Image Guided Therapy Center - Ultrasound-based sensor system for the monitoring of COVID-19 patients

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Project summary There are currently ~1.8 million active cases of COVID-19 in the US. Most of these patients are recovering at home, creating immense needs for remote monitoring. The main tools currently available for the task are thermometers, pulse oximeters and spirometers, to monitor temperature, blood oxygen level and lung capacity, respectively. We developed an ultrasound-based sensor system that captures in rich manner the way in which people breathe, and we believe that such biomechanical information can be an important complement to other, currently available tools. The proposed project involves modifying the hardware and software of our current sensor system to make it compatible with home-based monitoring, more specifically by making it smaller, wireless, cloud-based and inexpensive. Pulse oximeters and spirometers are closely related to the proposed sensor system in that they offer a measure of lung health. Spirometers provide a single measurement for the entire respiratory system, i.e., the volume of air exhaled. Because it is a device that one blows air into, it readily becomes contaminated when used by COVID-19 patients. Pulse oximeters are very helpful in the sense that they measure a parameter at the core of lung function, i.e., the ability to convert deoxyhemoglobins into oxyhemoglobins. For spirometers and pulse oximeters, normal or highly abnormal readings fulfill the purpose of a home-based monitoring device in the sense that they lead to clear decision making when the options are primarily ‘remaining at home’ vs. ‘hospital admission’. Intermediate readings, however, can be more difficult to interpret. Especially as treatment options continue to increase and diversify, more data will be needed to inform decisions, and biomechanical information as provided by our sensors is expected to be a valuable addition. By better informing decisions on patient management, it is easy to appreciate how the proposed sensor system might very well have life-saving effects in given patients. We propose to develop a rapid home-based testing/diagnostics device, in the form of wearable remote sensors for physiological monitoring. Our ultrasound-based sensors monitor tissue velocity and displacement at various tissue depths, at up to four separate locations on the torso, and as such richly captures the biomechanical motion associated with breathing. The proposed project involves converting our current PC-sized system into a smaller, wireless, cloud-based and inexpensive system compatible with home-based monitoring, and to develop algorithms specific to COVID-19 patients to better convert the rich motion information the sensors provide into an assessment of one’s state of recovery from the disease. Preliminary results suggest feasibility within one year, and a path to commercialization is presented in the proposal.