Wearables are valuable solutions for monitoring a variety of physiological parameters. Their application in cardiorespiratory monitoring may significantly impact global health problems and the economic burden related to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Here, we describe a soft biosensor capable of monitoring heart (HR) and respiratory (RR) rates simultaneously. We show that a skin-interfaced biosensor based on fiber optics (i.e., the smart patch) is capable of estimating HR and RR by detecting local ribcage strain caused by breathing and heart beating. The system addresses some of the main technical challenges that limit the wide-scale use of wearables, such as the simultaneous monitoring of HR and RR via single sensing modalities, their limited skin compliance, and low sensitivity. We demonstrate that the smart patch estimates HR and RR with high fidelity under different respiratory conditions and common daily body positions. We highlight the system potentiality of real-time cardiorespiratory monitoring in a broad range of home settings.

Tissue palpation is one of the most popular techniques to detect tissue abnormalities in clinical scenarios, including breast examination. However, the tactile sensation used to identify tumors by the clinician or a woman during breast palpation makes this procedure subjective. Over the past decades, tactile sensors have been developed o to quantitatively discriminate between cancerous and healthy tissues, but most of these systems still suffer from low force sensitivity, high power consumption, reduced sterilization durability, and electrical noise. This study aims at overcoming these limitations by exploiting the advantages of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) technology combined with the ones of 3D printing to develop an innovative tactile probe for breast cancer identification. FBGs have already been proposed for tissue palpation in minimally invasive surgery via tactile sensing, while their application in superficial palpation is still overlooked. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work in which the FBG integration into 3D printed structures is proposed for breast superficial palpation. Here, we first focused on the sensing unit design optimization via finite element analysis, fabrication, and metrological characterization. Then, the final prototype of the tactile probe integrating multiple identical sensing units was fabricated, and the results of tests on silicone samples with different hardness and on a phantom mimicking breast tissue with an early-stage tumor were discussed. The promising findings will guide further optimization of the tactile probe design to improve system spatial resolution, reduce its encumbrance and provide feedback to the user for applications on patients.

A novel fluid-structure computational framework for vascular applications is herein presented. It is developed by combining the double multi-scale nature of vascular physiopathology in terms of both tissue properties and blood flow. Addressing arterial tissues, they are modelled via a nonlinear multiscale constitutive rationale, based only on parameters having a clear histological and biochemical meaning. Moreover, blood flow is described by coupling a three-dimensional fluid domain (undergoing physiological inflow conditions) with a zero-dimensional model, which allows to reproduce the influence of the downstream vasculature, furnishing a realistic description of the outflow proximal pressure. The fluid-structure interaction is managed through an explicit time-marching approach, able to accurately describe tissue nonlinearities within each computational step for the fluid problem. A case study associated to a patient-specific aortic abdominal aneurysmatic geometry is numerically investigated, highlighting advantages gained from the proposed multiscale strategy, as well as showing soundness and effectiveness of the established framework for assessing useful clinical quantities and risk indexes.

One of the biggest challenges facing the world agriculture is feeding a growing population in a sustainable way. Therefore, global food availability is under a severe strain exacerbated by climate changes and biological stresses. Moreover, the content of macro and micronutrients obtained from in plant-food sources strongly depends on the plant development. An attractive strategy to increase agricultural productivity is the growth monitoring of plants and edible parts by using wearable systems. However, most of these tools measure dimensional changes uniaxially while an accurate representation of the growth distribution requires multi-point strain measurement especially for plants that show an anisotropic development. Here, we present a stretchable multi-sensor wearable system highly adaptable to the curvilinear surface of leaves and fruits for multi-directional dimensional monitoring. The proposed sensor consists of six fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) within a biomimetic flexible substrate with a flower design. FBGs with their miniaturized size, high metrological properties, and multiplexing capacities are well-suited to this purpose. A finite element model guides the optimal design and sensors positioning within the flower-shaped matrix to exhibit an adequate strain sensitivity and negligible crosstalk effects among the six sensing elements with a reduced encumbrance. A metrological characterization is first performed followed by the application of the proposed system for in-vivo detection of dimensional changes of a leaf and fruit in both indoor and outdoor scenarios.