Monitoring of physiological sounds with wearable device based on piezoelectric MEMS acoustic sensor

Abstract

Abstract Physiological mechano-acoustic signals play a pivotal role in medical diagnosis and fitness monitoring. Mechanical waves generated by natural physiological activities such as myocardial contraction, and vocal fold vibration, propagate through the tissues and fluids of the body and reveal characteristic signals of these events. Conventional methods such as stethoscope and electrocardiography (ECG) are not suitable for wearable mode and continuous monitoring. In this paper, we propose a wearable physiological sounds sensing device to monitor heart sound and detect speech and voice with high accuracy. The device consists of a MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) acoustic sensor and a low-noise amplification circuit, and both of them are packaged by silicone polymers with an air cavity to achieve conformal contact with human skin. The proposed device has advantages of light weight, sweatproof capability, resistant to noise and good stability. The wearable device has great potential in clinical diagnosis, healthcare, human-machine interaction and many other applications.