Optimum Placement of Piezo-Polymer Power Harvester for Epicardial Pacemaker

Abstract

The major drawbacks of current pacemaker are the battery replacement. Patient will need additional surgery to replace the pacemaker unit with the new one. Utilization of rechargeable battery has been proposed to overcome this problem. However, recharging a battery within the body is not feasible due to tissue-heating and battery’s charge-and-discharge life-time. By those reasons, the utilization of piezo-polymer is suitable for a self-powered pacemaker as energy harvester. Piezo-polymer has been widely used as energy harvesting but none for cardiothoracic implantable device. This study focuses on specific implementation of piezo-polymer for epicardial pacemaker. The proposed fundamental research aims to identify the optimum location on the heart to put the piezo-polymer. This research will be conducted by simulation of left ventricle of heart via ANSYS. Heart stress-strain Finite Element Analysis (FEA) will be employed to obtain the maximum harvested power. The result shows the location of myocardial contraction that produces sufficient kinetic energy for the placement of the pacemaker. The heart 3-dimensional images are taken from cardiac-CT or cardiac-MRI to search the optimum location on the heart for energy harvesting and minimize pacing energy. In conclusion, the left ventricular wall motion and deformation caused by the cardiac wall movements have been analysed based on the left ventricle model in the simulation to get the location of the maximum kinetic energy formed.