Wearable Ultrasound Patch Noninvasively Paces Heart to Stabilize Arrhythmias

Cardiac arrhythmias, including slow and irregular heart rhythms, often require pacemakers that are surgically implanted. While effective, implants carry procedural risks and long-term device maintenance burdens. Clinicians need options that stabilize rhythm without opening the chest or placing leads on the heart. To help address this challenge, engineers have developed an ultrasound-based, noninvasive pacemaker designed to pace the heart from a skin-worn patch.

Developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the wearable noninvasive sonogenetic pacemaker consists of a postage-stamp-sized sticker embedded with tiny ultrasound transducers. When placed on the chest, the transducers emit pulses that traverse the thorax and stimulate cardiac cells. The team amplified this effect by using genetic engineering to increase the opening of ion channels that admit calcium, which initiates contraction. A pocket-sized control unit houses the batteries and electronics, and a hydrogel adhesive enables strong skin contact while allowing ultrasound transmission.

In laboratory studies, engineered human cardiac cells exposed to the ultrasound pulses maintained healthy, synchronized contractions compared with unmodified cells. In animal testing, rats first received an ultrasound-sensitizing gene-therapy solution, after which a miniature sticker was attached to the chest. Activating the device quickly, safely, and noninvasively corrected arrhythmias and restored regular heart contractions. Animals with slow heart rates were brought to normal rates, and irregular rhythms were steadied in time with the ultrasound “ticks.”

The authors report plans to integrate this stimulator with a previously demonstrated ultrasound imaging sticker to enable closed-loop monitoring and pacing. The study was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering on June 2, 2026 and involved collaborators from the University of Southern California, Harvard University, and the University of California, Los Angeles. The approach relies on a one-time injection to boost cardiac sensitivity to ultrasound, envisioned as a gene therapy similar to treatments that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) currently approves for some inherited conditions.

“We can now use low-intensity ultrasound to open ion channels in cells to have very effective heart pacing. We are now making these stickers into smaller form factors and more integrated, so they are easier to wear, more stable, and more accurate over a longer term,” said Chen Gong, the paper’s first author.

“In this paper, we demonstrated noninvasive pacemaking. However, we think this concept could be useful beyond just the heart. We believe you could one day have stickers over different parts of the body that could do long-term imaging, monitoring, and closed-loop therapeutic stimulation,” said Xuanhe Zhao, professor of mechanical engineering and of civil and environmental engineering at MIT.

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