Modern technologies allow clinicians to assess the heart in all sorts of ways (electrocardiography (ECG), ultrasound, phonocardiography (PCG)), and just about anywhere. Yet, this reality is nowhere near ubiquitous because of high costs, interoperability issues, legacy tools, and frequent dependence on performing exams in a clinical setting by trained professionals.
A team of clinicians and engineers at the IT – Instituto de Telecomunicações and Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal in Portugal have now modified an off-the-shelf electronic stethoscope to also perform ECG and PCG recording and auto analysis. The 3M Littmann 3200 is a popular high-end stethoscope, and now the Portuguese team added some of its own 3D printed hardware and custom electrodes on top of the diaphragm. It can also detect the rotation of the diaphragm head in relation to the electrical axis of the heart, which can help understand non-physiological morphological changes in the ECG waveform. Using machine learning, the team has also given their new device the ability to extract signs of cardiac diseases from the PCG and ECG data, potentially allowing nurses and others to perform cardiac pre-screenings.
Here are the engineers that have been working on this project explaining their motivation and how the technology works:
SmartHeart project page: Smarter Cardiac Sensing via Integrated Signal Processing…
Flashbacks: BITalino: What if you could make your own body signals monitor?…; BITalino Helps You Build Your Own Body Monitoring Device…; BITalino (r)evolution, a Powerful New DIY Body Monitoring Kit…; BITalino Body Monitoring Project Kit Gets Cloud Software Upgrade…; Pervasive ECG: Integrating Body Sensors Into Everyday Things (Interview)…