Tag: medical devices

New AI Diagnostics for Lung Diseases

AI and IoT based Diagnostic Device for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases developed by IIT Kharagpur

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a common chronic respiratory disease caused by exposure to harmful gases and particulate matters, with a high health burden on the country’s healthcare services and society. For long, the medical community has been depending on patient history and clinical symptoms for disease diagnosis, which often prevents early detection of the disease and advancing of the disease adds to the medical bill through frequent hospitalizations. 

Researchers at IIT Kharagpur have developed an affordable diagnostic intervention for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease based on the internet-of-things medical devices (IoT-MD) integrated with AI. [Download Journal Paper]

At the Organic Electronics Laboratory (ORELA), Department of Physics, IIT Kharagpur, Prof. Dipak Kumar Goswami and his research team have developed SenFlex.T, a smart mask synced with an android monitoring app through Bluetooth, that can continuously monitor breathing patterns, rate, heart rate, oxygen saturation level in blood. The app is connected to a cloud computing server, where artificial intelligence (AI) has been implemented to predict the severity of COPD through machine learning (ML). 

“SenFlex.T can be used at home by patients without having to visit diagnostic centres as against the current practice. This will also address the critical issue of addressing COPD at an early stage and by means of advanced healthcare technology, a boon for both patients and the overall healthcare system,” explained Prof. Goswami. 

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease has been a top cause of death, second to only deaths due to heart diseases. In 2017 it claimed about 1 million lives in India. In October 2019, health experts, at a medical convention, confirmed that COPD claims more lives than AIDS, TB, Malaria, Diabetes all put together. The threat from COPD has become more acute under the COVID situation, with increased comorbidity rates. A recent survey confirmed that the severity and mortality rates among COPD patients to be affected by the COVID-19 virus are over 63%. Moreover, the patients affected in the COVID-19 virus, which is right now over 4 million people in India and 27 million in the world, are more susceptible to build up various lung disorder-related diseases like COPD, Asthma etc. 

“It was crucial for health-tech researchers to develop a diagnostic intervention for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Spirometry, the gold standard test to diagnose obstructive airway diseases like asthma and COPD, is often avoided due to the unavailability of the equipment, difficulty in data interpretation and the cost of the tests. This challenge and the criticality strongly motivated us to develop an AI-based system, that can overcome the problem of interpreting the results and be accessible not only for the doctors but also for the patients,” said Prof. Goswami. 

SenFlex.T smart mask contains a highly sensitive, flexible temperature sensor along with a Bluetooth based measuring electronics. The sensor system can continuously monitor the temperature changes of inhaled and exhaled air during breathing and record the breathing pattern. The temperature sensor has a resolution of 4.3 mK and about 25 ms response time. Further, a commercially available pulse oximeter has been integrated with the sensor system to monitor the oxygen saturation level during breathing.

The patient data is uploaded automatically to the cloud server through the mobile app (SenFlex), where it is processed by means of AIML, and reports made available on the app and for doctors’ consultation. 

The innovation has been reported in the international journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces [Download Paper]. The researchers have also filed a patent for the innovation and are ready for commercialization. The product cost has been estimated at about ₹ 2,500/-.

Cite Paper:  ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2019, 11, 4, 4193–4202
Publication Date:December 31, 2018
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.8b19051

Media Coverage:

Project Information: Prof. Dipak Goswami, dipak@phy.iitkgp.ac.in; 

Institute Information: Prof. B N Singh, Registrar, registrar@hijli.iitkgp.ac.in;

Media Outreach: Shreyoshi Ghosh, shreyoshi@adm.iitkgp.ac.in

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IIT KGP Researchers Design Award-winning for Cardiovascular Device Testing Technology

Researchers from IIT Kharagpur have designed an automated smart device for online testing of cardiac medical devices and prosthetics. The device is capable of creating life-like simulations in cardiac failure cases due to various diseases and tests the performance of implantable devices and prosthetics such as Ventricular assist devices.

The World Health Organization reported 17.9 million deaths in 2016 from cardiovascular diseases (CVD) accounting for about 31% of global deaths. In India, over 28% of the deaths are due to CVD in 2016 according to a study published in 2018. According to the business intelligence company Fior Markets, the global cardiovascular devices market is expected to grow from USD 42.61 billion in 2019 to USD 71.05 billion by 2027, at a CAGR of 6.6% during the forecast period 2020-2027. These devices would include surgical devices as well as diagnostic and monitoring devices covering a large range of CVDs – Cerebrovascular Heart Disease, Stroke, Sudden Cardiac Arrest and Coronary Heart Disease. With rapid development in medical devices, especially for the implants, rigorous testing and assessment are essential during the developmental stage. 

“The intriguing complexity of physiology and function of the heart makes it difficult to carry out an in-depth study of the live organ. For researchers, the study of a cadaver heart does not provide many clues regarding its functioning in live conditions. This limitation led us to design a novel heart analogue model, Cardiovascular Replicator (CVR), which can serve as a platform for studying the cardiovascular system,” said lead researcher Prof. Prasanta Kumar Das from the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering. 

The Cardiovascular Replicator (CVR) developed by the team is an electromechanical system that can mimic the entire hemodynamics of the human heart along with its pulmonic and systemic circulations.

“The device enables us to simulate a long-range of heart diseases and conditions like aortic valve stenosis, ventricular septal defects, fetal circulation, cross circulation, single ventricle conditions and Fontan correction etc. along with hardware in the loop simulation. We can also run tests prior to animal trials,” said researcher Sumanta Laha.

The design is equipped with sensors and a widescreen display which facilitates online real-time data monitoring and logging. This system is made in a modular way to ease transportation and enable improvisation.  

Prof. Indranil Ghosh from the Cryogenic Engineering Centre pointed out the pedagogical advantage of the device for the medical community.

“Cardiovascular Replicator will not only be of great value for researchers working in medical technology innovation but also for medical students during their practical training due to the experiential learning from real-life simulations of the diseases,” he said.

The research has been awarded the prestigious SITARE – Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Award 2020 for this work titled ‘Automated Cardiovascular Replicator for Online Assessment of Cardiac Assist Devices, Prosthetics and Beyond’.