Inductive Nerve Block System with Deformable Insulating Encasement
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing systems for inducing an electric field in a conducting medium struggle to effectively target complex or changing shapes within the body for nerve impulse blockage and analgesia, often resulting in significant losses due to current flow through non-occupied areas and requiring high voltages that can cause harmful electrochemical reactions.
Innovation Solution
A system utilizing a complex core with independently magnetizable component cores and an electrically non-conductive encasement capable of reversible shape change, allowing for a torus-shaped design that ensures the induced current flows tangentially around the encasement, minimizing losses and enabling a high electric field intensity with low voltage, and a membrane for shaping the current flow to enhance nerve blockage and analgesia.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of energy
If a magnetic core with rigid encasement is used to induce electric field, then the structure is stable and easy to manufacture, but the induced current flows through non-occupied areas causing significant losses
Solution Approach 1:
The encasement is designed to be deformable rather than rigid, allowing it to adapt its shape to conform to the surface of the target object (nerve fiber). This dynamic adaptability ensures tight contact and prevents current leakage through non-occupied areas, thereby reducing energy loss without requiring complex active control mechanisms.
Solution Approach 2:
The encasement material properties are changed from rigid to deformable, enabling the structure to modify its geometric parameters (shape, surface area) in response to contact with the target object. This parameter change allows the encasement to optimize current flow paths and minimize losses while maintaining structural integrity.
2Reliability
If high voltage is applied to ensure sufficient electric field intensity, then nerve blockage effect is achieved, but harmful electrochemical reactions occur on electrode surfaces
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the traditional electrode-based electrical stimulation system with a magnetic core-based inductive system. Instead of direct electrical contact that causes electrochemical reactions, the magnetic core induces electric fields through electromagnetic induction, substituting the mechanical/electrical contact mechanism with a magnetic field-based approach that eliminates harmful chemical reactions at the interface.
Solution Approach 2:
The magnetic core acts as an intermediary between the power source and the nerve fiber. Rather than direct electrical contact, the magnetic core mediates the energy transfer through electromagnetic induction, creating an induced electric field that stimulates the nerve without requiring electrical contact with the body, thus eliminating electrochemical reactions.
3Adaptability or versatility
If rigid encasement is used to maintain structural integrity, then manufacturing is easier, but the system cannot adapt to complex or changing shapes of body parts
Solution Approach 1:
The encasement is constructed from flexible or deformable materials that can be molded into various shapes and conform to the surface geometry of body parts. This flexible shell approach enables adaptation to complex and changing shapes while maintaining sufficient structural integrity to house the magnetic core and provide mechanical protection, with manufacturing simplified through molding techniques.
4Power
If current flows through the encasement material, then electric field is generated, but the encasement must be electrically conductive which conflicts with insulation requirements
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces direct electrical conduction through the encasement with electromagnetic induction. The magnetic core generates a changing magnetic field that induces an electric field in the surrounding medium without requiring the encasement material to be electrically conductive. This substitution maintains electrical insulation while still generating sufficient power for nerve stimulation.
Solution Approach 2:
The system is segmented into functionally distinct components: the magnetic core handles magnetic field generation, the encasement provides mechanical protection and insulation, and the surrounding medium completes the electromagnetic circuit. This segmentation allows each component to optimize its specific function without compromising the others, particularly allowing the encasement to remain insulating while still enabling electric field generation through induction.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The system achieves efficient induction of electric fields with minimal losses, providing effective nerve impulse blockage and analgesia with reduced risk of electrochemical reactions, allowing for safe and comfortable therapy, including implantation, by ensuring the induced current primarily targets the intended areas within the body.
Implementation Method 1
Systems utilizing magnetic cores immersed in a medium with a good electrical conductivity enable to obtain high electric field intensity using significantly smaller current than in the case of systems utilizing air core coils. This is a result of much higher magnetic permeability of the materials the magnetic cores are made from, so that a small changing current, which flows through windings that surround them, allows to obtain a high changing magnetization of the core, thus creating a large electromotive force by the means of a high changing magnetic flux.
Data Source
Figure 1~2b
Figure 3a~4
Figure 5a~6
AI summary
The subject of the invention is a system for inducing an electric field in a conducting medium, especially for medical applications. The system according to the invention induces a flow of electric current through objects located in the conducting medium (7), which may have shapes that are complex or change with time, and has a medical application consisting in a complete or partial nerve impulse block. The system for inducing an electric field in the conducting medium (7) comprises at least two component cores (2), whose magnetization is configured to be changed independently by a change of electric currents flowing through windings (5) that are wound around them, and a torus-shaped encasement (3) whose outer surface is electrically non-conductive, wherein the component cores (2) are situated inside the encasement (3) and encircle its opening, and the encasement (3) is situated inside the conducting medium (7).