A research team led by Professor Li Zhang’s team from MAE has developed a new strategy to simultaneously control and track a microrobotic swarm in blood vessels in real-time.

Driven by a rotating permanent magnet, a magnetic microswarm was formed and navigated near the boundary of vessels, where the reduced drag of blood flow and strong interactions between nanoparticles enable upstream and downstream navigation in flowing blood. The rotating microswarm affects the motion of blood cells and disrupts normal blood flow, enabling Doppler imaging and real-time tracking from multiple viewing configurations. The dynamic Doppler feedback and the fast response of the magnetic control approach benefit the targeted navigation in different flowing conditions (i.e. stagnant, flowing blood, and pulsatile flow).

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