A team of researchers at the University of California San Diego has developed a new and improved wearable ultrasound patch for continuous and noninvasive blood pressure monitoring. Their work marks a major milestone, as the ...
The technology, published on Nov. 20 in Nature Biomedical Engineering, has the potential to improve the quality of cardiovascular health monitoring in the clinic and at home.
"Traditional blood pressure measurements with a cuff, which are limited to providing one-time blood pressure values, can miss critical patterns. Our wearable patch offers a continuous stream of blood pressure waveform data, allowing it to reveal detailed trends in blood pressure fluctuations," said study co-first author Sai Zhou, who recently graduated with his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.
The patch is a soft and stretchy device, about the size of a postage stamp, that adheres to the skin. When worn on the forearm, it offers precise, real-time readings of blood pressure deep within the body. The patch is made of a silicone elastomer that houses an array of small piezoelectric transducers sandwiched between stretchable copper electrodes.
The transducers transmit and receive ultrasound waves that track changes in the diameter of blood vessels, which are then converted into blood pressure values.
Technological improvements to wearable ultrasound
This small, stretchy skin patch uses ultrasound to continuously monitor blood pressure deep inside the body. A comprehensive clinical validation on 117 subjects, including patients in the intensive care unit, has demonstrated its potential as a simpler and more reliable alternative to current clinical methods for monitoring blood pressure. Credit: David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
This small, stretchy skin patch uses ultrasound to continuously monitor blood pressure deep inside the body. A comprehensive clinical validation on 117 subjects, including patients in the intensive care unit, has demonstrated its potential as a simpler and more reliable alternative to current clinical methods for monitoring blood pressure. Credit: David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
This small, stretchy skin patch uses ultrasound to continuously monitor blood pressure deep inside the body. A comprehensive clinical validation on 117 subjects, including patients in the intensive care unit, has demonstrated its potential as a simpler and more reliable alternative to current clinical methods for monitoring blood pressure. Credit: David Baillot/UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering