The present invention relates to a system for sensing physiological characteristics. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system sensing physiological characteristics from the systems in a living creature, such as respiratory system and digestive system, by using light to stimulate the surface of the living creature to obtain the corresponding electromagnetic changes in the body of the living creature.
Generally speaking, in order to know the status of organs or systems in the body of a living creature, further understanding the health situation of the living creature, in addition to being dissected in a medical way, there are many non-destructive methods. Take human being for example. Medical staffs use X-rays to observe the lesion with the rays emitted by the cathode. These rays encounter different components and density of organizations. The penetration rates are not the same. Residues remaining in the imaging film or detector in the last are also not the same. Therefore, images with different brightness can be formed. Another higher resolution imager is Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging (NMRI) apparatus. It uses the principle of nuclear magnetic resonance to analyze the degree of attenuation of energy in different structural environments within an object. With the electromagnetic wave emitted by the applied gradient magnetic field detection, it is able to know the locations and species of the nuclei that make up the organ of this object. Thus, a structural image inside the object can be drawn. Broadly speaking, the above-mentioned techniques, no less than the use of high-density energy to stimulate the human body, and use some physical observations that can be detected from the human body at the same time to speculate or restore the situation within the human body. Sometimes, it is necessary to exert a certain amount of adjuvant to the human body, such as a developer. In addition to the problems such as expensive equipment and some minor injuries caused to the human body, if these techniques can be widely applied to all living creatures, whether it is for academic research or disease treatment, there are a lot of parameters needed to be adjusted. There is still much to be improved.
As we all know, living creatures are made up of a large number of single cells, working together to achieve many of the tasks required for survival. Take human being for example again. The human body is composed of 3.72×1013 single cells. These cells accumulate to form tissues, organs and systems. When a cell is biologically stimulated (For example, oxidation, microbial violations, temperature anomalies, and so on), the cell's own genes will adjust the structure and synthesis of various molecular substances, in a certain range, to change abnormal conditions back to normal. Meanwhile, it will also convey its own situation to the neighboring cells, together passing the message to other organs or systems. When the cell biological information and the number of occurrences reach a certain threshold, other organ or system will respond, for example, immune cells began to activate, adrenal gland secretes hormones, pituitary secretes hormones and so on. Its purpose is to assist in the repair. Modern biomedical points out that among cells, organs or systems, for use of molecular materials to convey the messages, in addition to molecular structure and quantity, involved level also includes energy, electrons and so on which are of more subtle changes. In addition to the use of adjacent cells to pass message, other cells, organs and systems may get the relevant information through the nervous system and circulatory system. Hence, in addition to blood, urine and other body fluids test analysis of “relatively giant” metabolic status, to understand the subtle changes of the messages can know more details about the current overall status of various organs and systems in the body. Now, at the molecular biology level, there is a partial understanding of message delivery status in vivo, e. g. energy and lesions of mitochondrion. However, if the skin is properly stimulated and signals, such as voltage changes, from the skin can be read, the current situation of the organ or system that delivers the message may be known.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,549,805 provides an associated technology. It is related to a system that utilizes non-invasive biological feedback signals. Please see
'805 utilizes relationship between light stimulation and micro potential changes on human surface to provide the operator (usually a doctor or a scientist) feedback messages to determine the status of the organs or systems of human (living creature) body. Although it is similar to “pulse” in traditional Chinese medicine used to understand the patient's condition, the signals provided by '805 are more complex. It needs to use special signal conversion technique, screening out some required information. Portion of the information screened can be used to compared with the huge past clinical data to make more objective judgments. However, the judgments for human (living creature) body provided from '805 must be checked by the operator. Thus, the results are subjective. Some operators may make their own judgments by comparing available data with naked eyes, but the portion which is involved in human manipulation could be prone to errors. This depreciates the contributions of '805.
