Smartphone as an ultra-low cost medical tricorder for real-time cardiological measurements via ballistocardiography

In this preliminary study, we investigate the potential use of smartphones as portable heart-monitoring devices that can capture and analyse heart activity in real time. We have developed a smartphone application called “Medical Tricorder” that can exploit smartphone;s inertial sensors and when placed on a subject;s chest, it can efficiently capture the motion patterns caused by the mechanical activity of the heart. Using the measured ballistocardiograph signal (BCG), the application can efficiently extract the heart rate in real time while matching the performance of clinical-grade electrocardiographs (ECG). Although the BCG signal can provide much richer information regarding the mechanical aspects of the human heart, we have developed a method of mapping the chest BCG signal into an ECG signal, which can be made directly available to clinicians for diagnostics. Comparing the estimated ECG signal to empirical data from cardiovascular diseases, may allow detection of heart abnormalities at a very early stage without any medical staff involvement. Our method opens up the potential of turning smartphones into portable healthcare systems which can provide patients and general public an easy access to continuous healthcare monitoring. Additionally, given that our solution is mainly software based, it can be deployed on smartphones around the world with minimal costs.