New 3mm 'robo-surgeon' swims inside your veins to hunt down disease - and destroy it !

Doctors in the future might tell patients, 'I'm afraid this is going to require surgery' - then hand over a pill that will do the surgery from inside the body.
A breakthrough at Stanford has created a Fantastic Voyage-style vehicle that can 'swim' through a patient's veins, powered wirelessly by electromagnetic waves from doctors from outside.
Previous prototypes have been hampered by large batteries - but the new machine is around the size of a grain of rice.

A transmitter outside the body sends electromagnetic waves which induce power in a coil in the 3mm device, which then powers a motor that propels it through the body

Racquel Welch in the classic 1966 sci fi Fantastic Voyage: The film envisaged a team of surgeons being 'shrunk' to fit inside the body

The device could deliver drugs, perform surgery, or just take on 'reconnaissance missions' which would otherwise require invasive endoscope treatments.
The current prototype chip is only three millimeters wide and four millimeters long.
This week, at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, Professor Ada Poon demonstrated a tiny, wirelessly powered, self-propelled medical device capable of controlled motion through blood.
'Such devices could revolutionize medical technology,' said Poon. 'Applications include everything from diagnostics to minimally invasive surgeries.'
 Poon's most recent creation, could travel through the bloodstream to deliver drugs, perform analyses, and perhaps even zap blood clots or remove plaque from sclerotic arteries.
The idea of implantable medical devices is not new, but most of today's implements are challenged by the size of their batteries, which are large and heavy and must be replaced periodically. Fully half the volume of most of these devices is consumed by battery.

An induced current provides the power - which keeps the device small enough to 'swim' through the bloodstream

The chip is so tiny it can swim through blood vessels, controlled by electromagnetic waves from outside the body

Angela Poon's team hope that their discovery could revolutionise treatment of illnesses that are currently resistant to surgery

'While we have gotten very good at shrinking electronic and mechanical components of implants, energy storage has lagged in the move to miniaturize,' said co-author Teresa Meng, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. 'This hinders us in where we can place implants within the body and also creates the risk of corrosion or broken wires, not to mention replacing aging batteries.'
Poon's devices are different. They consist of a radio transmitter outside the body sending signals inside the body to an independent device that picks up the signal with an antenna of coiled wire.
The transmitter and the antennae are magnetically coupled such that any change in current flow in the transmitter produces a voltage in the other wire – or, more accurately, it induces a voltage.
The power is transferred wirelessly. It can be used to run electronics on the device and propel it through the bloodstream.