The present invention relates to medical instruments, more particularly to a device for measuring blood oxygen saturation, and especially to a method for measuring blood oxygen content under low perfusion.
It is very necessary to monitor the state of blood oxygen for patients in the process of operation and reablement, generally, by monitoring a parameter of blood oxygen saturation. Conventionally, the above parameter is measured with spectrophotometry which utilizes the difference between light absorption coefficients of reduced hemoglobin and oxyhemoglobin based on the Lambert-Beer law and the theory of light scattering. The spectrophotometer can be performed by transmitted light or reflected light. The Lambert-Beer law is expressed as:
I=I0e−∝d,
Where I is the intensity of transmitted light, I0 is the intensity of incident light, C is the concentration of the light-receiving matter in solution, d is the path length of light absorbed by solution, and ε is the light absorption coefficient of the matter. From the above equation, the absorbance D is reached as follows:
D=ln I0/I=εcd.
It indicates that the light absorption of the matter correlates with the concentration thereof which implies the possibility of calculating internal composition of tissues from the light absorption of them.
The researchers have further researched the reduced hemoglobin (Hb) and the oxyhemoglobin (HbO2) closely correlating with the blood oxygen saturation. It is found that the difference between the light absorption coefficients of HbO2 and Hb is notable, as shown in
The arterial blood oxygen saturation is defined as:
SaO2=HbO2/(Hb+HbO2)=C1/(C1+C2), (1)
where C1 is the concentration of HbO2, and C2 is the concentration of Hb. Since
D(660)=ln I0(660)=ln(I0(660)/I(660)e−ε
D(805)=ln I0(805)/I(805)=ln(I0(805)/I(805)e−ε
where ε1 and ε2 are the light absorption coefficients of HbO2 and Hb for the red light with wavelength of 660 nm respectively, ε3 and ε4 are the light absorption coefficients of HbO2 and Hb for the infrared light with wavelength of 805 nm respectively and both equal to ε (i.e. ε3=ε4=ε), and d is the thickness of the light-transmitting tissue, the following equations can be reached:
C1+C2=D(805)/εd,
C1=(D(660)−ε2D(805)/ε)/(ε1−ε2)d.
By substituting them into the equitation (1), the following equation is reached
SaO2=A×D(660)/D(805)+B, (4)
where A=ε/(ε1−ε2) and B=ε2/(ε1−ε2).
However, D(660) and D(805) are not only relevant to Hb and HbO2, as expressed in the equations (2) and (3), but also relevant to the absorption of muscles, bones, pigments, adiposes, venous blood and the like in tissues. That is, each of D(660) and D(805) should further include a portion of background absorption as shown in
D(660)=ln I0(660)/I(660)=ln(I0(660)/IBe−ε
D(805)=ln I0(805)/I(805)=ln(I0(805)/IBe−ε
where I0 is the intensity of incident light, IB is the intensity of transmitted light when only the background absorption of tissues presents, Δd is the variation of the transmission distance as a result of the change from blood-free to blood-perfused. The background absorbance is easily defined as:
DB=ln(I0/IB).
Thereby, the following equations can be reached:
D(660)−DB(660)=ε1C1Δd+ε2C2Δd, (7)
D(805)−DB(805)=ε3C1Δd+ε4C2Δd, (8)
where ε3=ε4=ε, so the equation (4) become
SaO2=A×(D(660)−DB(660))/(D(805)−DB(805))+B. (9)
The equation (9) is the fundamental formula for detecting the blood oxygen saturation.
Generally, the infrared light with one isoabsorption point for wavelength of 805 nm is not utilized to detect the blood oxygen saturation, because it is hard to acquire the precise value of such wavelength and resultantly relatively large error occurs. The infrared light with wavelength of about 940 nm is commonly utilized, for the reason that the variation of the light absorption coefficients of HbO2 and Hb for the wavelength around are more smooth and thus little error usually occurs. When the infrared light with wavelength of 940 nm is utilized, since ε3 is not equal to ε4 (i.e. ε3≠ε4) in the equation (8) the equation (9) becomes the blood oxygen saturation Spo2
Spo2=(A×R+B)/(C×R+D), (10)
where A=ε1, B=−ε2, C=ε4−ε3, D=ε1−ε2, and
It can be known from the above equations that “R” and blood oxygen saturation are one to one correspondence. Since D=LnI0/I=εcd,
where IRM is the maximum intensity of the transmitted light of red light, IRm is the minimum intensity of the transmitted light of red light, IR0 is the intensity of the incident light of red light, IIM is the maximum intensity of the transmitted light of infrared light, IIm is the minimum intensity of the transmitted light of infrared light, and II0 is the intensity of the incident light of infrared light. With regard to red light, the following equation can be reached:
When the ratio of pulsating component to direct current (DC) component, namely (IRM−IRm)/IRM is small,
pulsating component/DC component.
