Create a GPS to track future smart implants under the skin

Employs wireless radio signals to detect implantable devices within the body

«A GPS in the body», this is how the creators of ReMix have baptized the new device. Born in the facilities of the Laboratory of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence of MIT, this small invention is ready to locate implants or smart capsules within the human body.

ReMix works with wireless radio signals capable of detecting devices implanted within a body. In the first tests, the MIT scientists placed a chip inside a false tumor that they placed in different forms of animal tissue.

The tests were carried out on several different tissues: a whole chicken, a container full of fat from this animal, pig belly and a fake human tissue. The results have been positive and achieved an average location accuracy of 1.4 centimeters in animal tissues.

However, it is not the same to use backscattering, the method by which ReMix works, in vacuum or air than in the human body, because the properties of tissues vary. The first tests have been satisfactory, although MIT scientists are still working on the tests, which will be presented at the SIGCOMM conference to be held in Budapest, the capital of Hungary.

ReMix, if the research is satisfactory, will allow a boost to the implantation of chips under the skin and in the future locate these implants to improve cancer treatments with the tracking of tumors by markers or administer drugs more precisely.