PFI (MCA): Smart Stethoscope for Point-of-Care Diagnosis of Valvular Heart Diseases

该创新伙伴关系-中期职业发展（PFI-MCA）项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一种智能听诊器，可以在医生办公室早期检测心脏瓣膜疾病。瓣膜性心脏病影响2.5%的美国人口，每年的医疗费用为424.7亿美元。本研究中提出的智能听诊器允许及时干预，以防止疾病进展并减少严重后果。同时，它消除了不必要的超声心动图程序，这是昂贵和耗时的。因此，可以为患者、医生和国家的医疗保健系统节省大量的时间和资源。该项目将培训未来的技术翻译领导者，并扩大女性和代表性不足的少数民族在STEM教育中的参与。拟议的工作将有广泛的活动，从高中教师和学生的教育计划，以从事研究和翻译计划的本科生。该项目拥有来自学术界、工业界和医学界的一系列合作伙伴和合作者，目标是在史蒂文斯理工学院形成技术转化和创新的精神。拟议项目的重点是开发一种智能听诊器，用于在护理点早期检测心脏瓣膜疾病。常规听诊器依靠人类听觉系统来检测与瓣膜异常相关的恶意杂音。可疑病例随后被转诊进行超声心动图检查，这既耗时又昂贵。听觉系统具有主观性，容易出错，导致大量案件未被发现。所提出的系统在检测的灵敏度和特异性方面都提供了显着的改进。因此，一方面，它减少了漏诊病例的数量，允许早期干预，以挽救患者的生命和医疗费用。另一方面，它消除了不必要的超声心动图程序，从而为心脏病专家和患者节省了时间和金钱。该项目将采用新的硬件开发和生物信号采集技术，沿着先进的信号处理方法和分类算法，以实现一个系统，这将大大提高病人监测和疾病检测的准确性和鲁棒性。在这项工作中采用的三级融合方法，它集成了心脏的振动，声学和生物电位活动，也可以显着提高所有血液动力学监测应用的准确性和鲁棒性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation – Mid Career Advancement (PFI-MCA) project is the development of a smart stethoscope which would enable the early detection of valvular heart diseases at the physician’s office. Valvular heart diseases affect 2.5% of the US population and incur an annual healthcare cost of $42.47 billion. The smart stethoscope proposed in this research allows for timely interventions to prevent disease progression and diminish severe outcomes. At the same time, it eliminates unnecessary echocardiography procedures, which are costly and time-consuming. As such, considerable time and resources can be saved for patients, physicians, and the nation’s healthcare system. This project will training future leaders in technology translation and broadening the participation of females and under-represented minorities in STEM education. The proposed work will have a wide range of activities, from educational programs for high school teachers and students to engaging undergraduate students in research and translational programs. The project has a range of partners and collaborators from academia, industry, and medicine, with the goal of forming a spirit of technology translation and innovation at Stevens Institute of Technology.The proposed project is focused on the development of a smart stethoscope for the early detection of valvular heart diseases at the point of care. Regular stethoscopes rely on the human auditory system to detect malicious murmurs associated with valvular abnormalities. Suspect cases are then referred for an echocardiography exam, which is time-consuming and costly. The auditory system is subjective and prone to error, resulting in a large number of undetected cases. The proposed system provides significant improvements in both the sensitivity and specificity of detection. As such, on the one hand, it reduces the number of missed cases, allowing for earlier interventions to save patients’ lives and healthcare costs. On the other hand, it eliminates unnecessary echocardiography procedures, hence saving time and money for both cardiologists and patients. The project will employ novel hardware development and bio-signal acquisition techniques along with advanced signal processing methods and classification algorithms to implement a system which would significantly enhance the accuracy and robustness of patient monitoring and disease detection. The three-level fusion approach employed in this work, which integrates vibrational, acoustic, and biopotential activities of the heart could also significantly improve the accuracy and robustness of all hemodynamic monitoring applications.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.