Illustration of ATOMS

Remember the “submarine” that travels through the blood stream in the 1966 movie, Fantastic Voyage? That fantasy actually is the inspiration for a microdevice, 1.4 mm square, that engineers at Caltech have devised that can be injected and tracked for location by magnetic fields. The prototype “. . . contains a magnetic field sensor, integrated antennas, a wireless powering device, and a circuit that adjusts its radio frequency signal based on the magnetic field strength to wirelessly relay the chip’s location.   Called “ATOMS,” for Addressable Transmitters Operated as Magnetic Spins, they could be used for, say, telling if an attached chemotherapy drug actually reached the acidic microenvironment of a tumor.   MORE

Image Credit: Ella Marushchenko for Caltech