Acoustic system for the estimation of the temporary blood chamber volume of the POLVAD heart supporting prosthesis

BACKGROUND: The paper presents a newly researched acoustic system for blood volume measurements for the developed family of Polish ventricular assist devices. The pneumatic heart-supporting devices are still the preferred solution in some cases, and monitoring of their operation, especially the temporary blood volume, is yet to be solved. METHODS: The prototype of the POLVAD-EXT prosthesis developed by the Foundation of Cardiac Surgery Development, Zabrze, Poland, is equipped with the newly researched acoustic blood volume measurement system based on the principle of Helmholtz’s acoustic resonance. The results of static volume measurements acquired using the acoustic sensor were verified by measuring the volume of the liquid filling the prosthesis. Dynamic measurements were conducted on the hybrid model of the human cardiovascular system at the Foundation, with the Transonic T410 (11PLX transducer - 5% uncertainty) ultrasound flow rate sensor, used as the reference. RESULTS: The statistical analysis of a series of static tests have proved that the sensor solution provides blood volume measurement results with uncertainties (understood as a standard mean deviation) of less than 10%. Dynamic tests show a high correlation between the results of the acoustic system and those obtained by flow rate measurements using an ultrasound transit time type sensor. CONCLUSIONS: The results show that noninvasive, online temporary blood volume measurements in the POLVAD-EXT prosthesis, making use of the newly developed acoustic system, provides accurate static and dynamic measurements results. Conducted research provides the preliminary view on the possibility of reducing the additional sensor chamber volume in future.