Project Goals
The objectives of this project are to design and evaluate the performance of an electromagnetic actuated (EMA) drug delivery system and explore the related issues.
Approaches
The EMA system consists of magneto-responsive microcapsules as drug carriers, a coil system with controlled currents flowing through, as well as a tracking algorithm for close loop feedback control.
The magneto-responsive and thermal sensitive microcapsules are prepared through an encapsulator. The properties can be further utilized for controlled drug release. The encapsulated microbubbles are prepared based on a gas foaming technique for enhancing the ultrasound imaging contrast.
The coil system consists of 2 Helmoholz coil pairs and 2 Maxwell coil pairs are fabricated with printed aluminum skeleton and copper wires. A current control system including 3 DC motor governors and a USB to RS485 converter are added to realize programmable current control. Hence, the magnetic fields generated by the coils are controlled by the signals sent by the computer. Figure 1 shows the principle of actuation over the microcapsules.
Fig. 1: Principle of Magnetic Actuation over the Microcapsules
Results
Figure 2 shows the preliminary set up for actuation over microparticles within the region of interest.
Fig. 2 Setup for Microparticles Actuation
Microcapsules with evenly distributed magnetic stripes have been fabricated. The stripes make the spherical microcapsules asymmetric so that their locomotion control is directed. Alignment and movement of the microcapsules are observed in the EMA system under DC output, while rotation is observed under sinusoidal output current.
Fig. 3 Microcapsules with magnetic CI strips. Scale bar: 200μm.
Fig.4 Magnetic actuation with (A)small cylindrical magnet and (B)magnetic microcapsules
People Involved
Staff: Shen Shen, Song Shuang and Zhu Jingling
PIs: Ren Hongliang and Li Jun
Experiment Videos
Presentations and Publications
1．Shen Shen, Shuang Song, Jingling Zhu, Max Q-H Meng, Jun Li and Hongliang Ren, Preliminary Design towards a Magnetic Actuated Drug Delivery System, 7th IEEE International Conference on Cybernetics and Intelligent Systems and the 7th IEEE International Conference on Robotics, Automation and Mechatronics, 2015.
Poster in BME Showcase 2015
