Patent ID: 8200310
Filing Date: 2012-06-12
Classification: A61B,Y10T

Abstract:
1. A system for detecting the location of injured spinal nerve cells in a spinal injury region, the system comprising: a swarm of nanosensors, each nanosensor having a chemical affinity that interacts with a chemical released by the injured spinal nerve cells and being coated with a magnetic material; a magnetic field generating subsystem configured to controllably generate a magnetic field that interacts with the magnetic material so as to magnetically levitate the coated nanosensors; an imaging subsystem configured to detect the positions of the swarm of nanosensors and to detect the chemical interaction between the chemical affinity on the nanosensors and a density of chemical released by the injured spinal nerve cells; and a controller configured to: (a) compute a physical center of the swarm of nanosensors based on the positions detected by the imaging subsystem; (b) compute a local chemical center of the chemical interaction between the chemical affinity on the nanosensors and the density of the chemical released by the injured spinal nerve cells as detected by the imaging subsystem; and (c) control the magnetic field generating subsystem in a feedback loop so as to guide the computed physical center of the swarm of nanosensors towards the computed local chemical center; and (d) repeat steps (a), (b),and (c) until the positions of the computed physical center and the computed local chemical center are approximately the same, thereby causing the nanosensors to agglutinate around the spinal injury region, thereby revealing the location of the injured nerve cells.