Inductive Contactless Distance Measurement Intended for a Gastric Electrical Implant

For a gastric electrical stimulation project we are developing a system for on-demand switching according to the volume or elongation of the stomach wall. The system is to be implanted into the human abdomen, which limits the utilization of many possible solutions and types of sensors. Magnetic induction has been agreed as the most suitable principle, despite its direction dependency and the need of multi-axial and multiple probes for precision measurements. Possible configurations are discussed as well as the complexity of the necessary electronics and the implantation itself. For detecting food consumption, perfect precision is fortunately not necessary, but a certain compromise will still be necessary for the final system. A simple two-coil system – a transmitter and receiver and a system with a three-axial coil – have already been realized. The first system has already been successfully tested in-vivo on dogs by our US colleagues. However, if the implantation is badly performed, and the coils are completely out of axis, the system cannot sense relative changes in volume properly. The three-axial sensor presented here eliminates these problems. More complex arrangements emerging from magnetic tracking are discussed, because laboratory studies of stomach movements may require them.