Medical Applications of Ultra WideBand UWB Jianli Pan jp10 cse wustl edu A survey paper written under guidance of Prof Raj Jain Download Abstract As an emerging technology Ultra Wide Band UWB wireless communications provides a very different approach to wireless technologies compared to conventional narrow band systems which brings huge research interests in it Because of this UWB has many potential applications to be researched One of the promising application areas is in medicine Some unique features of UWB make it very suitable for medical areas In this paper we will give a survey of the features and its current major applications in medical areas such as medical monitoring and medical imaging which are discussed and analyzed in detail After that other applications future potential applications and research directions are discussed Current research organizations in this area are also given At last we summarize the whole survey paper Keywords Ultra WideBand UWB Medical Application medical monitoring medical imaging Table of Contents 1 Introduction 1 1 Two modulation modes of UWB 1 2 Medical UWB History 2 UWB features for Medical Application 2 1 Penetrating through obstacles 2 2 High precision ranging at the centimeter level 2 3 Low electromagnetic radiation 2 4 Low processing energy consumed 2 5 Features that UWB lacks 3 UWB in Medical Monitoring 3 1 Patient motion monitoring 3 2 Vital signs monitoring of human body 3 3 Monitoring of medicine storage 4 UWB in Medical Imaging 4 1 Cardiology Imaging 4 2 Pneumology Imaging 4 3 Obstetrics Imaging 4 4 Ear Nose Throat Imaging 5 Other applications and Future Potential Applications 5 1 Other medical application areas of UWB 5 2 Research Directions 5 3 Research Organizations 1 of 12 6 Summary 7 References 8 List of Acronyms 1 Introduction Ultra wideband UWB radio is an emerging technology with some unique attractive features which are combined with researches in other fields such as wireless communications radar and medical engineering fields Formally before 2001 UWB s application is limited mainly in military areas However since 2002 FCC has gradually allowed the commercial usage of these bandwidths which makes it possible that every common people could benefit the UWB features Federal Communications Commission FCC regulate that the frequency for the UWB technique is from 3 1GHz to 10 6GHz in America However in Europe the frequencies include two parts from 3 4 GHz to 4 8 GHz and 6 GHz to 8 5 GHz The power radiation requirement of UWB is strict and it would not disturb the existing equipments because UWB s spectrum looks like background noise The UWB spectrum mask defined by FCC and the CEPT proposal is shown in Fig 1 Allen05 1 1 Two modulation modes of UWB With the abundant frequency resource the UWB has two modulation modes the Impulse Radio IR and Multi band OFDM Xu07 They have different advantages and could be applied in different fields in medical area MB OFDM mode of UWB could be used for small range high speed data communications For IR mode by using low power ultra short pulses sub nanosecond interval UWB has many applications short range high speed broadband access to the Internet accurate localization at centimeter level and high resolution penetrating radar in the medical engineering et al In these applications the accuracy detection and location is much adapt to the medical monitor and the high resolution imaging is suitable for pathologic imaging which is modulated by the IR So the UWB technology attracts more and more researchers interest in the medical applications area In a word the two modes of UWB modulation illustrate the two main function of UWB Sensing and Communicating Fig 1 UWB Spectrum Mask as Defined by FCC and the current CEPT proposal Allen05 1 2 Medical UWB History Applying Ultra WideBand UWB technology in medical applications is an emerging research trend in recent years 2 of 12 First attempt of using UWB radar in medical applications is in human body monitoring and imaging in 1993 On August 9 1994 the first US Patent application was filed for medical UWB radar One year later MIT began an educational project for the Radar Stethoscope MIT95 In 1996 the biomedical use of UWB radars is better described with photo and sample tracings and in the same year the US Patent McEwan96 was awarded Since then UWB is often deemed as a possible alternative to remote sensing and imaging Compared with X ray imaging UWB radar probes use non ionizing electromagnetic waves which proved to be harmless to human body Moreover the UWB radar has very low average power level and is very power efficient Thus is suitable to be a potentially cost effective way of human body imaging especially in real time imaging By 1999 many works have begun for UWB medical applications in cardiology obstetrics breath pathways and arteries The following parts of the paper are organized as follows Section 2 gives several key features of UWB that make it suitable for medical applications Current research and application of UWB in medical monitoring are discussed in Section 3 Medical UWB in medical imaging is analyzed and discussed in Section 4 We then discuss the future work directions and future potential applications in Section 5 Finally a summary is given Back to Table of Contents 2 UWB features for Medical Application It is known that the UWB pulse is generated in a very short time period sub nano second So it has spectrum below the allowed noise level This feature makes it possible to get Gbps speed by using 10GHZ spectrum So UWB is suitable to be used for high speed over short distances Such noise like feature relies on ultra short waveforms and does not require IF processing because they can be operated at baseband This UWB feature has long been appreciated as key advantages for medical engineering Xu07 2 1 Penetrating through obstacles In discussing this capability we could compare UWB with ultrasound Although UWB and ultrasound are in fact very similar and many of the signal processing techniques used in ultrasonic systems can be applied to UWB systems it is different from ultrasound which has broad application in today s world The major difference is that ultrasound is basically a line of sight technology and it is very s hort range It is used for medical imaging but it typically works only over a few inches However UWB is different because it does not use high frequency sound waves which can not penetrate obstacles UWB uses RF pulses and has
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