NSF Award
2321403
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.<br/><br/>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.<br/><br/>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.
