SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Measurement of vital signs (VS) is essential to assess the condition of human body. VS includes body temperature (Tc), heart (pulse) rate (HR), respiration rate (RR) and blood pressure (BP). VS are useful in detecting medical problems. Typically VS measurement and monitoring takes place in a controlled setting like hospital, clinic or home using bulky contact based machines. In order to monitor VS in a dynamic environment like a battle field it will be efficient to have a light weight and contactless device. Such a device can be wearable on a vest or mountable on a vehicle in order to expand its availability and reachability. This can enable VS monitoring and measurement of war fighters or civilians trapped in unreachable places using drones mounted with the lightweight contactless device. Such abilities are currently not available. In this work, we propose to design and build a compact and portable remote monitoring and measurement device for VS using light based sensing and integrated photonics. In Phase I, we will focus on estimating the feasibility of the proposed solution through simulated test and verification. We will design a laser array system with micromirrors for optical sensing with effective control of the mirrors for beam steering. We will design a computer vision based pulse point detection platform with a virtual human avatar. Using this platform we will design VS calculations using anthropometric measurements from the estimated poses of human body. We will design the reconfigurable/tunable photonic integrated circuit (PIC) platform for reception and computation of sensed laser signals. We will design an electronic integrated circuit (EIC) to control the micromirrors. The different simulated portions of the proposed remote monitoring system of VS will be tested and verified. This will be followed by the test and verification of the entire remote sensing system of VS. Finally, the simulation results will be analyzed to measure feasibility and establish design optimization techniques. In Phase II of this work, we will focus on building and testing a prototype of the proposed remote monitoring system of VS.
