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Imagine if your clothes could pick up the sounds of everything going on around you.

Scientists have created a fabric which can pick up sounds and could be used as a hearing aid, to monitor heartbeats or even in spacecrafts.

The new fibre works like a microphone. It picks up sounds and turns them into vibrations and then electrical signals, in a similar way to how ears work.

When woven into a shirts lining, the researchers say the fabric can even detect a wearer's heartbeat.

The fabric can capture sounds as low as a quiet library to louder sounds like heavy road traffic.

It can even tell the precise direction of sudden sounds like hand claps.

The fibre was created by engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and researchers at Rhode Island School of Design.

It is designed from a "piezoelectric" material that produces an electrical signal when bent, which means the fabric can convert sound vibrations into electrical signals.

"Wearing an acoustic garment, you might talk through it to answer phone calls and communicate with others," said lead author Yet Wan, who created the technology at MIT.

Once they had created the fibre, the team was able to weave it into a more traditional fabric which was much more flexible.

When it was sewed into the back of a shirt it was able to pick up the sound of people clapping, even picking up the direction the clapping was coming from.

When stitched to the shirts inner lining it could pick up the person's heartbeat, which the researchers think could be used in maternity clothes to monitor a baby's heartbeat.

As well as wearable hearing aids, and garments that track your heartbeat, the team says there are possibilities beyond clothing.

"It can be integrated with spacecraft skin to listen to (accumulating) space dust, or embedded into buildings to detect cracks or strains," Yan suggests. "It can even be woven into a smart net to monitor fish in the ocean."