Jornal de Sistemas Biomédicos e Tecnologias Emergentes

Programming and Managing Mechatronic Hydrocephalus Shunt: System and Method

Abstract

Momani L and Alkharabsheh AR

Parts of a hydrocephalus mechatronic shunting system will be implanted beneath the skin of a patient and frequent physical access to the devices for alteration of the intensity, duration or other characteristics of the therapy is not desirable. From this point, there is an essential need to find out a method to access, update and reprogram the implanted microcontroller wirelessly without a need to physical access to such microcontroller.

In this paper, a system and method has been proposed and developed for wirelessly managing the mechatronic shunting system. This method has three main contributions. First, remotely reprogram the implanted mechatronic shunt by replacing the values of vital implantable parameters such as valve schedules, intracranial pressure threshold values and pressure sensor settings.

Second, the usefulness of this approach was demonstrated using a real time sleeping schedule for the microcontroller to reduce the power needed.

Third, a problem associated with memory size limitations has been addressed by using embedded software to derive the required values and parameters in real time in case there is a need for such parameters without saving these values.

As a result, several wireless data transmission tasks of this method are implemented. The framework of the system is described and the functions of the main system are illustrated. The management shunting method was implemented and tested to demonstrate practicality, reliability and flexibility.