Digestion monitoring with wearable acoustic sensors (GastroDigitalShirt)

The goal of the project is the development of a non-invasive method based on abdominal auscultation to monitor patients with chronic inflammatory bowel disease in free-living.

Motivation

Most common gastrointestinal disorders are chronic conditions and reduce patient quality of life. Nowadays mostly endoscopic and uncomfortable examinations can provide a detailed diagnosis of the gastrointestinal disease. We aim to develop a novel investigation approach to monitor the digestion inconspicuously and continuously. We additionally investigate low-amplitude sounds produced by peristaltic contractions, i.e. Bowel Sounds (BS), as an indicator of chronic Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).

Innovation

We developed a smart T-Shirt (GastroDigitalShirt) in collaboration with the Universitätsklinikum Erlangen. The prototype embeds 8 miniaturized digital microphones that can record BS unobtrusively. We use stretchable fabric to optimally fit patients in free-living. The GastroDigitalShirt is currently used in a pilot study to collect and analyze BS from healthy participants and IBD patients. Based on the differences in BS patterns collected across the study groups, we will extract acoustic inflammation-related biomarkers and validate them against blood and stool samples collected from IBD patients and used as reference data.

The project received in 2019 the DGVS Innovation Award “Digital Gastroenterology” by the German Society for Gastroenterology, Digestive and Metabolic Diseases.