AERO: An Objective Peripheral Edema Measurement Device.

Peripheral edema is of ten assessed by medical prof essionals to gain insights about development of many patient conditions. Currently, doctors assess edema by pushing on the swollen area of a patient. The difficulty with this method is the inconsistency assessment results between different physicians due to the subjective nature of the practice.

Monitoring peripheral edema of heart failure patients at home: Device, algorithm, and clinic study.

Continuous monitoring of heart failure (HF) patients is desirable in order to better manage their illness and reduce unnecessary hospitalization. A comprehensive cloud-based HF patient management system is proposed to collect patients' health status information and provide just-in-time intervention. To date, an HF patient edema monitoring system prototype, including the device and its algorithm, has been developed.

Design of peripheral edema measurement device for home use.

Due to improvements in cardiovascular care, more patients are living longer but ultimately developing heart failure. It is important for patients with chronic conditions, like heart failure, to self-manage and monitor their symptoms. One symptoms that can be indicative of worsening heart failure is peripheral edema.

A Browser-Server-Based Tele-audiology System That Supports Multiple Hearing Test Modalities.

Introduction: Millions of global citizens suffering from hearing disorders have limited or no access to much needed hearing healthcare. Although tele-audiology presents a solution to alleviate this problem, existing remote hearing diagnosis systems support only pure-tone tests, leaving speech and other test procedures unsolved, due to the lack of software and hardware to enable communication required between audiologists and their remote patients. This article presents a comprehensive remote hearing test system that integrates the two most needed hearing test procedures: a pure-tone audiogram and a speech test.

iHandRehab: an interactive hand exoskeleton for active and passive rehabilitation.

This paper presents an interactive exoskeleton device for hand rehabilitation, iHandRehab, which aims to satisfy the essential requirements for both active and passive rehabilitation motions. iHandRehab is comprised of exoskeletons for the thumb and index finger. These exoskeletons are driven by distant actuation modules through a cable/sheath transmission mechanism.

Audiology telepractice in a clinical environment: a communication perspective.

Access to adequate hearing health care is an obstacle that many individuals face worldwide. The prospect of providing audiology services via the Internet is an attractive and viable alternative to traditional face-to-face interaction between patients and audiologists, thus affording improved access to hearing health care for traditionally underserved populations. This article details our experience of using a web-based system with wireless audiometers and videoconferencing software to administer remote audiological assessments in an active medical practice.

Design of a Web services based system for remote hearing diagnosis.

This paper presents a web services based, distributed system that allows remote pure tone hearing tests. The system network follows browser-server architecture, which minimizes hardware and software requirements on the client computers and makes hearing test services more accessible to traditionally underserved population groups. Thanks to the three tier software design, the system functionality is easily scalable to include other audiological services.

Using web services to realize remote hearing assessment.

Background: Internet-based tele-audiology is expected to relieve the dilemma between the lack of resources and high demand of audiological care services. This paper presents a web services based, distributed pure-tone hearing assessment system that improves accessibility of traditionally underserved groups to audiology care.

Methods: The system employs browser-server network architecture to connect patients to audiology specialists through a web server where all application software is hosted.

A Web services-based distributed system with browser-client architecture to promote tele-audiology assessment.

The purpose of this research was to extend applications of the Internet and other telecommunication means to the assessment of hearing. The newly developed distributed system consists primarily of an application server and its database, and Web services under browser-server architecture to support remote hearing assessment. A pilot study was conducted: three independent audiologists assessed hearing of 25 subjects using testing approaches with different data communication configurations.

An orthopedic injection training instrument using flow impedance to indicate needle tip locations.

Objective: The project aimed to design an instrument that can provide visual, quantitative feedback to medical students and help them develop intuitive, tactile-based injection skills.

Methods: The instrument uses force and displacement sensors to find flow impedance, the ratio of the pressure applied to fluid in the syringe to the fluid flow rate, of different tissues. A software program utilizes these flow impedances to identify needle tip location-either joint or tendon.

A pilot study on using derivatives of photoplethysmographic signals as a biometric identifier.

Photoplethysmographic (PPG) signals are easy to obtain with low cost, which enhances its potential to server as biometric identification mechanism for various applications. This paper examines two important issues in applying derivatives of PPG signals as discriminants to identify and verify subjects: consistency within an individual subject and discriminability between different subjects. The experimental results demonstrate that, by employing statistical tools, derivatives can precisely describe the features of an individual's PPG signal and be used as bio-measures for identification purposes.

Interoperability and security in wireless body area network infrastructures.

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) and their supporting information infrastructures offer unprecedented opportunities to monitor state of health without constraining the activities of a wearer. These mobile point-of-care systems are now realizable due to the convergence of technologies such as low-power wireless communication standards, plug-and-play device buses, off-the-shelf development kits for low-power microcontrollers, handheld computers, electronic medical records, and the Internet. To increase acceptance of personal monitoring technology while lowering equipment cost, advances must be made in interoperability (at both the system and device levels) and security.

A short study to assess the potential of independent component analysis for motion artifact separation in wearable pulse oximeter signals.

Motion artifact reduction and separation become critical when medical sensors are used in wearable monitoring scenarios. Previous research has demonstrated that independent component analysis (ICA) can be applied to pulse oximeter signals to separate photoplethysmographic (PPG) data from motion artifacts, ambient light, and other interference in low-motion environments. However, ICA assumes that all source signal component pairs are mutually independent.

A novel algorithm to separate motion artifacts from photoplethysmographic signals obtained with a reflectance pulse oximeter.

Pulse oximeters are mainstays for acquiring blood oxygen saturation in static environments such as hospital rooms. However, motion artifacts prevent their broad in wearable, ambulatory environments. To this end, we present a novel algorithm to separate the motion artifacts from plethysmographic data gathered by pulse oximeters.

Reconfigurable point-of-care systems designed with interoperability standards.

Interoperability standards, if properly applied to medical system design, have the potential to decrease the cost of point-of-care monitoring systems while better matching systems to patient needs. This paper presents a brief editorial overview of future monitoring environments, followed by a short listing of smart-home and wearable-device efforts. This is followed by a summary of recent efforts in the Medical Component Design Laboratory at Kansas State University to address interoperability issues in point-of-care systems by incorporating the Bluetooth Host Controller Interface, the IEEE 1073 Medical Information Bus, and Health Level 7 (HL7) into a monitoring system that hosts wearable or nearby wireless devices.

Applying the ISO/IEEE 11073 standards to wearable home health monitoring systems.

Objective: The goal of this effort was to investigate the feasibility of applying the ISO/IEEE 11073 (a.k.a.

A wearable point-of-care system for home use that incorporates plug-and-play and wireless standards.

A point-of-care system for continuous health monitoring should be wearable, easy to use, and affordable to promote patient independence and facilitate acceptance of new home healthcare technology. Reconfigurability, interoperability, and scalability are important. Standardization supports these requirements, and encourages an open market where lower product prices result from vendor competition.