High-Tech Heart Sock

This is not a cyborg testicle. It‘s an elasticated, sensor-packed silicon membrane that has been fitted around a removed-but-still-beating rabbit heart. The sheath is tailor-made to fit snugly around the heart without ever impeding its beats. Hugging the heart’s surface, the sensors monitor several markers of cardiac health in unprecedented detail – including pumping rhythm and changes in pH that can result from restricted blood flow, which can serve as early indicator of an impending heart attack. There’s also a plan to add components to the prototype that can stimulate the heart to enable the delivery of targeted electric shocks to correct abnormal rhythms. If they can be engineered to work in humans, these form-fitting heart membranes would be an upgrade on existing implantable pacemakers and defibrillators, which are not very sensitive when it comes to monitoring and not very good at targeted therapeutic stimulation.

Written by Daniel Cossins

Daniel Cossins

Writer

As a freelance science writer, Dan's work has been published in award-winning magazines including BBC Focus, Wired UK, Cosmos, BBC Knowledge, BBC History and Men's Health.

Website

• Image courtesy of John Rogers and colleagues
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature Communications 2014
• Research published in Nature Communications, February 2014