Flexible Magnetoresistive Sensors for Guiding Cardiac Catheters

Cardiac catheterization is a procedure, in which a long thin tube that is called a 'catheter' is inserted into the heart for diagnosis or treatment. Due to the excessive use of x-ray doses and contrast agents for orientation detection during the surgery, there is a need to find a better alternative. This paper presents magnetic tunnel junction sensors on flexible Si attached to the catheter tip for orientation detection during minimally invasive surgeries. Due to the small size of catheters, extreme minimization in terms of size, weight, thickness and power consumption is needed for any device implemented on it. The fabricated flexible magnetic tunnel junctions fulfill those requirements with size, thickness, weight and power consumption of 150 μm², 12 μm, 8 μg and 0.15 μW, respectively, while still providing a high sensitivity of 4.93 %/Oe. The sensors can be bent with up to 500 μm in diameter, which is more than needed for even the smallest catheters of size 1 mm (3 Fr) in diameter. This result is a stepping-stone towards the development of a versatile and low-cost smart catheter system that can help surgeons navigate inside the heart while minimizing the side effects.