Biodegradable Implant Antenna Utilized for Real-Time Sensing Through Genetically Modified Bacteria

This work presents a wireless real-time sensing system. The sensing system consist of a bio-hybrid implant and a wearable reader antenna pair. The bio-hybrid implant has two parts: a biodegradable implant antenna and genetically modified bacteria. The biodegradable implant antenna operates as a passive reflector and genetically modified bacteria control the degradation speed according to the presence of a specific molecule of interest. As the implant antenna degrades, changes in its geometry shift its resonant frequency. This shift is tracked by the wearable reader antennas. Therefore, the presence of the molecule of interest can be wirelessly tracked in real-time from outside the body.