© 1999 Robert A. Freitas Jr. All Rights Reserved.

Robert A. Freitas Jr., Nanomedicine, Volume I: Basic Capabilities, Landes Bioscience, Georgetown, TX, 1999

4.9.2.3 Body Weight Measurement

A network of nanodevices can inventory the volume and density of each of the body's ~10⁸ (1 mm)³ voxels using a combination of acoustic ranging, somatic mapping, and flowmetry. Each voxel is identified as fat, muscle tissue, bone mass, interstitial fluid, and so forth. These measurements allow the body's weight to be precisely computed as volume times density, rather than the usual method of determining weight using gravitational force data. The existence of a natural physiological "ponderostat," a crudely analogous humoral body-mass detector, has been proposed⁵⁰⁷; indeed, the insulin-leptin system³²⁶⁵ has been found to serve a related purpose, and is easily eavesdropped by medical nanorobots.

Last updated on 17 February 2003