On the use of smart stents for monitoring in-stent restenosis

In angioplasty with stent placement, re-narrowing of the artery within the stent site may occur due to the body´s natural response to “heal” the stented area. This re-narrowing, also known as “in-stent restenosis”, usually occurs within 6 months after surgery. To monitor and diagnose in-stent restenosis, passive telemonitoring using smart stents has been already proposed. In this paper, we present a feasibility study and advocate the use of an alternative method, namely active telemonitoring, which uses an integrated circuit embedded on the smart stent. Electromagnetic simulations and in-vitro measurements are presented to find the suitable range of frequency to wirelessly transfer power to the active device embedded on the smart stent. Furthermore, the range of induced power levels are simulated and experimentally verified.