Development of a telecare system based on ZigBee mesh network for monitoring blood pressure of patients with hemodialysis in health care centers.

In Taiwan, the number of the patients needing dialysis increases rapidly in recent years. Because there is risk in every hemodialysis session, monitoring physiological status, such as blood pressure measurement every 30 min to 1 h is needed during about 4 h hemodialysis process. Therefore, an assisted measurement on blood pressure is needful in dialysis care centers. Telecare system (TCS) is regarded as one of important technique in the medical care. In this study, we utilized ZigBee wireless technique to establish a mesh network for monitoring blood pressure automatically and data storage in medical record system for display and further analysis. Moreover, while the blood pressure exceeds the normal range, the system could send a warning signal to remind, or inform the relatives and clinicians in health care center through the personal handy-phone system (PHS) immediately. The proposed system provides an assisted device for monitoring patients' blood pressure during hemodialysis process and saving medical manpower.

Quantitative assessment of divergence eye movements.

PURPOSE: This study sought to quantify divergence eye movements and differences between divergence and convergence to smoothly moving ramp, step, and disappearing step stimuli. METHODS: Eight visually normal, adult subjects participated in three experiments investigating the dynamics of responses using an infrared limbal eye tracker. RESULTS: There were four primary findings: (1) a smooth tracking behavior was observed for slow ramps while the fast ramps elicited smooth tracking combined with a high-velocity, step-like behavior; (2) the high-velocity components observed in the faster ramps had a similar main sequence as divergence steps; (3) divergence dynamics to disappearing steps starting at the subject's near dissociated phoria level were similar to corresponding step responses; and (4) the high-velocity components from divergence ramps were dependent on initial vergence position, whereas the high-velocity components from convergence ramps were not. CONCLUSION: The results suggest a preprogrammed component is present in divergence similar to convergence; however, unlike convergence, the high-velocity components from divergence ramp responses are dependent on initial vergence position.

Implementation of a burn scar assessment system by ultrasound techniques.

Tissue injury and its ensuing healing process cause scar formation. In addition to physical disability, the subsequent disfigurements from burns often bring negative psychological impacts on the survivors. Scar hypertrophy and contracture limit the joint motion and body function of the patient. With fast development of the current available technologies regarding the scar therapies, not only the process of wound healing has to be focused, but also the cosmetic and functional outcomes need to be emphasized. Therefore, proper evaluation and assessment of the healing process to nil scar status is highly recommended. However, the currently employed tools for scar evaluation are mostly subjective. For example, Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) scar index uses color, pigmentation, vascularity, pliability, and depth of the scar as dependent variables for scar evaluation. These parameters only estimate the superficial surface of the scar, but they can not evaluate the deeper tissue within dermis. Ultrasound is a safe, inexpensive, and multifunctional technique for probing tissue characteristics. In addition, its resolution is not inferior to other measurement techniques. Although 3D-ultrasound is available in clinical application, it's still not widely used in scar evaluation because of its high cost. In this study, we proposed a system for scar assessment using B-mode ultrasonic technique. By utilizing the reconstruction methods to search the scar border, many characteristic parameters, including depth, area and volume, can be estimated. The proposed method is useful in assisting the clinician to evaluate the treatment effect and to plan further therapeutic strategy more objectively. In this report, the quantitative assessment system was used to evaluate the scar of a seriously burned patient. In order to verify the reliability of systematic reconstruction method, we constructed a phantom to imitate the scar tissue. The results show that it can achieve more than 90% in accuracy.

Quantitative assessment of osteoporosis from the tibia shaft by ultrasound techniques.

Bone mineral density (BMD) is used as a clinical estimate of the risk of fracture. Ultrasound provides an alternative or complement to X-ray based methods of bone densitometry for determining BMD. Among ultrasonic characteristics, the speed of sound (SOS) is a useful tool for assessment of osteoporosis because, as recently reported, it represents a combination of density and compressibility of bone tissue. Thus, it might provide better information on bone quality to estimate the fracture risk. In this paper, a dual-transducer ultrasound technique was employed to measure the mean ultrasound propagation speed of the cortical layer as well as the cancellous layer at the tibia shaft. Encouraging results from 18 outpatients showed a high correlation (r = 0.93) between measurements of BMD and those from dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA).