Medical Design Briefs - October 2024 - 47

Noninvasive Method First to Continually Measure True
Blood Pressure
The device uses sound
waves to gently stimulate
resonance in an artery.
Caltech, Pasadena, CA
Solving a decades-old problem, a multidisciplinary
team of Caltech researchers
has figured out a method to noninvasively
and continually measure blood pressure
anywhere on the body with next to no disruption
to the patient. A device based on
the new technique holds the promise to enable
better vital-sign monitoring at home,
in hospitals, and possibly even in remote
locations where resources are limited.
The new patented technique, called
resonance sonomanometry, uses sound
waves to gently stimulate resonance in an
artery and then uses ultrasound imaging
to measure the artery's resonance frequency,
arriving at a true measurement of
blood pressure. In a small clinical study,
Asahi_2023_MDB_printer.pdf 1 7/12/2023 3:31:35 PM
the device, which gives patients a gentle
buzzing sensation on the skin, produced
results akin to those obtained using the
standard-of-care blood pressure cuff.
" We ended up with a device that is
able to measure the absolute blood pressure
- not only the systolic and diastolic
numbers that we are used to getting
from blood pressure cuffs - but the
full waveform, " says Yaser Abu-Mostafa
(PhD '83), professor of electrical engineering
and computer science and one
of the authors of a new paper describing
the technique and device in the journal
PNAS Nexus. " With this device you can
measure blood pressure continuously
and in different sites on the body, giving
you much more information about the
blood pressure of a person. "
" This team has been working for almost
a decade, trying to build something
that makes a difference, that is good
enough to solve a real clinical problem, "
says Aditya Rajagopal (BS '08, PhD '14),
visiting associate in electrical engineering
at Caltech, research adjunct assistant
professor of biomedical engineering at
USC, and a co-author of the new paper.
" Many groups, including tech giants like
Apple and Google, have been working
toward a solution like this, because it
enables a spectrum of patient-monitoring
possibilities from the hospital to the
home. Our method broadens access to
hospital-grade monitoring of blood pressure
and cardiac health metrics. "
n Blood Pressure 101
Blood pressure is simply the force of
blood pushing on the walls of the body's
blood vessels as it gets pumped around
the body. High blood pressure, or hypertension,
is related to risk of heart attack,
stroke, chronic kidney disease, and other
health problems. Low blood pressure,
or hypotension, can also be a serious
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