Electrical Energy Transmission Technique Development

摘要

Electromagnetic energy transport through the intact skin has long been considered as an alternative to percutaneous electrical connection for powering extracorporeal partial or total artificial hearts. While considerable recent advances have been made, persistent problems with infection-free maintenance of percutaneous connections have motivated the development of intact skin transformers. A novel belt transformer concept has been developed which overcomes many difficulties of the pancake and skin-tunnel design approaches taken by earlier investigators. The development effort to date has focused on achieving required mechanical properties and biocompatibility of the implanted secondary. Preliminary results of transformer magnetic and mechanical design and in vitro testing, and the initial phase of in vivo evaluation, are presented.