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

这一创新伙伴关系-职业中期发展(PFI-MCA)项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是开发一种智能听诊器，使医生办公室能够及早发现心脏瓣膜疾病。瓣膜心脏病影响了2.5%的美国人口，每年造成424.7亿美元的医疗费用。这项研究中提出的智能听诊器允许及时进行干预，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，这些程序既昂贵又耗时。因此，可以为患者、医生和国家医疗保健系统节省大量时间和资源。该项目将对未来的技术翻译领导人进行培训，并扩大女性和代表性不足的少数群体参与STEM教育的范围。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到让本科生参与研究和翻译计划。该项目有来自学术界、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一种技术转化和创新的精神。拟议的项目重点是开发一种智能听诊器，用于在护理点早期发现心脏瓣膜疾病。常规听诊器依靠人类的听觉系统来检测与瓣膜异常相关的恶意杂音。然后，可疑病例被转介进行超声心动图检查，这既耗时又昂贵。听觉系统是主观的，容易出错，导致大量未发现的病例。建议的系统在检测的敏感度和特异度方面都有显著的改进。因此，一方面，它减少了漏诊病例的数量，允许及早进行干预，以挽救患者的生命和医疗成本。另一方面，它消除了不必要的超声心动图检查程序，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，以及先进的信号处理方法和分类算法来实施一个系统，该系统将显著提高患者监测和疾病检测的准确性和稳健性。这项工作中采用的三级融合方法，整合了心脏的振动、声学和生物势能活动，也可以显著提高所有血流动力学监测应用的准确性和健壮性。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.