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Iontronic tip-sensing guidewires

Nature Biomedical Engineering (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Plaque accumulation in coronary arteries causes stenoses, reducing blood flow and increasing the risk of cardiovascular disorders such as heart attacks. To assess the physiological impact of blood pressure across a stenosis, commercial pressure guidewires measure the fractional flow reserve using optical, piezoresistive or piezoelectric sensors, which suffer from brittleness, limited manoeuvrability and high costs. Here we report an iontronic tip-sensing guidewire (ITG) that integrates a thin iontronic tip sensor in a commercial workhorse guidewire via iontronic-based signal transmission, leveraging the ionic nature of human tissues. Intravascular pressure changes induce a capacitance difference at the interface of the metal and ionic gel of the ITG, allowing detection of subtle pressure changes in blood flow, substantially outperforming commercial guidewires. The ITG is free of embedded conductive leads needed in other pressure guidewires to ensure an ideal torque ratio for high manoeuvrability, and we validated its effectiveness and sensitivity in rabbit, goat and pig models in vivo. The compatibility of the ITG with commercial horsework guidewires will upgrade the design of interventional medical devices.

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Fig. 1: Design, fabrication and working principle of ITGs.
Fig. 2: Manoeuvrability comparison between an ITG, a workhorse guidewire and a commercial pressure guidewire.
Fig. 3: Sensing performance of the ITG and in vivo pulse detection in a pig model.
Fig. 4: Monitoring of the guidewire–vessel contact by tip sensing.
Fig. 5: In vivo measurement of FFR in a pig model.
Fig. 6: Biocompatibility of ITGs.

Data availability

The data supporting the findings of this study are available within the main text and the Supplementary Information. The data used to generate the figures in this study are available on GitHub at https://github.com/bnn-0501/iontronic-tipsensing-guidewire.

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Acknowledgements

This work was jointly financed by support from National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant nos. T2225017 (C.F.G.), 52203313 (F.G.), 52073138 (C.F.G.), 12388101 (L.W.), 12272369 (L.W.), and 52403335 (N.B.), Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory Program under grant no. 2021B1212040001 (C.F.G.) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under grant no. YD2090002022 (L.W.). We also acknowledge X. Lei from Guangzhou First People’s Hospital for insightful discussion.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Fangyi Guan, Ningning Bai.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Fangyi Guan, Ningning Bai, Jia Song, Hanxin Wang, Junli Shi, Xi Xia & Chuan Fei Guo

  2. Center of Neural Engineering, Institute of Integrated Technology, Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shenzhen, P. R. China

    Fangyi Guan

  3. School of Mechano-Electronic Engineering, Xidian University, Xi’an, China

    Ningning Bai

  4. Department of Modern Mechanics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Nian Zhang, Jiyu Li & Liu Wang

  5. State Key Laboratory of Cardiovascular Disease, Fuwai Hospital, National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China

    Yizhou Jiang

  6. State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemical Fibers and Polymer Materials, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Donghua University, Shanghai, China

    Zhiliang Han

  7. Department of Interventional Radiology, Shenzhen People’s Hospital, Shenzhen, China

    Xudong Chen

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Contributions

C.F.G. and L.W. conceived the idea. F.G. and N.B. designed the iontronic sensor and integrated the sensor with commercial guidewires. F.G. and L.W. collected and analysed the data. J. Song characterized the mechanical properties of the microstructured ionic gel and assisted in the in vivo experiments. N.Z., J.L. and L.W. performed the theoretical analysis of the torque ratio, torsional stiffness and bending stiffness. Y.J. assisted in the in vivo experiments. Z.H. did the cell proliferation assay. H.W. assisted in the in vivo experiments and performed scanning electron microscopy imaging of the ionic gels and sensitivity detection. J. Shi drew the illustration of the ITG. X.X. assisted in the fabrication of the tip-sensing guidewires. X.C. provided certain medical suggestions. L.W. advised on and revised the display items. F.G., L.W. and C.F.G. wrote the paper. L.W. and C.F.G. supervised the project.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Chuan Fei Guo or Liu Wang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Biomedical Engineering thanks Dong-Weon Lee, Sihong Wang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Texts 1 and 2, Tables 1–6, Figs. 1–19 and Videos 1 and 2.

Reporting Summary

Peer Review File

Supplementary Video 1

Real-time monitoring of FFR with the ITG.

Supplementary Video 2

Real-time monitoring of the drop in blood pressure with the ITG.

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Guan, F., Bai, N., Song, J. et al. Iontronic tip-sensing guidewires. Nat. Biomed. Eng (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-025-01548-9

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