Healthcare Monitoring of Bone Fracture Healing by Implanted Antenna

Remote patient monitoring using implantable medical devices (IMDs) provides continuous health monitoring such as heart rate, blood pressure, or insulin level through telecommunications. Wireless biotelemetry allows the transmission of physiological signals from the implanted device to monitoring or controlling devices. This thesis is about the study and characterization of the inhomogeneous human tissue as the lossy part of the communication channel. A healthcare monitoring technique of bone fracture healing is proposed. A multilayer human tissue model is analyzed in a range of frequencies covering the MICS and ISM bands for this purpose. The range of in-to-out incident angle of electromagnetic wave which produces transmission outside the body is identified for each frequency. The variation of reflection coefficient at the borders of the tissues with incident angle is characterized. An additional layer is added to the multilayer model to represent the fracture which increases the loss inside the model and affects the transmitted average power density outside the body. The human femoral shaft fractures and humerus fractures are selected as the applications of the proposed monitoring technique. Two post-surgery treated models of femoral shaft and humerus fractures are simulated by CST Microwave studio using different topologies of linear and meander half wave dipole antennas. The technique is verified experimentally on lifeless animal models and the measurements show good matching with the simulation results. This monitoring technique avoids repeated exposing to X Ray and eases the patients’ life through monitoring at home.