Accordingly, R can be expressed as follows:
where RedAC is the alternating current (AC) component of the intensity of transmitted red light (i.e. AC peak value of the intensity of red light), RedDC is the DC component of the intensity of transmitted red light, IrAC is the AC component of the intensity of transmitted infrared light (i.e. AC peak value of the intensity of the infrared light), and IrDC is the DC component of the intensity of transmitted infrared light. From the above equations, it can be seen that the main factor influencing the variable R is the AC components of the intensity of transmitted red light and infrared light, because the DC components of the intensity of the two transmitted lights are relatively stable for a period of time after the operating state of the light emitting diode is adjusted and fixed. Now the AC component is calculated by finding out the maximum value and minimum value of the intensity of the two transmitted lights. Therefore, the value of “R” can be calculated if the waveforms of the two transmitted lights in a full pulse wave were known.
In a human body, the arterial blood pulsates in the end parts of tissues as a result of the pulse wave, and the HbO2 and Hb cause the end parts of tissues (such as fingers) to have different transmittivities for red light and infrared light. Nowadays, according to the above principle, the domestic or foreign pulse oximeters operate by irradiating red light and infrared light with a certain intensity to the fingers, detecting the transmitted light intensities of the two lights, and then calculating the blood oxygen saturation based on the ratio of the density variations of the red light and the infrared light after the two lights passing through the fingers and the corresponding equations described above.
According to the principle described above, a device for measuring blood oxygen saturation basically includes a blood oxygen sensor and a signal processing unit. The key element of the blood oxygen sensor is a sensor including a light-emitting diode (LED) and a photosensor. The LED can provide the lights of two or more wavelengths. The photosensor can convert the light signals passing through the fingers and containing the information of blood oxygen saturation into electrical signals which are provided to a signal processing module to be digitalized for calculating the blood oxygen saturation.
More particularly, the measuring device can be functional divided into the following parts, i.e. a power supply circuit, a driving circuit a signal amplifying and processing part, an A/D (analog/digital) converting circuit, a logical control part, a single-chip microcomputer data processing part and the like. Specifically, as shown in
However, there are the following disadvantages in the conventional method described above. The level of perfusion is usually very low for patients. Since it is necessary to measure the AC component of the pulse waveform under this condition, that is, to find out the maximum value and minimum value of the waveform, but the signal to be measured is very poor under low perfusion and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is very low as well, it becomes difficult to find out the waveform. Therefore, errors may occur during the process of measuring the peak value of the pulse wave, and the ratio of AC to DC obtained thus may be wrong, which cause the value of blood oxygen content measured finally to have very low accuracy.
The present invention intends to provide a method for measuring blood oxygen content, which can accurately measure or monitor the value of blood oxygen content by analyzing and calculating the sampled data of pulse wave, as concerning the case where the level of perfusion is low and signals are poor.
To solve the problem described above, the general concept of the present invention is proposed as follows. Since it can be proved that the integration result of the sampled data of pulse wave corresponds to AC component of the pulse wave, the peak value of waveform, which is necessary to be found in the conventional method, can be replaced by the area integration of signal to calculate the blood oxygen saturation. Thus, only it is necessary to integrate the pulse waveform in a period of time. Further, the disturbance to effective signal by noise can be eliminated with the integration of the noise in the period of time approximating to zero. Therefore, the measuring accuracy of blood oxygen content under low perfusion can be improved.
As the technical solution for realizing the general concept of the present invention, there is provided a method for measuring blood oxygen content under low perfusion, which is used in a device for measuring blood oxygen content, includes the steps of:
a. initializing the device that is applied with power;
b. collecting and processing data with a driving circuit of a light emitting device, a bias circuit, a gain circuit and an A/D sampling circuit, which are controlled under a core control module;
c. calculating blood oxygen saturation based on the collected data with a data processing module which integrates the collected data in a period of time with an area integration method; and
d. outputting from a communication functional module results of the blood oxygen saturation or pulse rate calculated with the data processing module fits envelope waveform of a pulse wave
In the step of c, the data processing module further fits envelope waveform of the pulse wave and finds out the maximum value and the minimum value of the pulse wave to calculate the blood oxygen saturation with a waveform method based on the collect data. The method, between the steps of c and d, further includes a decision step of deciding the two results acquired from the data processing module with the waveform method and the integration method respectively based on the intensity of the measured signal and generating the final measured result, performed by a decision unit included in the device. The device performs the sampling and measuring by making at least two lights pass through end parts of tissues, wherein one is red light, and the other is infrared light; and in the step of c, the data of the two lights is integrated respectively to calculate the ratio of integration result of the red light to that of the infrared light for replacing the ratio of AC peak value of the intensity of the red light RedAC to that of the infrared light IrAC received during the period of time.
