Apple has been granted a patent for “Heart Measurement Using Acoustic Techniques.” It involves ways for the Vision Pro and perhaps the rumored Apple smart glasses (“Apple Glasses”) to track a wear’s heart activity.
About the patent
In the patent Apple notes that heart pathologies includes a range of conditions that relate to a person’s heart, such as, for example, blood vessel disease (e.g., coronary artery disease), heart rhythm problems (e.g., arrhythmias), heart defects (e.g., congenital heart defects), heart valve disease, disease of the heart muscle, heart infection, or other heart pathologies. The number of times the heart beats within a certain time period (e.g., in a minute) may be referred to as a heart rate. A person’s heart rate may indicate heart fitness, heart pathology, and health of the circulatory system.
Summary of the patent
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “An ultrasonic wave is output from a speaker of a head-worn device. A microphone signal is obtained from a microphone of the head-worn device that senses the ultrasonic wave as it reflects off an ear of a user. Heart activity such as a heart rate of the user is determined based at least on the microphone signal. Other aspects are also described and claimed.”
Apple’s patent involves a computing device that includes a processor configured to cause an ultrasonic wave to output from a speaker of a head-worn device. The device is worn on or in an ear of a user and obtains a microphone signal of a microphone of the device that receives a reflected ultrasonic wave.
The wave is responsive to the outputted ultrasonic wave, and determines the heart rate of the device wearer. For example, the ultrasonic wave may reflect off of a user’s ear canal, the eardrum, pinna, and/or other surfaces of the ear. Determining the heart activity of the user may include detecting a change in phase of the ultrasonic wave in the microphone signal over time.\
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