A cost-effective smartphone-based device for ankle-brachial index (ABI) detection
Zhongyun Yuan1, Xinru Huang1, Pei Wan1
1MicroNano System Research Center, College of Information & Computer Engineering, Key Laboratory of Advanced Transducers and Intelligent Control System of Ministry of Education and Shanxi Province, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China.
Insights
A new smartphone-based device offers accurate, non-invasive ankle-brachial index (ABI) monitoring for arteriosclerosis. This portable, cost-effective tool enables continuous home health care and remote patient monitoring.
Area of Science:
- Biomedical Engineering
- Cardiovascular Diagnostics
- Medical Device Development
Background:
- Arteriosclerosis poses significant risks for geriatric and chronic diseases.
- Current arteriosclerosis treatments are shifting towards home and community care.
- Traditional ankle-brachial index (ABI) devices are costly and less suitable for home use, especially for restricted patients.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a simple, non-invasive, smartphone-based device for ankle-brachial index (ABI) monitoring.
- To enable cuffless and remote monitoring of cardiovascular health for early arteriosclerosis detection.
- To provide a cost-effective and portable alternative to traditional ABI measurement tools.
Main Methods:
- Development of a smartphone-based system with four wireless, cuffless limb blood sensors.
- Utilizing a multiparameter fusion (MPF) algorithm to estimate blood pressure and ABI from blood flow waveforms.
- Employing an ARM-based microcontroller (STM32) with embedded C++ programming for ABI calculation.
- Bluetooth data transmission to a smartphone app for real-time visualization and analysis.
Main Results:
- The developed device achieved 91.80% accuracy in patients and 93.84% in sub-health volunteers compared to classical Doppler equipment.
- The prototype demonstrated stable performance for continuous, long-term monitoring.
- The system successfully estimates blood pressure and generates ABI values non-invasively.
Conclusions:
- The smartphone-based ABI device is sufficiently accurate for home medical and chronic disease monitoring.
- The device offers significant advantages in portability, cost-effectiveness, and energy efficiency over traditional methods.
- This technology facilitates remote monitoring of cardiovascular patients, aiding in arteriosclerosis risk assessment.
Background And Objective:
Detectors of ankle-brachial index (ABI) are commonly used in cardiovascular patients who have high-risk levels of arteriosclerosis. Increased evidences suggest that patients with arteriosclerosis possess many risks of geriatric and chronic diseases. Meanwhile, new chronic treatments trend from the hospitals toward family and community health centers, but for arteriosclerosis cases have delivered benefits far below instrument costs. Compared to traditional devices based on cuff pressure, cuffless and non-invasive measures have wider application potential in home health care, especially in the case of physically-restricted or severely symptomatic patients.
Methods:
In this study, we developed a simple smartphone-based device for non-invasive ABI monitoring, which consists of four wireless cuffless limbs blood sensors. By identifying and tracking blood flow waveform, a multiparameter fusion (MPF) algorithm is used to estimate blood pressure and generate ABI value. An ARM-based chip STM32 has been adopted as the microcontroller. The ABI calculating program is embedded in C++ and executed by the processor. After generating data, ABI information can be delivered to the smartphone by using Bluetooth. Relying on mobile apps to visualize the data and display on the screen, doctors can monitor cardiovascular patients in real time and analyze the risk levels of arteriosclerosis online.
Results:
In this paper, the detection conducted by the classical Doppler equipment and prototype were recorded respectively. A statistical evaluation of the verification results obtained from 29 patients and 7 sub-health volunteers is given, which shows that our device can achieve 91.80% and 93.84% accuracy for patients and sub-health volunteers, respectively. In addition, the prototype can be performed stably for a continuous long time monitoring.
Conclusions:
According to our studies, the accuracy of our device is sufficient for home medical and chronic disease monitoring within a certain time interval. The smartphone-based ABI device has several apparent advantages over traditional devices, such as portability, cost-effectiveness and energy-efficiency.
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