According to the technical solution described above, the disturbance to effective signal by noise can be eliminated, and the measuring accuracy of blood oxygen content under low perfusion can be improved without increasing the production cost for the measuring device.
Now the present invention will be further described in connection with the preferred embodiments shown in the attached figures.
According to the present invention, the disturbance to the signal waveform by noise under low perfusion can be effectively inhibited by adopting an asymptotic integration method. It can be proved theoretically that the asymptotic integration method is equivalent to the conventional method for finding the AC component of waveform under low perfusion. Thus, the asymptotic integration method is used to solve the problem that the measured result of blood oxygen content is inaccurate under low perfusion. At least two Lights are utilized to pass through end parts of tissues for sampling and measuring in the measuring system, wherein one is red light, and the other is infrared light. Firstly, the measured data of the two lights is normalized to acquire the DC ratio of the two lights
The normalized waveform of blood oxygen content can be treated as the combination of the waveform under ideal condition with noise. The waveform of blood oxygen content under ideal condition, both red light and infrared light can be treated as the combination of sine waves in different frequency ranges, i.e.
Red=a0 cos(ωt)+a1 cos(2ωt)+ . . . +an-1 cos(nωt)+nRed (14)
Ir=b0 cos(ωt)+b1 cos(2ωt)+ . . . +bn-1 cos(nωt)+nIr (15)
where a0, a1, . . . an-1 are the first to nth components of the frequency spectrum of red light respectively, nRed is the noise component in red light b0, b1, . . . bn-1 are the first to nth components of the frequency spectrum of infrared light respectively, nIr is the noise component in infrared light. The two equations above are integrated respectively to acquire the following ratio:
If the noise can be treated as white noise in a period of time, the integration of the noise will be zero. Thereby, the above equation is reduced to
Therefore, the ratio of AC data of the intensity of the two lights (namely, the AC peak values RedAC and IrAC) received in a period of time can be replaced with the ratio of the integration data of the two lights in the period of time in condition that the integrating time is long enough to make the integration of noises approximate to zero. Furthermore, as the disturbance by noise is eliminated by the method, the measuring under low perfusion will be in well effect.
The waveforms of red light and infrared light simulated actually from the sampling points are shown in
According to the description above, the accuracy of the measuring device under low perfusion can be increased by improving the system software and using the method according to the present invention, based on the measuring device as shown in
The precondition for the decision and calculation in the decision step is described as follows. Supposing the result of the blood oxygen saturation acquired with the waveform method is A1, the result of the blood oxygen saturation acquired with the integration method is A2, and the final measured result of the blood oxygen saturation is A, then
A=a*A1+(1−a)*A2,
where the value of “a” can be selected in the range of 1 to 0 depending on the intensity of the measured signal.
The measured signal with relative high intensity, for example, the collected analog signal whose intensity can reach the full range of A/D converting without being amplified, is taken as a reference. If the intensity of actual measured signal is larger than one thirty-second ( 1/32) of the intensity of the reference, the results of A1 and A2 become approximate to each other, thereby the value of “a” can be selected as 0.5 (i.e. a=0.5), and the average value of A1 and A2 is adopted as the final result; if the intensity of actual measured signal is smaller than one thirty-second ( 1/32) of the intensity of the reference but larger than one sixty-forth ( 1/64) of the intensity of the reference, the value of “a” can be selected as 0.4 (i.e. a=0.4); if the intensity of actual measured signal is smaller than one sixty-forth ( 1/64) of the intensity of the reference but larger than one one-hundred-twenty-eighth ( 1/128) intensity of the reference, the value of “a” can be selected as 0.3 (i.e. a=0.3); and the like. If the intensity of actual measured signal decreases to a certain degree, the value of “a” can be selected as 0 (i.e. a=0), and the result acquired with the integration method is adopted as the final result.
The precondition of the method described above is that the blood oxygen saturation of the measured object is constant in a period of time. In this case, the longer integrating time results in better measuring effect, and then more close to the truth. But once the blood oxygen saturation of the measured object changes (generally changes gently), the overlong integrating time may result in the decrease of measuring sensibility, thereby the real-time measuring or monitoring function of the system is degraded. To solve this problem, during the processes described above, the integration is only performed in a period of time (for example, 2-3 seconds), and a forgetting factor λ is incorporated to retain the real-time monitoring function. Therefore, the ratio of the AC peak value RedAC and IrAC of the current two lights becomes
where RedAC
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Number | Date | Country | |
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20090112074 A1 | Apr 2009 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | 11316060 | Dec 2005 | US |
Child | 12346565 | US |