Evidence Hub

All-nanofiber-based, ultrasensitive, gas-permeable mechanoacoustic sensors for continuous long-term heart monitoring

Nayeem MOG, Lee S, Jin H, Matsuhisa N, Jinno H, Miyamoto A, Yokota T, Someya T

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020

71 citations

Abstract

The prolonged and continuous monitoring of mechanoacoustic heart signals is essential for the early diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. These bodily acoustics have low intensity and low frequency, and measuring them continuously for long periods requires ultrasensitive, lightweight, gas-permeable mechanoacoustic sensors. Here, we present an all-nanofiber mechanoacoustic sensor, which exhibits a sensitivity as high as 10,050.6 mV Pa-1 in the low-frequency region (<500 Hz). The high sensitivity is achieved by the use of durable and ultrathin (2.5 µm) nanofiber electrode layers enabling a large vibration of the sensor during the application of sound waves. The sensor is ultralightweight, and the overall weight is as small as 5 mg or less. The devices are mechanically robust against bending, and show no degradation in performance even after 1,000-cycle bending. Finally, we demonstrate a continuous long-term (10 h) measurement of heart signals with a signal-to-noise ratio as high as 40.9 decibels (dB).

How strong is the evidence?

Evidence Hub reads this as a clinical trial, done in people. Its evidence level is 3 of 5 (Moderate · trial / cohort / secondary analysis). Trials without a large randomized design, cohorts and secondary analyses give moderate evidence.

How the five levels of evidence work. The level is assigned automatically from the abstract and can be wrong, so check the paper.

Read the paper

Related studies

Go deeper in Evidence Hub

Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.

Open this study Sign up free