Posted March 23, 2015

 

By Seshadri Ramkumar (s.ramkumar@ttu.edu)

 

LUBBOCK, Texas – A team of scientists from the Berkeley and San Francisco campuses of the University of California have devised smart bandages that can detect bedsores early on.

 

A group of engineering professors from the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and Bioengineering from Berkeley has used a flexible electronic device on smart bandages that can detect bedsores even before they are noticed by humans. As the cells die, electrical changes occur, which are detected by the smart bandage. Thin plastic based wearable electronic bandages were tested on the skin of rats, which were able to detect the changes as the skin cells die, which is an indicator of the initiation of bedsore ulcers.

 

According to University of Berkeley, gold electrodes were printed on to the bandage material, which utilizes impedance spectroscopy to detect cell damages. Dr. Michael Harrison, professor of surgery at the University of California-San Francisco, a co-investigator of the work, said the device looks for electrical properties of the cells and evaluates the damage.

 

According to the research published recently in Nature Communications, the cell membrane is impermeable to electric charges when it is live and in good condition. As the cell starts to die, the electrical signals penetrate through them and functions like a resistor. This concept forms the basis of the smart bandage development.

 

The smart bandage is now entering a phase of clinical trials. The United States’ National Science Foundation funded the study.

 

Dr. Seshadri Ramkumar, Ph.D, FTA (honorary), is a professor at the Nonwovens & Advanced Materials Laboratory at Texas Tech.