DR.BEAT

Astro­nauts expe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant phys­i­cal stress due to weight­less­ness, neces­si­tat­ing con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing of vital bod­i­ly func­tions, espe­cial­ly the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem. This mon­i­tor­ing is cru­cial dur­ing their time in space. The insights gained from space health can also be applied to mon­i­tor­ing car­diac activ­i­ty on Earth, address­ing the lead­ing cause of glob­al mor­tal­i­ty.

In 2015, the Ger­man Fed­er­al Sta­tis­ti­cal Office report­ed that car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease incurred a cost of 46.4 bil­lion EUR. Present-day car­diac func­tion mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems have lim­i­ta­tions, being either cost­ly or restrict­ed to inpa­tient set­tings. How­ev­er, the “DR.BEAT” project cap­i­tal­izes on Bal­lis­to­car­dio­g­ra­phy (BCG) along with micro­elec­tron­ics to cap­ture pre­cise heart func­tion. This project aims to design towards an approach to an afford­able and high­ly accu­rate BCG sen­sor sys­tem that can be worn as a “wear­able” device, allow­ing for con­tin­u­ous health mon­i­tor­ing.

The project will auto­mate sig­nal pro­cess­ing, data analy­sis, and visu­al­iza­tion. This advance­ment is antic­i­pat­ed not only to con­tribute to space health but also to facil­i­tate the record­ing of dynam­ic car­diac activ­i­ty in a prac­ti­cal and user-friend­ly man­ner for every­day use.

With­in the scope of this col­lab­o­ra­tive project, there will be a focus on fur­ther design approach­es for a minia­tur­ized sen­sor sys­tem to detect the method of BCG sig­nals. This sen­sor sys­tem will play a cru­cial role in col­lect­ing essen­tial BCG data, serv­ing as train­ing data for fur­ther analy­sis and the deriva­tion of eval­u­a­tion algo­rithms.

Sig­nif­i­cant efforts will be ded­i­cat­ed to imple­ment­ing sig­nal pro­cess­ing, inte­grat­ed data eval­u­a­tion, and thor­ough data analy­sis. Addi­tion­al­ly, a well-designed visu­al­iza­tion will be devel­oped to ensure accu­rate mon­i­tor­ing of health para­me­ters.

DSI, as the coor­di­na­tor of the joint project, assumes respon­si­bil­i­ty for over­all plan­ning and risk man­age­ment. Their pri­ma­ry role involves fur­ther devel­op­ment, high inte­gra­tion, and imple­men­ta­tion of embed­ded eval­u­a­tion algo­rithms. DSI col­lab­o­rates with the project part­ners to con­duct require­ments analy­ses and devel­op sys­tem con­cepts.

As part of their con­tri­bu­tion, DSI will devel­op, imple­ment, and man­u­fac­ture a minia­tur­ized BCG sen­sor sys­tem demon­stra­tor. They will also pro­vide tech­ni­cal sup­port for the mea­sure­ments con­duct­ed by the part­ners. DSI’s exper­tise lies in inte­grat­ing the eval­u­a­tion algo­rithms derived from the BCG basic data into the BCG sen­sor sys­tem. These algo­rithms will be applied to the col­lect­ed data for eval­u­a­tion.