Therefore, in order to settle the problems that '805 cannot solve, effectively use external light stimulation to understand the operation of human systems, even further assess aging and damage of the systems in the body of with clinical data, a system for sensing physiological characteristics is provided by the inventor. The system can alert patients as earlier as possible before medical improvement for some disease processes, as part of preventive medicine. Importantly, the system can apply not only on human beings, but all living creatures, contributing to scientific researches.
This paragraph extracts and compiles some features of the present invention; other features will be disclosed in the follow-up paragraphs. It is intended to cover various modifications and similar arrangements included within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.
In order to fulfill the requirements mentioned above, the present invention provides a system for sensing physiological characteristics. The system includes: a stimulating light emitting unit, for continuously emitting signal light beams with specific wavelengths to a first region of skin of a living creature; a potential measuring unit, capable of being attached to a second region of the skin of the living creature, for measuring the electric potential of the second region; an analog-to-digital converting unit, electrically connected to the potential measuring unit, for converting the measured value of electric potential to a corresponding binary value at a sampling frequency within a measuring time; a characteristic parameter group filtering unit, connected to the analog-to-digital converting unit, for converting the binary value from the analog-to-digital converting unit into a plurality of characteristic parameter groups, wherein each characteristic parameter group comprises a plurality of numbers; a characteristic parameter group storing unit, for storing characteristic parameter groups and standard values for each characteristic parameter group from different samples of the same living creatures according to different characteristic parameter groups; a comparing and calculating unit, connected to the characteristic parameter group filtering unit and the characteristic parameter group storing unit, for calculating differences between a plurality of characteristic parameter groups from the characteristic parameter group filtering unit and standard values of the same characteristic parameter groups in the characteristic parameter group storing unit, and utilizing the differences and corresponding standard values to process comparison calculations; an analysis unit, connected to the comparing and calculating unit, for storing physiological characteristic judgments the differences of each characteristic parameter group represent; and a display unit, for displaying the physiological characteristic judgment in the analysis unit and/or results of comparison calculations from the comparing and calculating unit.
According to the present invention, the second region and the first region are not on the surfaces of adjacent skin of the living creature.
According to the present invention, the system for sensing physiological characteristics may further include a testee characteristic parameter group storing unit, connected to the characteristic parameter group filtering unit and the comparing and calculating unit, for storing the plurality of characteristic parameter groups from the characteristic parameter group filtering unit, and providing the characteristic parameter groups to the comparing and calculating unit.
According to the present invention, the specific wavelengths may be near infrared light wavelengths and range from 800 nm to 900 nm.
According to the present invention, the power of the signal light beams is smaller than 0.5 Watt.
According to the present invention, the stimulating light emitting unit may be an infrared LED emitter.
According to the present invention, the potential measuring unit may be a phototransistor.
According to the present invention, if the living creature is human being, then the characteristic parameter group filtering unit converts the binary value into 13 characteristic parameter groups. A first characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of the skin and associated derivatives, a second characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of bones, joint, bones and spines, a third characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of blood vessels, heart striated muscle and smooth muscle, a fourth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of blood, spleen and hematopoietic organs, a fifth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of intestinal, stomach and muscle tissues, a sixth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of intestine, duodenum, ileum, pancreas, exocrine system, salivary glands and esophageal, a seventh characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of genital organs, an eighth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of liver and gallbladder, a ninth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of kidney, bladder and ureter, a tenth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of immune system, nasal and bronchial, a eleventh characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of nervous system and endocrine system, a twelfth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of sympathetic system, parasympathetic system, peripheral nervous system, self-sensor and physiological analyzer, and a thirteenth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of brain and spirit.
According to the present invention, the results of the comparison calculations are presented by a plurality of scattering relation values. The larger the scattering relation values are, the farer the characteristic parameter groups representing the physiological characteristics are away from the standard values that the physiological characteristics are far from far from healthy status.
According to the present invention, the plurality of characteristic parameter groups are obtained by fast Fourier transform operation.
