Chapter category: Nanomedicine
Nanosensors and Nanoscale Scanning
Nanomedicine, Volume I: Basic Capabilities
Edited by: Robert A. Freitas, Jr.ISBN: 1-57059-680-8
» Get more information about this book at landesbioscience.com «
Chapter authors:
Robert A. Freitas
Medical nanorobots need to acquire information from their environment to properly execute their assigned tasks. Such acquisition is achieved using onboard nanoscale sensors, or nanosensors, of various types. Nanosensors allow for medical nanodevices to monitor environmental states at three different operational levels: 1. Internal nanorobot states, 2. Local and global somatic states (inside the human body), and 3. Extrasomatic states (sensory data originating outside the human body). The general physical limits to sensory perception are reviewed by Block810 and Bialek.811 The specific nanosensor technologies required include sensors to detect chemical substances (Section 4.2), displacement and motion (Section 4.3), force and mass (Section 4.4), and acoustic (Section 4.5), thermal (Section 4.6), and electromagnetic (Section 4.7) stimuli. Typical sensor device mass, volume, and sensitivity limits are summarized in each Section. In vivo bioscanning is briefly described in Section 4.8, followed by external macrosensing in Section 4.9. Methods of getting sensors in and out of the body are explained in Chapter 16, and methods of getting sensor information out of the body are described in Chapter 7. A discussion of sensor biocompatibility is deferred to Chapter 15.3234
Additional chapters from this book:
Other Basic Capabilities
Robert A. Freitas
This final Chapter describes a miscellany of important technical capabilities that may prove useful in some or all medical nanodevices, in various scenarios or theaters of operation. Any one of the...
Manipulation and Locomotion
Robert A. Freitas
Manipulation and mobility are crucial basic capabilities in most classes of medical nanodevices. Manipulation includes handling fluids, biological objects such as tissue matrix fibers or cellular e...
Navigation
Robert A. Freitas
It is difficult to imagine any significant application of medical nanodevices which does not involve navigation, however crude. Devices intended to monitor somatic states, assemble artificial inter...
Communication
Robert A. Freitas
Communication is an important fundamental capability of medical nanorobots. At the most basic level, nanomachines must pass sensory and control data among internal subsystems to ensure stable and c...
Power
Robert A. Freitas
Device energetics may represent the most serious limitation in nanorobot design. Almost all medical nanodevices will be actively powered. Mechanical motions, pumping, chemical transformations and t...
Shapes and Metamorphic Surfaces
Robert A. Freitas
It has been asserted that nanomechanical systems fundamentally differ from systems of biological molecular machinery in their basic architecture—specifically, that nanomechanical components are sup...
Nanosensors and Nanoscale Scanning
Robert A. Freitas
Medical nanorobots need to acquire information from their environment to properly execute their assigned tasks. Such acquisition is achieved using onboard nanoscale sensors, or nanosensors, of vari...
Molecular Transport and Sortation
Robert A. Freitas
The human body consists of ~7 x 1027 atoms arranged in a highly aperiodic physical structure. Although 41 chemical elements are commonly found in the body’s construction (Table 3.1), CHON comprises...
Pathways to Molecular Manufacturing
Robert A. Freitas
Most contemporary industrial fabrication processes are based on “top-down” technologies, wherein small objects are sawn or machined from larger objects, or small features are imposed on larger obje...
The Prospect of Nanomedicine
Robert A. Freitas
The history of disease is vastly older than that of humankind itself. Indeed, disease and parasitism have been inseparable companions to life since the dawn of life on Earth. Fossilized bacteria si...
