This inner ear implant could one day help people with dizziness and balance disorders to regain stability.
Developed by Timothy Constandinou from Imperial College London and colleagues, it senses linear and radial acceleration in three dimensions and transforms the information into a signal that the brain can interpret, restoring balance in a similar way to how a cochlear implant fixes hearing.
The chip, which measures 3 × 2 millimetres, is an example of how dramatically implants have shrunk. Early prototypes were bulky and hampered by poor battery life.
To save costs, many different types of implants can be integrated on a single silicon wafer. In the wafer pictured above, the chip in the top left corner, for example, is a prototype designed to connect the severed nerves of people with spinal injuries. The chip in the bottom left is being developed to sense the chemical activity in nerves. The wafer will later be chopped up into separate implants.
Both of these pictures are part of an Instagram series celebrating the beauty of life-changing chips designed by the Centre for Bio-Inspired Technology at Imperial College London.
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