Design of a high SNR electronic heart sound sensor based on a MEMS bionic hydrophone

Since most of the contact conduction type of heart sound sensors don’t take into account the acoustic signal attenuation problem caused by the heart sound signal transmitting to a sensor whose filling materials’ impedance is different to human soft tissue, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the hear...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAIP advances Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 015005 - 015005-10
Main Authors Li, Haixia, Ren, Yongfeng, Zhang, Guojun, Wang, Renxin, Zhang, Xiaoyong, Zhang, Ting, Zhang, Lansheng, Cui, Jiangong, Xu, QingDa, Duan, Sicun
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Melville American Institute of Physics 01.01.2019
AIP Publishing LLC
Subjects
Acoustic attenuation
Acoustic noise
Bionics
Computer simulation
Coupling agents
Electrocardiography
Finite element method
Heart
Hydrophones
Mechanical systems
Microelectromechanical systems
Resonant frequencies
Sensors
Sound
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Summary:Since most of the contact conduction type of heart sound sensors don’t take into account the acoustic signal attenuation problem caused by the heart sound signal transmitting to a sensor whose filling materials’ impedance is different to human soft tissue, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the heart sound sensors is not very well. Human heart is immersed in blood. If the sensor’s core sensitive element can be immersed in fluid, the attenuation of heart sound signal may be decreased greatly. Inspired by the principle of hydroacoustic signal’s detection, this paper proposes the design of heart sound sensor based on the bionic vector hydrophone. Then theoretical analysis and finite element method (FEM) simulation about the sensor have been carried out. Combined sensitivity with resonant frequency, the optimum dimension of the sensor’s structure has been determined. The sensor’s micro-structure has been fabricated by using Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) technology and coupling encapsulated by choosing a kind of medical coupling agent as the filling material. Finally, the performance of the proposed sensor is tested. The fact is that the proposed sensor can work well with either healthy people or patients with heart disease. The obtained data clearly show that: the SNR of the proposed heart sound sensor is superior to 3200-type of 3M Littmann 8.2 dB.
ISSN:2158-3226
2158-3226
DOI:10.1063/1.5062619