When a patient is in a hospital, it is very important to monitor their vital signs. Doctors and nurses use this information to assess the condition of the patient. Most of the existing vital signs measurement devices need physical contact with the patient. This thesis focuses on a non-contact vital signs estimation method. Using a mmWave radar, one or more persons in the view of the sensor are being monitored. This monitoring consists of finding the chest region of a person, and monitoring this chest for vibrations. These vibrations are caused by breathing in and out, and the beating of the heart. Using signal processing, these vibrations can be converted to a heart rate and a respiration rate.

This thesis is about getting insight in the already available options regarding vital signs monitoring, programming the Texas Instruments IWR6843ISK mmWave radar module to estimate the vital signs of multiple persons and validating this project against trusted vital signs monitors.

The implemented solution which followed from this project is able to track multiple persons inside the radar view, and is able to measure the vital signs for up to four persons in real-time. The mean accuracy gained for one person heart rate estimation is 10.8%, the mean accuracy gained for one person respiration rate estimation is 7.6%. The mean observed accuracy for multiple person heart rate estimation is 13.4%, the multiple person respiration rate mean accuracy is 10.6%.

Expanded Criteria Donor (ECD) organs are being used more often in clinical setting. The regenerative ability of the organs might be able to restore the organ to full functionality ex vivo. For long term kidney stabilization, optimization and monitoring an organ incubator is preferable. However, it is unclear which available parts would work best in synergy. A Normothermic Machine Perfusion (NMP) setup and a Mathematical Windkessel Model were created as a first step in a larger project of prolonged preservation of ECD organs. While the current NMP setup was found adequate for academic research, it can only be used for simple studies using water. Several fundamental improvements need to be made before the setup can be used as a fully functioning NMP setup for kidneys. Key improvements would be the addition of a Windkessel and a different cardiac pump.