According to the present invention, the standard values may be values of the characteristic parameter groups obtained from healthy living creatures.
According to the present invention, the display unit may be a smartphone, a tablet, or a screen of a laptop computer or a desktop computer.
According to the present invention, the system for sensing physiological characteristics may further include a power supply unit, for providing power the system needs to operate.
The present invention utilizes external signal light beams to stimulate the skin to fetch data of potential changes, and further observes the status of various organs or systems in the living creature by numerical means. The characteristic parameter group storing unit with the analysis unit and the display unit can remove the error probability caused by man-made operation in the prior arts, suitable for scientific research applications.
The following description contains the embodiments of the present invention in order to understand how the present invention is applied to practical conditions. It is to be noted that in the following figures, portions not related to the illustrative techniques of the present invention have been omitted. Meanwhile, In order to highlight the relationship between the elements, the ratio between the components in the diagram and the ratio between the real components is not necessarily the same.
Please refer to
The stimulating light emitting unit 100 is used to continuously emit signal light beams with specific wavelengths to a first region of skin of a living creature. The living creature refers to any species that have a living phenomenon, especially an animal. In the present embodiment, take human beings (human body) as an example for illustration. Human beings have many accumulated academic and practical achievements in medicine, and the clinical trials carried out corresponding to the present invention all can be used to verify the specific results of the present invention. The physiological characteristic mentioned in the present invention refers to the corresponding chemical or physical changes when a system or an organ of a living creature operates. Take human being as an example. For digestive system, the physiological characteristic is stomach acid secretion, intestinal peristalsis, etc. For the heart, heart rate and myocardial status also belong to physiological characteristic. General living creatures also have their physiological characteristics. Theoretically, the signal light beams emitted to the body through the skin should be better under a situation of no background light, e.g. in a darkroom, in order to avoid interferences of background light with close wavelengths or strong energy. In practice, the interferences can be eliminated by eliminating background noise. However, in order to avoid unnecessary burst interference or interferences of too strong light sources, resulting in inaccurate evaluation, reduce light intensity near the stimulating light emitting unit 100 as much as possible.
In practice, the stimulating light emitting unit 100 can be an infrared LED emitter. The specific wavelengths of the light beams emitted are near infrared light wavelengths and range from 800 nm to 900 nm. Preferably, for safety consideration, power of the signal light beams is smaller than 0.5 Watt, e.g. 0.25 Watt. This intensity is sufficient to stimulate enough reactions to be measured. According to the spirit of the present invention, the signal light beams as an external source of energy to stimulate the body, should be continuously emitted to a first region (the first region will be illustrated with a second region disclosed later) of the skin. According to the test results, it is better to keep the continuous time at least one minute. Because the longer the simulation lasts, the more the response signals corresponding to the simulation can be fetched. It is better to have the duration over one minute. For every living creature, the type of light source used to obtain the best light stimulation for the systems in the body may not be the same. Take human beings as an example. The best light wavelengths of the signal light beams should be near infrared light wavelengths. Other living creatures can use light beams with other wavelengths. Corresponding relationships can be obtained through repeated experiments. In terms of emission energy, every living creature is also not the same. Considering safety, the energy of the signal light beams exerted to the human body may be under 0.5 Watt. Such strength is sufficient to stimulate enough responses to be measured.
