Biosensors and Bioelectronics

Biosensors are used in the food industry to measure carbohydrates, alcohols and acids. Graphene based enzymatic and non-enzymatic electrodes can efficiently detect glucose, cytochrome-c, NADH, haemoglobin, HRP, and cholesterol, hydrogen peroxide, AA, UA, DA, respectively. Nanocapsules are nano scale shells made out of a nontoxic polymer. They are vesicular systems that are made up of a polymeric membrane which encapsulates an inner liquid core at the Nano scale level. Nanocapsules have a myriad of uses, which include promising medical applications for drug delivery, food enhancement, nutraceuticals, and for the self-healing of materials.

Biological properties can be measured and altered using electronics, magnetics, Photonic, sensors, circuits, and algorithms. Applications range from basic biological science through clinical medicine, and enable new discoveries, diagnoses, and treatments by creating novel devices, systems, and analyses. Bio molecular Electronics is a branch of nano-science and technology dealing with the investigation and the technological exploitation of electron transport properties in special classes of biomolecules.

Bioelectronics have a wide variety of applications, including: electrocardiographs, cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators, blood pressure and flow monitors, and medical imaging systems. Bioelectronics implants have been designed incorporating biophysical therapeutic actuation, bone-implant interface sensing, implant-clinician communication and self-powering ability. The ultimate goal is to implement revist interface, controlled by clinicians/surgeons without troubling the quotidian activities of patients.

Most biomechatronic devices resemble conventional orthotics or prosthetics, but biomechatronic devices have the ability to accurately emulate human movement by interfacing directly with a wearer’s muscle and nervous systems to assist or restore motor control. Current biomechatronic research focuses on three areas are analysing human motions, interfacing electronics with humans and advanced prosthetics. Mechanical Sensors measure information about the biomechatronic device and relay to the biosensor or controller.

Photonic sensing focuses on experimental contributions related to novel principles, and structures or materials for photonic sensors. Optical fibers can be used as sensors to measure strain, temperature, pressure and other quantities by modifying a fiber so that the quantity to be measured modulates the intensity, phase, polarization and wavelength or transit time of light in the fiber. Sensors that vary the intensity of light are the simplest, since only a simple source and detector are required. These devices are responsible for commercial successes of optical fibers and communication.

Biomedical instrumentation or Bioinstrumentation  focuses on the development of methods and devices for the treatment of diseases. It is an emerging field of biomedical engineering that bridges the gap between medicine and engineering. It combines the design and problem solving skills of engineering with medical and biological sciences to advance health care treatment, including diagnosis, monitoring, and therapy.  To ensure that good quality assurance practices are used for the design of medical devices and that they are consistent with quality system requirements worldwide, the Food and Drug Administration revised the Current Good Manufacturing Practice (CGMP) requirements by incorporating them into the Quality System Regulation, 21 CFR Part 820.

Fluorescence is by far the method most often applied and comes in a variety of schemes. Nowadays, one of the most common approaches in the field of optical biosensors is to combine the high sensitivity of fluorescence detection in combination with the high selectivity provided by ligand-binding proteins. In this chapter we deal with reviewing our recent results on the implementation of fluorescence-based sensors for monitoring environmentally hazardous gas molecules. Medical Image Analysis provides a forum for the dissemination of new research results in the field of medical and biological image analysis, with special emphasis on efforts related to the applications of high-level computer vision, virtual reality and robotics to biomedical imaging problems.

In healthcare, the Wearable IoT (WIoT) is a network of patient-worn smart devices (e.g., electronic skin patches, ECG monitors, etc.), with sensors, actuators and software connected to the cloud that enable collection, analysis and transmitting of personal health data in real time. Wearable technology is widely used in healthcare to enable patient condition monitoring, therapy delivery, and more. Implantable biosensors have great potential in the diagnosis, monitoring, management and treatment of a variety of disease conditions. These are an important class of biosensors because of their ability to provide continuous data on the levels of a target analyte.

The majority of reported biosensor research has been directed toward development of devices for clinical markets; however, driven by a need for better methods for environmental surveillance, research into this technology is also expanding to encompass environmental applications.  Biosensors are biophysical devices which can detect the presence of specific substances e.g. sugars, proteins, hormones, pollutants and a variety of toxins in the environment. They are also capable of measuring the quantities of these specific substances in the environment.

A major challenge facing the healthcare industry is the human body’s inability to sometimes absorb entire doses of drugs. This is where nanotechnology comes into the picture. Nanotechnology can be used to transport the drug to specific cells in the body, which not only ensures a more precise treatment but also reduces the chances of failure or rejection. The ability to examine the human body, its drug therapies and medical devices at the nano level. The healthcare industry is leveraging this nanotechnology (like Nano medicine, Nanobots, Nanofibers and Nanotech-based wearables) for broad applications.

The Micro/NanoElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS/NEMS) need to be designed to perform expected functions typically in millisecond to picosecond range. Most mechanical properties are known to be scale dependent. For BioMEMS/BioNEMS, adhesion between biological molecular layers and the substrate, and friction and wear of biological layers can be important. Component-level studies are required to provide a better understanding of the tribological phenomena occurring in MEMS/NEMS. The emergence of the fields of nanotribology and nanomechanics, and atomic force microscopy (AFM) atomic force microscopy (AFM)-based techniques, has provided researchers with a viable approach to address these problems.

Advanced Sensing Technologies has an extensive portfolio of sensors. The primary sensors used within medical devices are pressure, force, airflow, oxygen, pulse oximetry, temperature, and barcode sensing. The Biosensors play a critical role in the operation of the equipment. Biosensors embedded in medical devices are used to improve patient care, comfort, enhance healthcare professionals’ performance and reduce healthcare costs. These smart connected devices using Biosensors and Bioelectronics will contain a multitude of different sensors that will be used to gather valuable data. This data will be collated and analyzed to diagnose illnesses and provide treatment more quickly.