Development of a novel intrafascicular nerve electrode.
Artificial organs could be controlled using autonomic neural signals, because they exhibit rapid responses to physical needs similar to those of natural organs. A nerve electrode must satisfy many requirements to measure autonomous neural signals such as a long lifetime, high signal-to-noise ratio, multichannel recording, simple installation into a nerve fascicle, and good manufacturing productivity. The purpose of our study is to propose and evaluate a novel nerve electrode that satisfies these conditions, which to date has not been developed. A novel intrafascicular nerve electrode was designed, fabricated, and evaluated on autonomic nerves. Conventional extrafascicular and intrafascicular nerve electrodes were fabricated and tested for comparison to our novel intrafascicular nerve electrode. The novel intrafascicular nerve electrode had a 3-week lifetime, whereas the conventional extrafascicular nerve electrode had a 2-week lifetime. The signal-to-noise ratio was improved from 1.6 to 2.0 compared with the conventional extrafascicular nerve electrode. The novel intrafascicular nerve electrode was easier to install into a nerve fascicle and had better manufacturing productivity than the conventional intrafascicular nerve electrode. We succeeded in demonstrating the feasibility of our novel intrafascicular nerve electrode.
Mitsui
Mie
M
Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Suzuki
Takafumi
T
Mabuchi
Kunihiko
K
Takiura
Koki
K
Saito
Itsuro
I
Chinzei
Tsuneo
T
Mochizuki
Shuichi
S
Isoyama
Takashi
T
Abe
Yusuke
Y
Imachi
Kou
K
D000818:Animals; D001187:Artificial Organs; D017776:Autonomic Pathways / Q000601:surgery; D001698:Biomedical Engineering; D004566:Electrodes; D004867:Equipment Design; D011817:Rabbits