In the life sciences, applications include the development of "smart" medical instruments, health monitoring, and advanced diagnostics technologies. Because inertial sensors are rapidly evolving, a number of new markets in the field of life sciences are opening up. From those markets, here are just a few examples:
- Using inertial sensors as inclinometers or orientation sensors. These sensors can be used for feedback to retrain and re-animate limbs previously paralyzed.
- Using inertial sensors to detect motion inside “smart pacemakers”. With an accelerometer and a microprocessor, the person’s activity can be monitored. Large motion can suggest lots of exertion, so the pacemaker could increase the heart rate as necessary. Likewise, no movement could indicate less exertive body states, and as a result a slower heart rate is more appropriate.
- Sensors could be embedded in clothes or seamlessly integrated onto the user. Measuring the motion in general could determine that habits, and provide a means to diagnosis their daily activity and exercise.
- Similarly, hospital-bed providers are interested in motion sensors for critical care patients. Measuring their activity in bed (i.e. how many times they roll over) could allow hospitals to better care for their patients.
- For surgery related cutting instruments, sensors could be embedded inside the blade to measure motion and force. That information could then be relayed to the surgeon via a monitor to help determine the optimal force and speed during the cutting.
- Minimally-invasive-surgery (MIS) is a type of surgery that uses tiny surgical instruments and cameras to perform surgeries to reduce the total amount of damage to tissue. However, because the surgeon is usually looking at a display from a camera to do the surgery, it is not as intuitive as open surgery. To overcome this obstacle, in robotic surgery (or computer-aided surgery) instead of the surgeon holding the tools and doing the cutting directly, in the surgeon guides the surgery through a computer controller. With such a surgery, minimal movements can be finely controlled. Furthermore, overlaying 3-D images from magnetic resonance images (MRI’s) could give the surgeon a 3-D view of the surgical area. To determine the location of the surgical tools, gyros and accelerometers can be used. With inertial sensors and force feedback controllers, the surgeon can also determine the softness or hardness of tissue he is interacting with.