ECE 290 Seminar: Low-Power and Miniaturized Medical Electronics for in vivo Localization and Tracking
Presenter: Dr. Saransh Sharma, Postdoctoral Scholar, MIT
Description: Accurate in vivo localization of medical devices is central to applications ranging from ingestible pills in the GI tract to endovascular and minimally invasive procedures. However, current clinical methods rely on endoscopy or repeated ionizing imaging (CT/X-ray), and are poorly suited for continuous or out-of-hospital use. In this talk, I will present a radiation-free platform for high-precision localization of wireless miniaturized devices in vivo, using engineered magnetic field gradients. We design battery-less ingestible microdevices that measure and transmit their local magnetic field, while planar coils generate monotonically varying fields in X, Y, and Z. This architecture uniquely encodes spatial position and achieves <100 μm 3D accuracy—to our knowledge, the highest reported. We then translate this to in vivo large-animal studies to localize ingestible devices in the GI tract in real time with mm-scale resolution, without radiation or hospital-grade imaging. This enables continuous monitoring relevant to constipation, incontinence, motility disorders, medication adherence, and quantitative GI transit-time. Next, I will show how this platform generalizes to surgical navigation. By embedding the same localization architecture into catheters and guidewires, we can track device position without fluoroscopy, offering a pathway toward image-free vascular navigation and minimally invasive interventions. Finally, to further shrink devices and power, I developed a monolithic 3D magnetic sensor in 65 nm CMOS (4 mm², 14.8 μW, <10 μT_rms noise). This fully CMOS-compatible architecture enables high-sensitivity magnetic sensing at μW power, and can serve as the core for future miniaturized, radiation-free localization systems.
Bio: Dr. Saransh Sharma received the B.Tech. degree in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, India, in 2017, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA, USA, in 2018 and 2023, respectively. He is currently a postdoctoral research scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA, working on low-power analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits and system design for bio-medical applications. Dr. Sharma was a recipient of the Wilts Prize and the Demetriades-Tsafka-Kokkalis Award for outstanding Ph.D. thesis in Electrical Engineering, Biotechnology and related fields at Caltech, Lewis Winner Award for outstanding paper at ISSCC 2024, Best Student Paper Award at CICC 2025, Charles Lee Powell Fellowship at Caltech, and Excellence in Mentorship Award at Caltech for mentoring undergraduate and graduate students.
Hosted by: Professor Soumya Bose, ECE Department
Zoom Link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97975378707?pwd=ljcgaCfhMmhZ88Vt5dqQUBVQRjehOx.1