The potential measuring unit 110 is able to be attached to a second region of the skin of the living creature, for measuring the electric potential of the second region. In practice, the potential measuring unit 110 can be a phototransistor. About the first region and the second region of the skin, in principle, the second region and the first region are not on the surfaces of adjacent skin of the living creature. It is to avoid that the source of the signal light beams and the potential measurement side are too close. The received voltage value is locally affected and the observation of the target system is lost. An example is shown in
The analog-to-digital converting unit 120 and the potential measuring unit 100 are electrically connected. It converts the measured value of electric potential to a corresponding binary value at a sampling frequency within a measuring time. Said measuring time is about one minute. The longer the measuring time is, the more stable stimulated responses (potential changes) can be collected. Sampling frequency may depend on the characteristics of existing electronic components. For example. If an Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) with sampling frequency of 100 kHz or 192 kHz and resolution of 12 bits is used, the corresponding sampling frequency is 100 kHz or 192 kHz. A relationship between measured electric potentials and converted binary values is shown in
The characteristic parameter group filtering unit 130 is connected to the analog-to-digital converting unit 120. It is used to convert the binary value from the analog-to-digital converting unit 120 into a plurality of characteristic parameter groups. Each characteristic parameter group comprises a plurality of numbers. Namely, for the interferences of background light and the inherent noise of the apparatus, they need to be removed in a simple way to improve the accuracy of the evaluation results. Based on different environments and calibration experiences, it is able to select a threshold interval, using binary values (a value of a 12 bits in the present embodiment), to find out qualified converted binary values. For example, select 011101110010 (dashed line) representing 36 mV and 01111110001 (dashed line) mV as upper and lower limits of the threshold interval. It can be available from
In this embodiment, human being is used as an example of the living creature. The characteristic parameter group filtering unit 130 converts the binary value into 13 characteristic parameter groups: a first characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of the skin and associated derivatives, such as hair, nails and breast; a second characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of bones, joint, bones, bone plate and spines; a third characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of blood vessels (arteries and veins), heart striated muscle and smooth muscle; a fourth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of blood, spleen and hematopoietic organs (red marrow); a fifth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of intestinal (including large intestine, cecum, ascending colon, transverse colon, descending colon and sigmoid colon), stomach and muscle tissues; a sixth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of intestine, duodenum, ileum, pancreas, exocrine system, salivary glands and esophageal (throat); a seventh characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of genital organs (vagina and ovaries for female; prostate, testicles and scrotum for male); an eighth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of liver and gallbladder; a ninth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of kidney, bladder and ureter; a tenth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of immune system (including thymus, spleen, white spleen marrow and lymph nodes), nasal and bronchial; a eleventh characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of nervous system and endocrine system (comprising thyroid, adrenal gland, gonad, pituitary, hypothalamus and pineal gland); a twelfth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of sympathetic system, parasympathetic system, peripheral nervous system, self-sensor and physiological analyzer (eyes, ears and vestibular organs); and a thirteenth characteristic parameter group is used to analyze physiological characteristics of brain and spirit, which can be further coupled with a pre-existing database of a number of professional physician experiences for comprehensive analysis to determine the physiological characteristics of the brain and spirit. Relationships between characteristic parameter groups and corresponding organ or system require many clinical tests to find out.
The characteristic parameter group storing unit 140 is a database. It is used to store characteristic parameter groups and standard values for each characteristic parameter group from different samples of the same living creatures according to different characteristic parameter groups. The characteristic parameter group storing unit 140 is preferably built according to biological species. If the space is large enough, different characteristic parameter groups of close species can be built in the same characteristic parameter group storing unit 140. It is helpful for scientific research. The standard values are values of the characteristic parameter groups obtained from healthy living creatures. The definition of health refers only to specific organs or systems, and organs or systems associated with the operation of a particular organ or system that are in good functioning. Effects of other organs or systems are not taken into account. For example, myopia does not affect heart and lung functions. If an testee has myopia but his heart and lung functions are healthy, associated characteristic parameter groups can be deemed as “healthy”. In practice, since all values of the healthy characteristic parameter groups fall within a range, the standard values are a combination of several averages.
The comparing and calculating unit 150 is connected to the characteristic parameter group filtering unit 130 and the characteristic parameter group storing unit 140. It is used to calculate differences between a plurality of characteristic parameter groups from the characteristic parameter group filtering unit 130 and standard values of the same characteristic parameter groups in the characteristic parameter group storing unit 140, and utilize the differences and corresponding standard values to process comparison calculations. The results of the comparison calculations are presented by a number of scattering relation values. Each scattering relation value is calculated for a specific characteristic parameter group. The larger the scattering relation values are, the farer the characteristic parameter groups representing the physiological characteristics are away from the standard values that the physiological characteristics are far from far from healthy status.
