Compact and Portable Remote Monitoring System for Vital Signs with Integrated Photonics

Measurement of vital signs (VS) is essential to assess the condition of the human body. VS includes body temperature (Tc), heart (pulse) rate (HR), respiration rate (RR) and blood pressure (BP). VS are useful in detecting medical problems. Typically, VS measurement and monitoring takes place in a controlled setting like a hospital, clinic or home using bulky contact based machines. In order to monitor VS in a dynamic environment like a battle field, it will be efficient to have a light weight and contactless device. Such a device can be wearable on a vest or mountable on a vehicle in order to expand its availability and reachability. This can enable VS monitoring and measurement of warfighters or civilians trapped in unreachable places using drones mounted with the lightweight contactless device. Such abilities are currently not available. In this work, we propose to design and build a compact and portable non-contact monitoring and measurement device for VS using light based sensing and integrated photonics. In Phase I, we focused on estimating the feasibility of the proposed solution through simulated test and verification. We designed a laser light system with focal plane array with effective beam steering along with liquid crystal ¢ silicon nitride (LC-SiN) based photonic integrated circuit (PIC) for optical sensing of pulse point vibrations. We designed a computer vision based pulse point detection platform with a virtual human avatar. Using this platform we designed VS calculations using anthropometric measurements from the estimated poses of human body. The different simulated portions of the proposed VS monitoring system was tested and verified. In Phase II, we will focus on building and testing a prototype of the proposed VS monitoring system. We will construct and test the focal plane array based laser light system with a selected compact light source. We will fabricate and test the PIC with LC-SiN based ring resonators. We will implement and test the pulse point detection unit on a computing device like CPU/GPU. We will prototype and test the VS monitoring system by integrating the discrete tested units. We will perform human subject testing of the prototype for validation. We will enhance the prototype to work on moving targets and finally demonstrate its operation. The results and data gathered from this effort will be used to further refine and optimize the VS monitoring device in Phase III. This will include custom integration, manufacturing and packaging of the device meeting the military specifications and standards.