Preliminary Evaluation of the Clinical Value of an Ultra-Wideband Radar Sensor for Heart Assessment

Abstract: Heart dysfunction is a worldly widespread problem that currently is one of the leading causes of death. Studies indicate that many deaths related to cardiac dysfunction could have been prevented if discovered early. Contemporarily, ultrasound and electrocardiography are indispensable modalities for diagnostic purposes and analysis of cardiac function. The Ventricorder is an Ultra-Wideband radar sensor manufactured by the Norwegian company Novelda. Ventricorder has been shown to be able detect heart movements and breathing but its actual clinical value remains to be investigated. The Cardiac State Diagram (CSD) is a pre-clinical software tool for visualization of the heart's mechanical function. The CSD is confirmed by pilot studies to be able to constitute a basis for diagnosis and cardiac function assessment. Theoretically, the CSD is well suited to be used with the Ventricorder since the Ventricorder detects small changes over time and information about time events is all that is required for the creation of a CSD. Contemporarily, ultrasound tissue velocity imaging (TVI) is usually used for production of CSDs and in this master thesis we examined if the Ventricorder can be used to produce CSDs. This was done by mainly comparing velocity data from the Ventricorder with velocity data from temporally synchronized apical four-chamber images acquired with ultrasound TVI. The results indicate that there is an apparent correlation between these data sets and the Ventricorder should therefore be able to produce data that could constitute the basis for the production of a CSD. What remain now is to confirm these results statistically with a larger test group and to investigate whether all the time instants needed for the production of a CSD can be identified objectively.