As to the way to calculate the scattering relation values, for example, first of all, calculate a sum of absolute values of difference amounts between M values and the corresponding average values of the M values and assign a value from 1 to L according to the calculated sum ranking from small to large. L is a positive integer. The value of 1 represents the difference amount ranging from zero to a next level, and the value of L represents the difference amount ranging from the maximum to the previous level (first step). Let L=6. It means the value ranges from 1 to 6. If a maximal value of the sum of the absolute values of the difference amounts is 3.6, every 0.6 is a level. Each level represents a specific value, e.g. 0˜0.6 for the value of 1, 0.6˜1.2 for the value of 2, etc. Each level has its assigned value.
Next, calculate the number of sets for the value of 1 to the value of L (second step). For example, there are 5 sets with the value of 1, 10 sets with the value of 2, 20 sets with the value of 3, 15 sets with the value of 4, 10 sets with the value of 5, and no sets with the value of 6. Next step: set L integer values from large to small (third step). For example, 10, 9, 8, 5, 2 and −1. The integer can be negative. Differences between the integers can be any positive integer. Its purpose is to adjust the warning level when there may be something wrong with a system of the body. The more intensive the integers are, the closer the warning level approaches 1. In practice, the second step and the third step can be exchanged.
Finally, multiply the number of sets arranged with the value from 1 to L by the corresponding integer value arranged from large to small, respectively, and dividing the sum of the products by a product of the number of sets and the maximum of the integer (fourth step). According to the example above, it is calculated by (5×10+10×9+20×8+15×5+10×2+0×(−1))/(60×10)=0.658. If there are 60 sets with the value of 1, the result of the calculation is 1. In other words, one observation is the same as the condition the average values indicates. 0.658 shows that the physiological system may have a problem. Of course, the way to calculate the scattering relation values is not limited to what is disclosed above. Any calculating method using a value to represent the difference amount between the values in the characteristic parameter group and the corresponding standard values can be applied.
The scattering relation values above are specific values. However, they are still different from description of physiological characteristics. For example, when a doctor sees the differences between the scattering relation values and the standard values in some characteristic parameter group, current situation of a disease (physiological characteristic) in a patient can be described by his experience, or when scientists are observing the scattering relation values of a characteristic parameter group for a group of monkeys, they can provide their evolutionary interpretation for the color genes of the monkeys. Therefore, it needs the analysis unit 155 to automatically execute the job of explanation. As shown in
The display unit 160 is used to display the physiological characteristic judgment in the analysis unit 155 and/or results of comparison calculations from the comparing and calculating unit 150. As shown in
It is to be noted that although the present embodiment represents the compositional relationship of the hardware in a dash line frame, in practice, each unit can be standalone hardware, assembled according to actual demands and not restricted by the illustration of the embodiment.
There is a second aspect of the system for sensing physiological characteristics provided by the present invention. It is illustrated by another embodiment below. Please see
Secondly, the display unit 160 of the system for sensing physiological characteristics is a standalone device. It may be a smartphone, a tablet, or a screen of a laptop computer or a desktop computer. In practice, the comparing and calculating unit 150 can show data in a remote mobile device or desktop via a network. If it uses the screen of the mobile device to display, an APP can be installed in the mobile device to facilitate user interaction with the system.
While the invention has been described in terms of what is presently considered to be the most practical and preferred embodiments, it is to be understood that the invention needs not be limited to the disclosed embodiments. On the contrary, it is intended to cover various modifications and similar arrangements included within the spirit and scope of the appended claims, which are to be accorded with the broadest interpretation so as to encompass all such modifications and similar structures.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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106125130 | Jul 2017 | TW | national |