Mosquito inspired medical needles

The stinging proboscis in mosquitos have diameters of only 40-100 μm which is much less than the thinnest medical needles and the mechanics of these natural stinging mechanisms have therefore attracted attention amongst developers of injection devises. The mosquito use a range of different strategies to lower the required penetration force hence allowing a thinner and less stiff proboscis structure. Earlier studies of the mosquito proboscis insertion strategies have shown how each of the single strategies reduces the required penetration force. The present paper gives an overview of the advanced set of mechanisms that allow the mosquito to penetrate human skin and also presents other biological mechanisms that facilitate skin penetration. Results from experiments in a skin mimic using biomimetic equivalents to the natural mechanisms are presented. This includes skin stretching, insertion speed and vibration. Combining slow insertion speed with skin tension and slow vibration reduces the penetration force with 40%.

[1]  Shawn A. Chester,et al.  Microstructured barbs on the North American porcupine quill enable easy tissue penetration and difficult removal , 2012, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[2]  Jeffrey D Zahn,et al.  Microneedle Insertion Force Reduction Using Vibratory Actuation , 2004, Biomedical microdevices.

[3]  P. Brey,et al.  Visualizing Non Infectious and Infectious Anopheles gambiae Blood Feedings in Naive and Saliva-Immunized Mice , 2012, PloS one.

[4]  W. Takken,et al.  Selection of biting sites on a human host by Anopheles gambiae s.s., An. arabiensis and An. quadriannulatus , 1998 .

[5]  W. Yuan,et al.  Insertion and pull behavior of worker honeybee stinger , 2016 .

[6]  Chengwei Wu,et al.  Biomechanical Property of a Natural Microneedle: The Caterpillar Spine , 2011 .

[7]  Seiji Aoyagi,et al.  Realistic imitation of mosquito's proboscis: Electrochemically etched sharp and jagged needles and their cooperative inserting motion , 2011 .

[8]  A. Dufresne,et al.  Structure and morphology of cladodes and spines of Opuntia ficus-indica. Cellulose extraction and characterisation , 2003 .

[9]  H. Ferguson,et al.  Ecological and evolutionary determinants of host species choice in mosquito vectors. , 2009, Trends in parasitology.

[10]  Allison M. Okamura,et al.  A Velocity-Dependent Model for Needle Insertion in Soft Tissue , 2005, MICCAI.

[11]  M. Nee.  The Cactus Primer , 1986 .

[12]  Chengwei Wu,et al.  Measurement and Prediction of Insertion Force for the Mosquito Fascicle Penetrating into Human Skin , 2009 .

[13]  J. Vincent,et al.  Mechanical design of hedgehog spines and porcupine quills , 2009 .

[14]  Pierre E. Dupont,et al.  Mechanics of Dynamic Needle Insertion into a Biological Material , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[15]  Seiji Aoyagi,et al.  Biodegradable polymer needle with various tip angles and consideration on insertion mechanism of mosquito's proboscis , 2008 .

[16]  Jaydev P. Desai,et al.  A biplanar fluoroscopic approach for the measurement, modeling, and simulation of needle and soft-tissue interaction , 2007, Medical Image Anal..

[17]  M. H. Ross,et al.  Histology: A Text and Atlas: With Correlated Cell and Molecular Biology. Eighth Edition, 2018 Authors: Wojciech Pawlina; Michael H. Ross , 2019, Morphologia.

[18]  S. Meier,et al.  NMR insights into the inner workings of living cells. , 2015, Analytical chemistry.

[19]  Robert J. Webster,et al.  Design Considerations for Robotic Needle Steering , 2005, Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[20]  Krithika Muralidharan.  Mechanics of soft tissue penetration by a vibrating needle , 2007 .

[21]  R. Wildnauer,et al.  Stratum corneum biomechanical properties. I. Influence of relative humidity on normal and extracted human stratum corneum. , 1971, The Journal of investigative dermatology.

[22]  Dimitra Dodou,et al.  Buckling prevention strategies in nature as inspiration for improving percutaneous instruments: a review , 2016, Bioinspiration & biomimetics.

[23]  Jenny Dankelman,et al.  Needle-tissue interaction forces--a survey of experimental data. , 2012, Medical engineering & physics.

[24]  M K Ramasubramanian,et al.  Mechanics of a mosquito bite with applications to microneedle design , 2007, Bioinspiration & biomimetics.

[25]  H. Barnes.  Thixotropy—a review , 1997 .

[26]  L. Mahadevan,et al.  How ticks get under your skin: insertion mechanics of the feeding apparatus of Ixodes ricinus ticks , 2013, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.