# Development and Validation of a Wearable Ultrasonic Sensor for Noninvasive Beat-to-beat Blood Pressure Monitoring

> **NIH NIH R43** · SOFTSONICS LLC · 2023 · $253,009

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Hemodynamic monitoring is often carried out by invasive techniques. Noninvasive, continuous blood pressure
monitoring is a major challenge in the multibillion-dollar healthcare industry. However, there is a clear lack of
satisfactory noninvasive solution: blood pressure cuffs only provide intermittent data and can be irritating to
patients, and other emerging non-invasive technologies require complex and frequent calibration procedures
and oftentimes suffer from physiological or measurement artifacts. There is a critical need for new non-invasive
technologies for blood pressure surveillance. The goal of this project is to develop an easy-to-use noninvasive
blood pressure sensor prototype based on a proof-of-concept wearable device demonstrated by the team. The
device records the human central blood pressure with a soft ultrasonic patch, which extracts blood vessel
diameter based on A-mode ultrasound radiofrequency signals. The approach is enabled by stretchable electronic
designs that allow conformal, seamless contact of a soft device with the human skin, eliminating the need for
coupling gel at the device/skin interface. In this project, the current lab prototype will be redesigned to enable the
device application in a clinical setting guided by physician interviews. The manufacturability will be enhanced to
prepare for scale-up. The approach is innovative because it is the first-of-its-kind to acquire the blood pressure
waveforms of major arteries non-invasively by a stretchable ultrasonic patch. In addition, because most existing
devices on the market are either rigid or flexible but not stretchable, knowledge on stretchable device prototyping
and packaging is critical to technological translation of similar wearable health monitoring sensors. The proposed
research is significant because it aims to use a band-aid-like device to collect beat-to-beat pressure waveforms
that are conventionally done invasively. Ultimately, the proposed approach has the potential to clear the
roadblock to practical applications for cuffless blood pressure sensing and impact the clinical practice, which can
eventually translate to improvements in patient outcomes and reductions in healthcare costs.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10699861
- **Project number:** 1R43HL169121-01
- **Recipient organization:** SOFTSONICS LLC
- **Principal Investigator:** Sai Zhou
- **Activity code:** R43 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $253,009
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2023-07-01 → 2026-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10699861

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10699861, Development and Validation of a Wearable Ultrasonic Sensor for Noninvasive Beat-to-beat Blood Pressure Monitoring (1R43HL169121-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10699861. Licensed CC0.

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