Safe wireless transmission of electricity has been an engineering dream since the energy medium was discovered a couple hundred years ago. In medicine, the technology is of particular interest for implanted devices that either have to have a long term battery on board or require wires to penetrate the skin to connect with an external power source. Implantable heart pumps, unlike pacemakers for example, are particularly power hungry and require continuous access to electricity. Engineering students at Rice University were asked by Procyrion of Houston, TX, a company that developed a catheter deployed ventricular assist device, to look into designing a system to transmit energy to the pump.
In response, the students applied a technique, sometimes used in other applications, to generate a magnetic field externally, which is converted back to electricity by an implanted coil. The transcutaneous energy-transfer (TET) system also uses an internal battery that would keep the pump going for up to three hours when external power is disconnected.
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