Nyquist-Rate Healthcare: Silicon Systems to Close the Sub-Sampling Gap in Health Monitoring

Advances in healthcare technologies have mainly focused on therapeutics,
interventional procedures, and late-stage/ "post-symptom' diagnostics. These steps have
undergone significant improvements, leading to higher survival rates and enhancements
in quality of life. Nevertheless, current trends are unsustainable due to the inadequate
outcomes on specific critical diseases and skyrocketing national healthcare
costs. An important example is cancer, where mortality rates have not seen major improvements,
even with the tremendous technological advances in diagnostic imaging
tools over the last four decades.
In this talk I will outline our efforts in better marrying technology and healthcare with
new systems that 1) enable continuous "Nyquist rate" imaging and screening tools to
enable preventive/predictive care, and 2) introduce smart implants for precision monitoring
and closed-loop therapies. Preventive screening through continuous monitoring
has the potential to fundamentally revamp our understanding of disease as well as targeted
therapy. Today, the human body is monitored infrequently, perhaps on an annual
basis and with a low "resolution". This is in contrast with advanced electronic systems
(many of which our community designs and ships), which are frequently monitored and
calibrated. I will summarize a few example projects that aim to address these issues,
including portable, semiconductor-based, "Tricorder" imaging systems, ultrasoundpowered
implantable devices that can measure, detect, and act upon local physiological
changes through closed-loop neuromodulation or "electroceuticals", and finally our
new investigation of a noninvasive methods of neuromodulation based on ultrasonic
excitation.
Amin Arbabian received his PhD degree in EECS from UC Berkeley in 2011 and in
2012 joined Stanford University, as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering. His research
interests are in mm-wave and high-frequency circuits and systems, imaging technologies,
and ultra-low power sensors and implantable devices. Prof. Arbabian currently
serves on the steering committee of RFIC, the technical program committees of RFIC and
ESSCIRC, and as associate editor of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters (SSC-L) and the IEEE
Journal of Electromagnetics, RF and Microwaves in Medicine and Biology (J-ERM). He is the
recipient or co-recipient of the 2016 Stanford University Tau Beta Pi Award for Excellence
in Undergraduate Teaching, 2015 NSF CAREER award, 2014 DARPA Young Faculty Award
(YFA) including the Director's Fellowship in 2016, 2013 Hellman faculty scholarship, and
best paper awards from several conferences including ISSCC (2010), VLSI Circuits (2014),
RFIC symposium (2008 and 2011, 2nd place), ICUWB (2013), PIERS (2015), MTT-S BioWireless
symposium (2016), and BioCAS (2017).