, for a larger 20 mm3 Rx (diameter of 5 mm), the inductive link achieved higher PTE and PDL, particularly at shorter distances (d 12 < 30 mm). The optimal loading condition is shown to be quite different in inductive and ultrasonic links. Despite higher performance for small Rx and large d 12, the ultrasonic link is more sensitive to Rx misalignments and orientations. This led us to propose a new design procedure based on the worst-case misalignment scenario. The simulation results have been validated by measurements. The inductive and ultrasonic links, operating at 30 MHz and 1.1 MHz, achieved measured PTEs of 0.05% and 0.65% for the 1.1 mm3 Rx located 30 mm inside tissue and oil environments with optimal load resistances of 295 Ω and 3.8 kΩ, respectively.

An Implantable Peripheral Nerve Recording and Stimulation System for Experiments on Freely Moving Animal Subjects

A new study with rat sciatic nerve model for peripheral nerve interfacing is presented using a fully-implanted inductively-powered recording and stimulation system in a wirelessly-powered standard homecage that allows animal subjects move freely within the homecage. The Wireless Implantable Neural Recording and Stimulation (WINeRS) system offers 32-channel peripheral nerve recording and 4-channel current-controlled stimulation capabilities in a 3 × 1.5 × 0.5 cm³ package. A bi-directional data link is established by on-off keying pulse-position modulation (OOK-PPM) in near field for narrow-band downlink and 433 MHz OOK for wideband uplink. An external wideband receiver is designed by adopting a commercial software defined radio (SDR) for a robust wideband data acquisition on a PC. The WINeRS-8 prototypes in two forms of battery-powered headstage and wirelessly-powered implant are validated in vivo, and compared with a commercial system. In the animal study, evoked compound action potentials were recorded to verify the stimulation and recording capabilities of the WINeRS-8 system with 32-ch penetrating and 4-ch cuff electrodes on the sciatic nerve of awake freely-behaving rats. Compared to the conventional battery-powered system, WINeRS can be used in closed-loop recording and stimulation experiments over extended periods without adding the burden of carrying batteries on the animal subject or interrupting the experiment.

Position and Orientation Insensitive Wireless Power Transmission for EnerCage-Homecage System

We have developed a new headstage architecture as part of a smart experimental arena, known as the EnerCage-HC2 system, which automatically delivers stimulation and collects behavioral data over extended periods with minimal small animal subject handling or personnel intervention in a standard rodent homecage. Equipped with a four-coil inductive link, the EnerCage-HC2 system wirelessly powers the receiver (Rx) headstage, irrespective of the subject's location or head orientation, eliminating the need for tethering or carrying bulky batteries. On the transmitter (Tx) side, a driver coil, five high-quality (Q) factor segmented resonators at different heights and orientations, and a closed-loop Tx power controller create a homogeneous electromagnetic (EM) field within the homecage 3-D space, and compensate for drops in power transfer efficiency (PTE) due to Rx misalignments. The headstage is equipped with four small slanted resonators, each covering a range of head orientations with respect to the Tx resonators, which direct the EM field toward the load coil at the bottom of the headstage. Moreover, data links based on Wi-Fi, UART, and Bluetooth low energy are utilized to enables remote communication and control of the Rx. The PTE varies within 23.6%-33.3% and 6.7%-10.1% at headstage heights of 8 and 20 cm, respectively, while continuously delivering >40 mW to the Rx electronics even at 90° rotation. As a proof of EnerCage-HC2 functionality in vivo, a previously documented on-demand electrical stimulation of the globus pallidus, eliciting consistent head rotation, is demonstrated in three freely behaving rats.

A Multi-Cycle Q-Modulation for Dynamic Optimization of Inductive Links

This paper presents a new method, called multi-cycle Q-modulation, which can be used in wireless power transmission (WPT) to modulate the quality factor (Q) of the receiver (Rx) coil and dynamically optimize the load impedance to maximize the power transfer efficiency (PTE) in two-coil links. A key advantage of the proposed method is that it can be easily implemented using off-the-shelf components without requiring fast switching at or above the carrier frequency, which is more suitable for integrated circuit design. Moreover, the proposed technique does not need any sophisticated synchronization between the power carrier and Q-modulation switching pulses. The multi-cycle Q-modulation is analyzed theoretically by a lumped circuit model, and verified in simulation and measurement using an off-the-shelf prototype. Automatic resonance tuning (ART) in the Rx, combined with multi-cycle Q-modulation helped maximizing PTE of the inductive link dynamically in the presence of environmental and loading variations, which can otherwise significantly degrade the PTE in multi-coil settings. In the prototype conventional 2-coil link, the proposed method increased the power amplifier (PA) plus inductive link efficiency from 4.8% to 16.5% at (RL = 1 kΩ, d23 = 3 cm), and from 23% to 28.2% at (RL = 100 Ω, d23 = 3 cm) after 11% change in the resonance capacitance, while delivering 168.1 mW to the load (PDL).