scholarly journals Non-Contact Vital Signs Monitoring of Dog and Cat Using a UWB Radar

Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pengfei Wang ◽  
Yangyang Ma ◽  
Fulai Liang ◽  
Yang Zhang ◽  
Xiao Yu ◽  
...  

As pets are considered members of the family, their health has received widespread attention. Since pets cannot talk and complain when they feel uncomfortable, monitoring vital signs becomes very helpful in disease detection, as well as observing their progression and response to treatment. In this study, we proposed an ultra-wideband radar-based, non-contact animal vital sign monitoring scheme that could monitor the breathing and heart rate of a pet in real-time. The primary advantage of the ultra-wideband radar was its ability to operate remotely without electrodes or wires and through any clothing or fur. Because of the existing noise and clutter in non-contact detection, background noise removal was applied. Furthermore, the respiration rate was directly obtained through spectrum analysis, while the heartbeat signal was extracted by the variational mode decomposition algorithm. By using electrocardiogram measurements, we verified the accuracy of the radar technology in detecting the anesthetized animals’ respiratory rate and heart rate. Besides, three beagles and five cats in a non-sedated state were measured by radar and contact pressure sensors simultaneously; the experimental results showed that radar could effectively measure the respiration of cats and dogs, and the accuracy rate was over 95%. Due to its excellent performance, the proposed method has the potential to become a new choice in application scenarios, such as pet sleep monitoring and health assessment.

2013 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 2069-2075 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Khee-Meng Chan ◽  
Adrian Eng-Choon Tan ◽  
Karumudi Rambabu

Author(s):  
Wang ◽  
Zhang ◽  
Ma ◽  
Liang ◽  
An ◽  
...  

Radar has been widely applied in many scenarios as a critical remote sensing tool for non-contact vital sign monitoring, particularly for sleep monitoring and heart rate measurement within the home environment. For non-contact monitoring with radar, interference from house pets is an important issue that has been neglected in the past. Many animals have respiratory frequencies similar to those of humans, and they are easily mistaken for human targets in non-contact monitoring, which would trigger a false alarm because of incorrect physiological parameters from the animal. In this study, humans and common pets in families, such as dogs, cats, and rabbits, were detected using an impulse radio ultrawideband (IR-UWB) radar, and the echo signals were analyzed in the time and frequency domains. Subsequently, based on the distinct in-body structure between humans and animals, we propose a parameter, the respiratory and heartbeat energy ratio (RHER), which reflects the contribution rate of breathing and heartbeat in the detected vital signs. Combining this parameter with the energy index, we developed a novel scheme to distinguish between humans and animals. In the developed scheme, after background noise removal and direct-current component suppression, an energy indicator is used to initially identify the target. The signal is then decomposed using a variational mode decomposition algorithm, and the variational intrinsic mode functions that represent human respiration and heartbeat components are obtained and utilized to calculate the RHER parameter. Finally, the RHER index is applied to rapidly distinguish between humans and animals. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach more effectively distinguishes between humans and animals in terms of monitoring vital signs than the existing methods. Furthermore, its rapidity and need for only minimal calculation resources enable it to meet the needs of real-time monitoring.


Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (9) ◽  
pp. 3077 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenfeng Yin ◽  
Xiuzhu Yang ◽  
Lei Li ◽  
Lin Zhang ◽  
Nattapong Kitsuwan ◽  
...  

