This ingestible
electronic device invented at MIT can measure heart rate and
respiratory rate
from inside the gastrointestinal tract.
Image: Albert
Swiston/MIT Lincoln Laboratory
(November 18, 2015) Ingestible
sensor measures heart and breathing rates from within the digestive tract.
Using technology invented at MIT, doctors may one day be
able to monitor patients’ vital signs by having them swallow an ingestible
electronic device that measures heart rate and breathing rate from within the
gastrointestinal tract.
This type of sensor could make it easier to assess trauma
patients, monitor soldiers in battle, perform long-term evaluation of patients
with chronic illnesses, or improve training for professional and amateur
athletes, the researchers say.
The new sensor calculates heart and breathing rates from the
distinctive sound waves produced by the beating of the heart and the inhalation
and exhalation of the lungs.
Researchers
explain how their technology could be used to monitor vital signs from
within the GI
tract. Video: Melanie Gonick/MIT (animation and additional imagery courtesy of
Diana Saville,
Albert Swiston, and Giovanni Traverso)
“Through characterization of the acoustic wave, recorded
from different parts of the GI tract, we found that we could measure both heart
rate and respiratory rate with good accuracy,” says Giovanni Traverso, a
research affiliate at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, a
gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and one of the lead
authors of a paper describing the device in the Nov. 18 issue of the journal
PLOS One.
The paper’s other lead author is Gregory Ciccarelli, an
associate staff member at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. Senior authors are Robert
Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT and a member of the Koch
Institute, and Albert Swiston, a technical staff member at Lincoln Laboratory.