Scientists constantly study the natural world to develop technology, and this time, they have turned to sea turtles to innovate the heart monitor.
At the North University of China, Junbin Zang and his colleagues have created advanced heart-monitoring technologies, from portable handhelds to wearables to larger devices for hospitals. At first, they sought to advance the technology already available by figuring out how to make a more sensitive device.
Currently, doctors listen to the heartbeat with instruments such as stethoscopes and echocardiograms. As these methods call for specialized knowledge, they wanted to come up with a low-cost, at-home solution that would better enable individuals to track their heart health as a preventive model.
They turned to sea turtles because their extraordinary auditory anatomy makes them particularly sensitive to vibrations. They thus provided an ideal model to rethink how we listen to the vibrations coming from the human heart as they range from inaudible to audible.
A T-shaped heart monitor inspired by sea turtle anatomy
Sea turtles don’t absorb sound through a pair of ears as human do but rather through a layer of skin and fat that covers their auditory system. Similarly to humans, sound hits a small bone and is then sent to the brain via electrical signals for it to process and interpret.
Due to a naturally innovative T-shaped design, the movement of these signals across the bones is directed perpendicularly, which makes for a sensitive system unique to sea turtles. It allows them to pick up on low-frequency signals in the 300- to 400-hertz range.
“Heart sounds are also low-frequency signals, so the low-frequency characteristics of the sea turtle’s ear have provided us with great inspiration,” Zang explained.
These researchers created a tiny MEMS cantilever beam sensor, a miniature device with a beam built in almost like a diving board. It can sense physical quantities such as pressure.
The vibrations from the sound cause “deformations in its beam, and the fluctuations in the voltage resistance are then translated into electrical signals.” In short, this device picks up on low-vibrations frequencies, which could help specialists as well as individuals to detect irregularities and problems in advance, and that too, at home.
This could help solve a global problem
This technology could help address the 47-trillion-dollar loss (by 2030) that the medical industry faces due to cardiovascular disease. In 2019, it was the number one killer in the world. It’s a large, global threat. And even diabetics are at risk of developing heart disease.
Finding new and better ways to monitor heart health would alleviate a tremendous amount of pressure off our shoulders across the board.
After conducting tests in a lab, the researchers published the results of a subsequent study with two human volunteers. The sensor showed “excellent vibration characteristics,” Zang said, with a higher vibration sensitivity than other devices currently available on the market.
As a technology, it proves to be promising and potentially quite innovative. However, these researchers have to work out some kinks. The sensor tends to pick up on background noise, an issue that they’ll address next. They seek to integrate this “bioinspired sensor” into the technologies already available and innovate how the heart is monitored.