Further applications of impulse radio ultra-wideband radar in mobile health are hindered by the difficulty in extracting such vital signals as heartbeats from moving targets. Although the empirical mode decomposition based method is applied in recovering waveforms of heartbeats and estimating heart rates, the instantaneous heart rate is not achievable. This paper proposes a Heartbeat Estimation And Recovery (HEAR) approach to expand the application to mobile scenarios and extract instantaneous heartbeats. Firstly, the HEAR approach acquires vital signals by mapping maximum echo amplitudes to the fast time delay and compensating large body movements. Secondly, HEAR adopts the variational nonlinear chirp mode decomposition in extracting instantaneous frequencies of heartbeats. Thirdly, HEAR extends the clutter removal method based on the wavelet decomposition with a two-parameter exponential threshold. Compared to heart rates simultaneously collected by electrocardiograms (ECG), HEAR achieves a minimum error rate 4.6% in moving state and 2.25% in resting state. The Bland–Altman analysis verifies the consistency of beat-to-beat intervals in ECG and extracted heartbeat signals with the mean deviation smaller than 0.1 s. It indicates that HEAR is practical in offering clinical diagnoses such as the heart rate variability analysis in mobile monitoring.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (17) ◽  
pp. 5735
Author(s):  
Somayyeh Chamaani ◽  
Alireza Akbarpour ◽  
Marko Helbig ◽  
Jürgen Sachs

Microwave sensors have recently been introduced as high-temporal resolution sensors, which could be used in the contactless monitoring of artery pulsation and breathing. However, accurate and efficient signal processing methods are still required. In this paper, the matrix pencil method (MPM), as an efficient method with good frequency resolution, is applied to back-reflected microwave signals to extract vital signs. It is shown that decomposing of the signal to its damping exponentials fulfilled by MPM gives the opportunity to separate signals, e.g., breathing and heartbeat, with high precision. A publicly online dataset (GUARDIAN), obtained by a continuous wave microwave sensor, is applied to evaluate the performance of MPM. Two methods of bandpass filtering (BPF) and variational mode decomposition (VMD) are also implemented. In addition to the GUARDIAN dataset, these methods are also applied to signals acquired by an ultra-wideband (UWB) sensor. It is concluded that when the vital sign is sufficiently strong and pure, all methods, e.g., MPM, VMD, and BPF, are appropriate for vital sign monitoring. However, in noisy cases, MPM has better performance. Therefore, for non-contact microwave vital sign monitoring, which is usually subject to noisy situations, MPM is a powerful method.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (16) ◽  
pp. 5503
Author(s):  
Xinyue Zhang ◽  
Xiuzhu Yang ◽  
Yi Ding ◽  
Yili Wang ◽  
Jialin Zhou ◽  
...  

Vital signs monitoring in physical activity (PA) is of great significance in daily healthcare. Impulse Radio Ultra-WideBand (IR-UWB) radar provides a contactless vital signs detection approach with advantages in range resolution and penetration. Several researches have verified the feasibility of IR-UWB radar monitoring when the target keeps still. However, various body movements are induced by PA, which lead to severe signal distortion and interfere vital signs extraction. To address this challenge, a novel joint chest–abdomen cardiopulmonary signal estimation approach is proposed to detect breath and heartbeat simultaneously using IR-UWB radars. The movements of target chest and abdomen are detected by two IR-UWB radars, respectively. Considering the signal overlapping of vital signs and body motion artifacts, Empirical Wavelet Transform (EWT) is applied on received radar signals to remove clutter and mitigate movement interference. Moreover, improved EWT with frequency segmentation refinement is applied on each radar to decompose vital signals of target chest and abdomen to vital sign-related sub-signals, respectively. After that, based on the thoracoabdominal movement correlation, cross-correlation functions are calculated among chest and abdomen sub-signals to estimate breath and heartbeat. The experiments are conducted under three kinds of PA situations and two general body movements, the results of which indicate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed approach.


