In-Suit Detection of Venous Gas Emboli

Future manned missions to the moon and Mars will be resource constrained. Crew time and oxygen are among the most important resources for any manned mission. Unfortunately, current strategies—dentriogenation by long duration oxygen prebreathe protocols—for mitigating the risk of decompression sickness (DCS) during extravehicular activities (EVA) consume significant time and oxygen. NASA needs new and better strategies for monitoring, mitigating, and managing DCS risk. Creare proposes to adapt our diver-worn DCS risk assessment tool for EVA. Our proposed Body-worn Emboli Notification Device (BEND) will non-invasively monitor the astronaut’s blood for venous gaseous emboli (VGE) via two different ultrasound techniques: Doppler and dual-frequency ultrasound (DFU). It has long been established that there is a very strong correlation between VGE and DCS and that monitoring VGE is a promising avenue for assessing DCS risk in real-time. In addition to monitoring for VGE, BEND will use DFU to monitor microbubbles in the tissue and in the blood. DFU does not require precise alignment with the heart or veins to function (reducing the amount of crew time needed to properly don the device) and DFU requires minimal embedded signal processing (reducing the necessary processing power, which reduces the device size while increasing battery life). In Phase I, we will advance the TRL of our device from 3 to 5 by adapting our existing design for the EVA suit environment, fabricating prototypes, validating prototype performance in the laboratory in reduced pressure oxygen and freefall environments, and delivering a prototype to NASA for evaluation. In Phase II, we will increase our TRL to 6 by iterating the system design, fabricating high fidelity prototypes, and demonstrating performance in mission-simulating environments in the laboratory, in human subject flights in hypobaric chambers, and in an animal model of altitude DCS.

The technology developed under this program will improve both the safety and efficiency of extravehicular activity by providing real time feedback on decompression sickness (DCS) risk and allowing decompression schedules to be tailored and optimized for individual astronauts in real time. By providing early warning of the possibility of DCS, astronauts and mission planners will be able to take proactive corrective action to prevent or minimize the impact of DCS while reducing or avoiding the need for resource intensive oxygen prebreathes. Other government agencies engaged in activities in space will benefit from the proposed BEND technology, most notably including Space Force. Beyond the primary spaceflight application, the BEND technology is directly applicable to both diving and some aviation applications. The U.S. Navy and Army have extensive diving programs and capabilities, and the BEND technology is derived from a Navy program. These markets are significantly larger than the spaceflight market. The Navy Dive and Salvage Training Command (NDSTC, Panama City, Florida), Second Class Dive School graduates approximately 1,300 students per year. Pilots and aircrews operating at high altitudes are also at risk to altitude DCS. For example, cases of U-2 pilots experiencing altitude DCS have been anecdotally reported. Private spaceflight is a new and rapidly growing market favorable to BEND. The first private spacewalk occurred as part of the Polaris Dawn mission in 2024. Future commercial extraterrestrial missions to the moon or Mars are likely to include significant EVA. Beyond the spaceflight application, there is a significant diving market for the BEND technology, both for commercial and recreational diving. Non-military diving is big business. The global diving market is estimated to generate annual revenues of $8 billion, with some 22 million divers worldwide. Commercial diving represents a large market where both risk reduction and efficiency afforded by BEND-like technologies are highly valued.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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