A First Step Towards On-Device Monitoring of Body Sounds in the Wild

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel chest-mounted wearable device capable of continuous, on-device monitoring of heart sounds in real-world environments, enabling accurate heart rate tracking outside clinical settings.

Contribution

It introduces a wearable with on-device data processing that segments cardiac cycle phases to improve robustness against noise and motion artifacts.

Findings

Achieved heart rate estimates comparable to commercial monitors

Demonstrated low power consumption suitable for continuous use

Validated with a pilot study of 9 users

Abstract

Body sounds provide rich information about the state of the human body and can be useful in many medical applications. Auscultation, the practice of listening to body sounds, has been used for centuries in respiratory and cardiac medicine to diagnose or track disease progression. To date, however, its use has been confined to clinical and highly controlled settings. Our work addresses this limitation: we devise a chest-mounted wearable for continuous monitoring of body sounds, that leverages data processing algorithms that run on-device. We concentrate on the detection of heart sounds to perform heart rate monitoring. To improve robustness to ambient noise and motion artefacts, our device uses an algorithm that explicitly segments the collected audio into the phases of the cardiac cycle. Our pilot study with 9 users demonstrates that it is possible to obtain heart rate estimates that are competitive with commercial heart rate monitors, with low enough power consumption for continuous use.