We’re excited to share that Parth Gami, has published a new study demonstrating the feasibility of wearable ultrasound technology for cardiovascular health monitoring. This multi-year collaboration between the Ultrasound Elasticity Imaging Laboratory (UEIL) and TDK Americas explores the use of a miniaturized piezoelectric micromachined ultrasound transducer (pMUT) for assessing carotid artery mechanics.
Cardiovascular diseases and their risk factors—such as hypertension and obesity—continue to rise globally. While early detection and monitoring are key to prevention, current clinical methods for assessing arterial function are often limited to hospital settings and may not offer a comprehensive picture of vascular health. This work highlights the promise of wearable ultrasound devices to enable at-home and continuous monitoring of arterial parameters.
In this study, the team integrated a miniaturized pMUT array with Pulse Wave Imaging (PWI)—an ultrafast motion estimation technique—to assess carotid mechanics in healthy, normotensive individuals. The performance of the pMUT was benchmarked against a conventional diagnostic transducer. Results show that PWI can be successfully performed with wearable-scale hardware, opening the door to real-time, accessible cardiovascular monitoring.
Congratulations to Parth on this exciting advancement!
LinkedIn post (refined version provided by Parth):
Cardiovascular diseases and risk-factors like hypertension and obesity are becoming prevalent globally, yet current methods for assessing arterial health are often limited to clinical settings and may not provide a comprehensive overview on arterial function. Recent advancements in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have led to the development of ultrasound transducers configured for wearable use. Wearable ultrasound technology offers the potential for at-home and/or continuous monitoring of arterial parameters, which could be valuable for early disease detection and potentially optimize treatment strategies. However, current wearable ultrasound hardware may face a tradeoff between form factor and imaging performance, especially when compared to conventional clinical transducers. Additionally, the use of ultrafast motion estimation techniques, like Pulse Wave Imaging (PWI), have been largely unexplored for transducers designed for wearable use.
In this study, we explored the integration of a miniaturized piezoelectric micromachined ultrasound transducer (pMUT) with PWI for the assessment of carotid arterial mechanics in young, normotensive participants. This work compares the performance and reproducibility of relevant PWI metrics between the miniaturized pMUT array and a diagnostics transducer. Overall, this feasibility study showcases the potential of performing PWI with hardware suitable for wearable applications, highlighting new opportunities for cardiovascular health monitoring with further refinement.
This paper is the result of a multi-year collaboration between an industry leader in sensor development and manufacturing, TDK Americas, and UEIL. TDK Americas led the design and development of the state-of-the-art miniaturized pMUT array featured in this study and provided funding support on this project.