Researcher devises mass system to track multiple patients’ vitals

The new monitoring system, based on Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) mmWave radar, stands out for its ability to measure HR and BR for multiple patients simultaneously and with accuracy.

Hyderabad: In a breakthrough that has the potential to reshape the landscape of healthcare monitoring, Jewel Benny, an undergraduate researcher with the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT)-Hyderabad, has come up with a non-invasive mass monitoring system to measure heart rates (HR) and breath rates (BR) using radars.

The new monitoring system, based on Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) mmWave radar, stands out for its ability to measure HR and BR for multiple patients simultaneously and with accuracy.

---

While the previous studies that used FMCW radars to measure HR and BR focused on single subjects, the research expanded to monitoring the vitals of multiple subjects. However, it did not achieve simultaneous measurements.

Jewel Benny, undergraduate researcher at IIIT-H.

Benny, an Honours (BTech ECE) student, along with Pranjal Mahajan, Srayan Chatterjee and Mohd Wajid, under the guidance of Prof Abhishek Srivastava, has come up with a design that not only seeks to simultaneously measure BR/HR of multiple patients but also improved measurement accuracy with its advanced signal processing techniques.

“Normally, you have oximeters to check the health of patients with any condition that affects blood oxygen levels such as pneumonia, heart failure and so on. But they are not really useful in mass monitoring scenarios or during a pandemic-like situation. We wanted a single device that could measure vitals in a contactless manner and for multiple people,” Benny said.

According to researchers, the new system can find its application in hospitals and such places where mass monitoring of health vitals is necessary. Outside of hospitals, too, unobtrusive monitoring of vitals could come in handy in large spaces such as corporate offices, they said.

The prototype based on the research was built and presented at IInvenTiv-2024 — the Ministry of Education’s flagship R&D Innovation Fair. The same proposal has helped Benny bag the Comprehensive and Holistic Advancement of National Knowledge Yield and Analytics fellowship offered by the iHub-Anubhuti-IIIT Delhi Foundation.

As per Benny, the fellowship will help in extending the research project. “We are currently working on further improving the accuracy and latency of the radars in the system,” he said, adding that a patent will also be filed soon.