A Miniature Non-Invasive Wireless Tail-Cuff-Based Heart Rate Sensor With Motion Artifacts Suppression for Real-Time Monitoring of Laboratory Mice

This paper presents the design, implementation, and characterization results of miniature, non-invasive, tail-cuff-based heart rate (HR) sensors for real-time laboratory mice monitoring. 3D-printed lightweight tail-cuffs incorporating MEMS piezo-resistive pressure sensors are developed to minimize animal stress. A tail-cuff design employing two pressure sensors is proposed to suppress differential motion artifacts. The prototype tail-cuff sensors have demonstrated the capability of detecting blood pressure (BP) pulse waveform from a laboratory mouse tail, from which HR and heart rate variability (HRV) can be obtained. Compared to a tail-cuff design employing one pressure sensor, the two-sensor tail-cuff design exhibits a maximum HR error of 4.9%, which is 16 times lower than that obtained from the one-sensor tail-cuff design. Further, a miniature wireless transmitter module is demonstrated to be suitable for BP pulse waveform telemetry.