A research team led by Prof. Im Hyung Hyung and Prof. Bong Cheol Kang of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Hankuk University of Science and Technology (Dr. Choi Sung Ok, M.S., Kim Sun Young, M.S., Baek Seung Hyun, Ph.D., and Jang Woo Jin, Ph.D.) has introduced an innovative sensor technology that can be inserted inside human blood vessels to measure blood flow velocity.

The team developed an ultraslim flow sensor that can directly measure blood flow by implementing a thin-film sensor-on-wire (SoW) on the surface of an ultra-thin medical guidewire for vascular implantation, about the thickness of a human hair, and published a paper titled "Monolithic integration of ultraslim flow sensor and medical guidewire by laser filament scanning sintering for in vivo diagnostics of cardiovascular diseases," which was selected as the cover paper for the February 2024 issue of ACS Sensors, a globally influential international journal in various sensor fields.

In the paper, the team used the Laser Filament Scanning Sintering (LFSS) method, a technique that uses lasers to process metal nanoparticles, to fabricate an entire microscopic sensor circuit integrated into the surface of a guide wire for vascularization. The developed sensor system was evaluated using an artificial heart pacemaker and found to be capable of measuring blood flow with a high accuracy of more than 99 percent. In addition, blood flow measurement experiments using pigs were successfully completed, verifying its applicability in actual clinical practice.

"The developed guide wire integrated blood flow sensor is expected to dramatically improve the accuracy of early diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases," said Prof. Lim.