A Novel Assessment Methodology for the EMI Occurrence in Implantable Medical Devices Based Upon Magnetic Flux Distribution of RFID Reader/writers

With respect to the EMI affecting implantable medical devices caused by radio frequency identification reader/writers (RFID R/W), experimental investigations are conducted to develop a risk assessment methodology based upon the measurement of the EMF distribution around RFID R/W. First, fundamental EMI occurrence mechanisms of implantable- cardiac pacemakers and -cardioverter-defibrillators (ICD) are described. Secondly, the characteristics of the radio wave emitted by the RFID R/W are described. Next, EMI test experiments and measurements of the field distributions are performed. Then, a novel experimental assessment methodology is proposed. The EMI characteristics derived from magnetic flux distributions are compared with the experimental results to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. Finally, it is shown that the probability of EMI occurrence can be estimated using the statistical processing of the proposed methodology.