Documents / Official release
This Defense Intelligence Reference Document, dated 31 March 2010 and numbered DIA-08-1003-020, was prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Warning Office under its Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program. It surveys biosensors and biomedical microelectromechanical systems, covering brain-implanted micromachine neuroelectrodes, drug-delivery pumps, glucose sensors, neural interfaces, retinal prostheses, microfluidic lab chips, NASA cell-culture systems and microcantilever sensors. It concludes that the field is expanding rapidly, with nanomechanical systems expected to follow.
From the source: Release of 2026-09-18 Incident: 3/31/10, Las Vegas, Nevada. Released with redactions. This document is a Defense Intelligence Reference Document (DIRD), a technical reference format used by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to capture baseline knowledge on a specific topic for later analytic use. DIRDs are best understood as reference and synthesis products rather than as original research. It is one of 38 DIRDs produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) between 2009 and 2011. Because AAWSAP’s scope permitted a broad range of supporting topics, not every DIRD in the series directly concerns aerospace systems or future threat assessment. The following summary reflects the DIRD’s scope and framing at the time of writing and should not be read as implying current validation of the concepts discussed. This DIRD surveys biosensors and BioMEMS, a broad class of miniature biomedical devices that combine microscale engineering with sensing, fluid handling, stimulation, or drug-delivery functions. The report reviews major application areas including implantable blood-chemistry sensors, neural interfaces, neurostimulation, drug-delivery pumps, microfluidic systems, and emerging nanoscale extensions of the field, while emphasizing that miniaturization can improve sensitivity and enable functions that are difficult or impossible at larger scales. However, it also makes clear that practical development is constrained by biocompatibility, long-term stability, sensor drift, device degradation inside the body, and the high regulatory burden associated with implantable medical systems. The document presents BioMEMS as a rapidly growing and productive field whose future advances are likely to come through continued improvements in fabrication, materials, and reliability.
UNCLASSIFIED/ /P'OR: OP'P'l@IAL WS& 8NI.¥
So far, despite decades of work, no continuous monitoring sensor that is self contained
and implantable has been successful for long term usage. The human body is an
exceptionally hostile environment for foreign materials. Even our most advanced
biosensors fail over a period of days or weeks if continuously exposed to the body
environment. This failure is mostly due to the sensor chemistry wearing out in one way
or another or attack of the sensor interface by the body's immune system. Failure is not
generally attributed to the materials of which the sensor is made.
MEMS Blood Glucose Sensors
Diabetes is an enormous world problem. A significant fraction of the annual world
health care expenditures can be traced back to diabetes, and its cousin, obesity.
Measurement of blood glucose on a regular basis, usually 3-4 times a day, allows a
diabetic to regulate his diet and insulin dose to achieve normal glucose levels.
Perhaps one of the most needed biosensors is that for an in-vivo blood glucose sensor.
These could be used to automatically control of the output of an insulin-delivery pump.
This would constitute a major improvement in the treatment of diabetes by
automatically using blood glucose concentration feedback to stabilize the blood glucose
levels with the exact level of needed insulin. This kind of system is sometimes called an
artificial endocrine pancreas since it mimics the normal function of the pancreas in
regulating insulin release.
There are several attempts at using MEMS devices to produce indwelling glucose
sensors. These are presently on the market, but currently the sensors have relatively
short lifetimes, are disposable, and require replacement every few days.
Figure 9 shows this basic idea. An
implantable sensor produces an
electrical output that reports the blood
glucose concentration. Its signal is
transmitted to a receiver and then
processed by a computer to drive a
belt-worn pump.
The creation of such a sensor has been
a daunting problem from more than 30
years. The most recent attempts have
been in the use of micromachining to
produce optical devices of very small
size and to produce wireless
transmitting electrochemical sensor
devices small enough to be injected into
the body• Figure 9. Control of an Insulin-Delivery System by
an Implantable Glucose Sensor (Medtronic Inc.)
Coincident with the development of
sensors has been the need to develop very small wireless telemetry systems that
transmit the sensor data to outside the body.
UNCLASSIFIED/ {FOR OFFICIO! !Pfli ODIi.¥
13 Not linked to a story yet.
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 45 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.