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Monitoring COVID-19 Patients

PhD student Devin Willey demonstrates the portable breathing sensor.

Dean Darnell PhD received an NIH grant to develop a system to monitor breathing patterns of COVID patients. This device combines two technologies: an ultrasound system from Brigham Women’s Hospital that acquires a patient’s biomechanical respiratory data and a wireless MR coil with corresponding electronics developed at Duke by PhD student Devin Willey. Together, the system can simultaneously acquire MR lung images and wirelessly transmit the ultrasound respiratory data to a cloud-based platform for analysis. Since the device is MR compatible and portable, it can not only accompany a COVID-19 patient during imaging in the hospital but also travel with the patient back home to monitor their respiratory health remotely. Darnell is our program faculty, and he and Willey are also members of the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center (BIAC).