THE DERMAL ABYSS: Color-Changing Tattoos for Medical Diagnostics

Abstract

Can tattoos reveal changes in human physiology? The Dermal Abyss (d-abyss) presents an approach to biointerfaces in which the body surface is rendered an interactive display. Traditional tattoo inks are replaced with biosensors whose colours or intensity change in response to variations of biomarkers in the interstitial fluid. The Dermal Abyss is designed to use the aesthetics, permanence, and visible nature of tattoos to encode diagnostic information. Here, tattoo biosensors were designed to report on the concentration of sodium ions, glucose, and pH in the skin. We report the preliminary quantitative evaluation of these biosensors in an ex vivo skin model by assessing their visibility of color changes from the dermis. This work provides a proof of concept of a platform in which the skin reveals information inside the body, tattoos form wearable displays within the skin, and the body's metabolism works as an input for the d-abyss biosensors.