Wearable, broadband auscultation patch with cantilever pressure transducer for remote healthcare monitoring.

Abstract

Flexible and wearable devices employing acoustic sensors have emerged as promising alternatives for continuous monitoring of physiological mechano-acoustic signals during daily activities, offering distinct advantages over conventional rigid stethoscopes. However, the limited low-frequency sensitivity of commercial MEMS acoustic sensors constrains their ability to accurately capture vital physiological signals. Here, we present a wireless, flexible auscultation patch (AusculPatch) that overcomes these limitations by employing a highly sensitive cantilever pressure transducer (CPT). The combination of a narrow airgap in CPT together with the ultra-low mass of the nanothin cantilever enables precise measurement across a broad acoustic frequency range (0.2 Hz to over 10 kHz), allowing the detection of multiple physiological mechano-acoustic signals, including pulse waves, Korotkoff sounds, cardiac signals, respiration patterns, and vocalizations. The single-chip architecture simplifies circuitry, enabling a lightweight design ( ~ 3.2 g), compact form factor (20×47×3.5 mm), and low power consumption (4.5 mW), making AusculPatch an ideal platform for continuous wear for cardiorespiratory monitoring and potentially sleep quality assessment. These features represent a significant advance in the development of low-cost and multifunctional wearable devices capable of multi-site auscultation for home-based wellness monitoring as well as Artificial Intelligence (AI)-assisted diagnosis and Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) applications.