Bio-Inspired Active Electrolocation Sensors for Inspection of Tube Systems

At night, weakly electric fish Gnathonemus petersii use active electrolocation to scan their environment with self generated electric fields. Nearby objects distort the electric fields and are recognized as electric images on the electroreceptive skin surface of the animal. By analyzing the electric image, G. petersii can sense an object’s distance, dimensions and electrical properties. The principles and algorithms of active electrolocation can be applied to catheter-based sensor systems for analysing wall changes in fluid filled tube systems, for example atherosclerotic plaques of the coronary blood vessels. We used a basic atherosclerosis model of synthetic blood vessels and plaques, which were scanned with a ring electrode catheter applying active electrolocation. Based on the electric images of the plaques and the evaluation of bio-inspired image parameters, the plaque’s fine-structure could be assessed. Our results show that imaging through active electrolocation principally has the potential to detect and characterize atherosclerotic lesions.