A Microwave-Based Method for Early Detection of Congestive Heart Failure

We propose a microwave-based method for the early detection of Congestive heart failure (CHF). The proposed method is based on the prevalence of pulmonary edema accompanying CHF. Current approaches based on chest radiographs can only detect relatively high levels of pulmonary edema, limiting their efficacy for early diagnosis. We observe that microwaves passing through the thoracic cavity would experience significantly higher attenuation in the presence of fluid. Our detection method consists of a microwave source in the form of a two-dimensional array of low-power emitters placed on one side of the thoracic cavity, a corresponding array of receivers on the other side, and signal processing to compute the attenuation of microwaves as they pass through the body. We develop an electromagnetic simulation model to evaluate the proposed method and apply it to compute microwave attenuation in the absence and presence of various levels of pulmonary edema. Our experiments suggest that the method is sensitive to even mild and moderate levels of pulmonary edema that are difficult to detect using current first-line diagnostic methods. Our work makes a case for microwave-based detection as a safe, low-cost diagnostic method for CHF at earlier stages where there is a good potential for improved patient outcomes.