A Biodegradable Implant Antenna Detecting Post-Surgical Infection

Biodegradable implants have proven to be attractive where the patient will not need to go through an additional operation for the removal of the implant. Here biodegradability is utilized further where the biodegradation process has been part of the device’s operation. An implant antenna is designed to detect the post-surgical infections which increase the acidity inside the human body. The implant antenna is provisioned to be located in the operation site where it degrades at different paces depending on the existence of an infection or not. The Mg antenna is tested in cow’s minced fat where the degradation is monitored using a wearable slot antenna used as a reader. The detection was possible for 1 cm deep implant with 14 MHz resolution.