Author(s):  
Giovanni Diraco ◽  
Alessandro Leone ◽  
Pietro Siciliano

Continuous in-home monitoring of older adults living alone aims to improve their quality of life and independence, by detecting early signs of illness and functional decline or emergency conditions. To meet requirements for technology acceptance by seniors (unobtrusiveness, non-intrusiveness, privacy-preservation), this study presents and discusses a new smart sensor system for the detection of abnormalities during daily activities, based on ultra-wideband radar providing rich, not privacy-sensitive, information useful for sensing both cardiorespiratory and body movements, regardless of ambient lighting conditions and physical obstructions (through-wall sensing). The radar sensing is a very promising technology, enabling the measurement of vital signs and body movements at a distance, and thus meeting both requirements of unobtrusiveness and accuracy. In particular, impulse-radio ultra-wideband radar has attracted considerable attention in recent years thanks to many properties that make it useful for assisted living purposes. The proposed sensing system, evaluated in meaningful assisted living scenarios by involving 30 participants, exhibited the ability to detect vital signs, to discriminate among dangerous situations and activities of daily living, and to accommodate individual physical characteristics and habits. The reported results show that vital signs can be detected also while carrying out daily activities or after a fall event (post-fall phase), with accuracy varying according to the level of movements, reaching up to 95% and 91% in detecting respiration and heart rates, respectively. Similarly, good results were achieved in fall detection by using the micro-motion signature and unsupervised learning, with sensitivity and specificity greater than 97% and 90%, respectively.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (10) ◽  
pp. 1155-1162
Author(s):  
Lorena Catarina Del Sant ◽  
Luciana Maria Sarin ◽  
Eduardo Jorge Muniz Magalhães ◽  
Ana Cecília Lucchese ◽  
Marco Aurélio Tuena ◽  
...  

Introduction and objectives: The impact of multiple subcutaneous (s.c.) esketamine injections on the blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR) of patients with unipolar and bipolar treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is poorly understood. This study aimed to assess the cardiovascular safety of multiple s.c. doses of esketamine in patients with TRD. Methods: Seventy TRD patients received 394 weekly s.c. esketamine injections in conjunction with oral antidepressant therapy for up to six weeks. Weekly esketamine doses were 0.5, 0.75 or 1.0 mg/kg according to each patient’s response to treatment. Participants were monitored before each treatment and every 15 minutes thereafter for 120 minutes. We assessed systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), and HR measurements for the entire treatment course. Results: BP increased after the first s.c. esketamine injection, reaching maximum mean SBP/DBP levels of 4.87/5.54 mmHg within 30–45 minutes. At the end of monitoring, 120 minutes post dose, vital signs returned to pretreatment levels. We did not detect significant differences in BP between doses of 0.5, 0.75, and 1 mg/kg esketamine. Mean HR did not differ significantly between doses or before and after s.c. esketamine injection. Conclusions: The BP changes observed with repeated s.c. esketamine injections were mild and well tolerated for doses up to 1 mg/kg. The s.c. route is a simple and safe method of esketamine administration, even for patients with clinical comorbidities, including obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and dyslipidemia. However, 14/70 patients experienced treatment-emergent transient hypertension (SBP >180 mmHg and/or a DBP >110 mmHg). Therefore, we strongly recommend monitoring BP for 90 minutes after esketamine dosing. Since s.c. esketamine is cheap, requires less frequent dosing (once a week), and is a simpler procedure compared to intravenous infusions, it might have an impact on public health.


2011 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 1037-1040 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Del Chicca ◽  
G. Macrì ◽  
V. Pensabene ◽  
F. De Negri ◽  
P. Valdastri

Author(s):  
Muhammad Niswar ◽  
Muhammad Nur ◽  
Idar Mappangara

Medical devices are often expensive, so people in low-income countries cannot afford them. This paper presents the design of a low-cost wearable medical device to measure vital signs of a patient including heart rate, blood oxygen saturation level (SpO2) and respiratory rate. The wearable medical device mainly consists of a microcontroller and two biomedical sensors including airflow thermal sensor to measure respiratory rate and pulse oximeter sensor to measure SpO2 and heart rate. We can monitor the vital signs from a smartphone using a web browser through IEEE802.11 wireless connectivity to the wearable medical device. Furthermore, the wearable medical device requires simple management to operate; hence, it can be easily used. Performance evaluation results show that the designed wearable medical device works as good as a standard SpO2 device and it can measure the respiratory rate properly.  The designed wearable medical device is inexpensive and appropriate for low-resource settings. Moreover, as its components are commonly available in the market, it easy to assembly and repair locally.


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