Breaking New Ground in Cardiac Care

MIT’s Ultrasound Pacemaker

MIT engineers have developed a noninvasive pacemaker that uses ultrasound to stimulate the heart. The device is a small sticker worn on the chest, containing transducers that send ultrasound pulses through the chest to trigger ion channels in heart cells, causing them to contract.

"The dream for many years has been noninvasive heart stimulation with ultrasound."
— Gengxi Lu, co-corresponding author

How It Works

The researchers amplified the effect through sonogenetics, genetically engineering heart cells to increase sensitivity to ultrasound. In lab experiments, ultrasound pulses maintained healthy contractions of engineered human cardiac cells.

In tests on rats, the device corrected arrhythmias and restored normal heart contractions.

The prototype includes a postage stamp-sized ultrasound sticker and a pocket-sized device with batteries and electronics.

The Bigger Picture

Approximately 3 million adults in the United States have implantable pacemakers, which require surgery and carry risks. Ultrasound is a noninvasive technology that can penetrate the body and is already used for imaging and therapeutic effects in other conditions.

Sonogenetics, similar to optogenetics, involves genetically modifying cells to respond to sound waves.

"We believe you could one day have stickers on the body that could do long-term imaging deep in the body and also do stimulation for therapeutic effects, in a noninvasive closed-loop way."
— Xuanhe Zhao, professor at MIT

Looking Ahead

The team plans to combine this with a previous ultrasound sticker design for imaging, enabling simultaneous monitoring and regulation of heart activity.

"We can now use low-intensity ultrasound to open ion channels in cells to have very effective heart pacing."
— Chen Gong, first author

Study Details

The results were published in Nature Biomedical Engineering. The study involved collaborators from MIT, University of Southern California, Harvard University, and other institutions. Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other organizations.