Katia Vega, The Dermal Abyss in collaboration with Xin Liu (CN), image from Ars Electronica, image credit: Xin Liu.
The Dermal Abyss project is the result of a collaboration between MIT researchers Katia Vega, Xin Liu, Viirj Kan and Nick Barry and Harvard Medical School researchers Ali Yetisen and Nan Jiang. Dermal Abyss is a proof-of-concept that presents a novel approach to bio-interfaces in which the body surface is rendered an interactive display. Traditional tattoo inks are replaced with biosensors whose colors change in response to variations in the interstitial fluid. It blends advances in biotechnology with traditional methods in tattoo artistry. This is a research project, and there are currently no plans to develop Dermal Abyss as a product or to pursue clinical trials.
Investigating four biosensors, Vega and Liu discovered a reaction to three pieces of biochemical information in body fluid and changes colors: The pH sensor changes between purple and pink, the glucose sensor shifts between blue and brown; the sodium and a second pH sensor fluoresce at a higher intensity under UV light.
The Dermal Abyss creates a direct access to the compartments in the body and reflects inner metabolic processes in a shape of a tattoo. It could be used for applications in continuously monitoring such as medical diagnostics, quantified self, and data encoding in the body. Currently, during daily activities and alimentary habits, diabetics need to monitor their glucose levels by piercing the skin, 3 to 10 times per day. With Dermal Abyss, we imagine the future where the painful procedure is replaced with a tattoo, of which the color from pink to purple based on the glucose levels. Thus, the user could monitor the color changes and the need of insulin.
Publication: Katia Vega, Nan Jiang, Xin LIU, Viirj Kan, Nicolas Barry, Ali Yetisen, Pattie Maes and Joe Paradiso. "The Dermal Abyss: Interfacing with the Skin by Tattooing Biosensors" In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers. ACM, 2017.
Katia Vega, Nan Jiang, Xin Liu, Viirj Kan, Nicolas Barry, Ali Yetisen, Pattie Maes and Joe Paradiso. "The Dermal Abyss: Interfacing with the Skin by Tattooing Biosensors" In Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers. ACM, 2017.
Katia Vega is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Design at the University of California, Davis, where she founded and directs the Interactive Organisms Lab. Her research leads new explorations of the next generation of organisms-device symbiosis. Her lab creates novel interfaces in/around the skin and within fungal colonies such as: Beauty Technologies, Growable Interfaces and Interactive Tattoos. Vega was a Postdoc Associate at MIT Media Lab (USA), and received her PhD and MA in Computer Science at PUC-Rio (Brazil). She was a researcher in the Fine Arts Department at HKBU (Hong Kong). Her undergraduate studies were done in Computer Science at UNMSM (Peru).
Vega collaborates with different researchers, artists and engineers in order to publish at top-tier computer science conferences and journals including CHI, TEI, DIS, IUI and IEEE Computer. In addition, her projects are exhibited at several galleries and festivals such as SXSW, Barbican of London, Tekniska Museet inStockholm, Ars Electronica, Music Tech Festival in Berlin and Bellagio in Las Vegas. Her work has been featured by BBC, New Scientist, Wired, Discovery, CNN and awarded by SXSW, ArsElectronica, TEI, Ubimedia Competition, among others. Springer is the publisher of her book: "BeautyTechnology: Designing Seamless Interfaces for Wearable Computing".
Click here to learn more about Vega’s work.