Towards an effective sensing technology to monitor micro-scale interface loosening of bioelectronic implants

Instrumented implants are being developed with a radically innovative design to significantly reduce revision surgeries. Although bone replacements are among the most prevalent surgeries performed worldwide, implant failure rate usually surpasses 10%. High sophisticated multifunctional bioelectronic implants are being researched to incorporate cosurface capacitive architectures with ability to deliver personalized electric stimuli to peri-implant target tissues. However, the ability of these architectures to detect bone-implant interface states has never been explored. Moreover, although more than forty technologies were already proposed to detect implant loosening, none is able to ensure effective monitoring of the bone-implant debonding, mainly during the early stages of loosening. This work shows, for the first time, that cosurface capacitive sensors are a promising technology to provide an effective monitoring of bone-implant interfaces during the daily living of patients. Indeed, in vitro experimental tests and simulation with computational models highlight that both striped and circular capacitive architectures are able to detect micro-scale and macro-scale interface bonding, debonding or loosening, mainly when bonding is weakening or loosening is occurring. The proposed cosurface technologies hold potential to implement highly effective and personalized sensing systems such that the performance of multifunctional bioelectronic implants can be strongly improved. Findings were reported open a new research line on sensing technologies for bioelectronic implants, which may conduct to great impacts in the coming years.