Contribution to long term telemetry in small laboratory animals
- Autores: Oscar Zabaco Natali
- Directores de la Tesis: Mireya Fernández Chimeno (dir. tes.), Juan Ramos Castro (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) ( España ) en 2011
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Juan Antonio Madrid Pérez (presid.), Pere Joan Riu Costa (secret.), Romano Giannetti (voc.)
- Materias:
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- Resumen
Several research works provide evidence to show a clear relationship between parameters obtained from the ECG and the health in the human being. It is still a big challenge to find clear biomarkers, and translate them from animal models to humans. For that purpose, basic research covering the entire life time of the animal under no restricting situations is a crucial but unsolved question given current technical limitations. Available implantable telemetry systems need to be replaced before the end of the experiment (long term studies) due to internal power supply depletion. There is no clear 'scavenging¿ alternative to supply an implanted device in rats without restrictions as regards time and mobility. An inductive power supply link seems to be the most promising technique in terms of deliverable amount of energy, but all the research applications have serious limitations with respect to the animal confinement.
The goal for this PhD work is to study the feasibility of an external powered implant, based on an inductive power supply to monitor physiological variables of a small size animal throughout its entire lifetime.
To carry out this study, a first analytical approximation showing the feasibility of the concept is conducted. FEM simulations are performed for study with a more elaborated model, the magnetic field behaviour in our configuration and the SAR levels induced in the animal. An initial implant is built in order to demonstrate practically the viability of the magnetic link. 'In-vitro¿ and 'in-vivo¿ experiments are conducted to test the capability of the proposed system, yielding with satisfactory results.
A final device with the capacity for monitoring several physiological parameters (ECG, activity and temperature) is developed with the necessary requirements for implantation and tested 'in-vitro¿ and 'in-vivo¿.
Finally and as a global verification in completely real conditions, a full 'in-vivo¿ study is carried out. In this experiment adult male rats are trained over a period of four months; monitoring and processing their temperature, activity and ECG parameters. As a result of this study, correlations between the body temperature and the activity are observed. Furthermore, temporary parameters (mean value of the RR segment) yield significant results respect to the exercise practice. These results are in agreement with those obtained in the same research department in previous and actual studies using commercially available implants and under the same experimental conditions (type of animal, environmental conditions, training protocol and telemetry cadence), providing a full validation of the developed system.
This work opens the door to a wide variety of applications in animal research, with every chance of being a useful tool for the research community.
