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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.
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thermoelectric sensors have improved reproducibility of the sensors, but there has only
been limited success in applications of implantation into the body.
Neuroengineering by BioMEMS
BioMEMS types of devices, as we understand them today, were used first in
neuroscience. There has been a long history of the study of the electrical nature of body
tissue dating back to the days of Galvani and Volta. Frog nerves were found to be
electrically stimulatable and the first recordings of bioelectrical events were
accomplished very early with the invention of the string galvanometer.
More recently, pointed wires inserted into muscle, nerve and brain have given way to
MEMS electrode systems that are made on silicon supporting substrates and the
processes of photolithography used to define electrical current pathways. Figure 17
shows a modern electrode system for detecting and recording electrical signals from
living things. Each of the square regions is an exposed film of platinum while the
thinner conductors that contact the pads are insulated by a thin layer of a plastic and
conduct the detected electrical signals to a connector system (not shown).
Figure 17. A MEMS Biopotential Electrode System. It is approximately 100 microns in width . Each square pad
is an electrically sensitive region. (Wikipedia)
BIOELECTRIC EVENTS
The living processes of biology can in some ways be likened to that of a battery. The
metabolism of life produces the charging of the battery while it discharges through a
myriad of bioelectrical events that produce movement, thought, and cognition.
The transfer of electrical charge in the form of ions, mostly sodium, potassium and
chloride is initiated by bioelectrically excitable cells of the nerves, muscles, and neurons
of the brain. Collectively they constitute the wiring of the body. These ions result from
the salts that are part of the composition of living things that have evolved from the
sea.
The movements of these ions constitutes the flow of an electrical current in tissues and
are called bioelectrical currents. These currents give rise to electrical potentials that can
be detected from the skin or by biopotential electrodes inserted into organs or muscle.
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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.