Performing a robotized telemedicine act via specific networks brings forth the issue of transparency in order to enable the operator, e.g. the medical ultrasound specialist, to safely and accurately... Show More

Performing a robotized telemedicine act via specific networks brings forth the issue of transparency in order to enable the operator, e.g. the medical ultrasound specialist, to safely and accurately perform bilateral tele-operation tasks despite the long time delays inherent to the communication link. To counter these effects, two strategies are combined to improve, at the operator site, the rendering of the interactions between the remote robotic systems with its environment (i.e. the patient), and the control of the robot’s orientation at the operator site. The first approach is the development of a new control architecture based on an internal model providing an anticipated value of the distant environment stiffness; it is complemented with a graphic user interface (GUI) which provides the expert with the real-time relative position of the haptic probe with the robot’s end effector for better tele-operated control. These combined strategies provide the expert with an improved interactive tool for tele-diagnosis.

Healthcare solutions using anytime, and anywhere remote healthcare surveillance devices, have become a major challenge. The patients with chronic diseases who need only therapeutic supervision are... Show More

Healthcare solutions using anytime, and anywhere remote healthcare surveillance devices, have become a major challenge. The patients with chronic diseases who need only therapeutic supervision are not advised to occupy a hospital bed. Using Wearable Wireless Body/Personal Area Network (WWBAN), intelligent monitoring of heart can supply information about medical conditions. Electrocardiogram (ECG) is the core reference in the diagnosis and medication process. An approach on healthcare solution WBAN based, for real-time ECG signal monitoring and long-term recording will be presented. Low-power wireless sensor nodes with local processing and encoding capabilities in order to achieve maximum mobility and flexibility are our main goal. ZigBee wireless technology will be used for transmission. Sensor device will be programmed to process locally the ECG signal and to raise an alert. Low-power and miniaturization are essential physical requirements.

This paper aims to investigate the performance of a system consisting of plethysmographic sensors used to measure the human pulse (or heart rate), and ZigBee wireless networks used to collect the... Show More

This paper aims to investigate the performance of a system consisting of plethysmographic sensors used to measure the human pulse (or heart rate), and ZigBee wireless networks used to collect the data in view of processing and storing. A demo system build around a MICROCHIP development kit (PICDEM Z) is described. Some conclusion derived on the basis of the observations obtained during the implementation of the demo system and during the measurement campaign are given.

An unobtrusive bed integrated system for monitoring physiological parameters during sleep is presented and evaluated. The system uses textile electrodes attached to a bed sheet for measuring... Show More

An unobtrusive bed integrated system for monitoring physiological parameters during sleep is presented and evaluated. The system uses textile electrodes attached to a bed sheet for measuring multiple channels of electrocardiogram. The channels are also combined in order to form several additional ECG leads. One lead at a time is selected for beat-to-beat-interval detection. The system also includes force sensors located under a bed post for detecting respiration and movements. The movement information is also used to assist in heart rate detection and combining the ECG derived respiration information with respiration information derived from force sensors, is investigated. The authors tested the system with ten subjects in one hour recordings and achieved an average of 95.9% detection coverage and 99 percentile absolute error of 3.47 ms for the BB-interval signal. The relative mean absolute error of the detected respiration cycle lengths was 2.1%.

The application of mobile technologies for health monitoring has garnered great attention during the last years. The sensors together with a mobile device form a personal area network that monitors... Show More

The application of mobile technologies for health monitoring has garnered great attention during the last years. The sensors together with a mobile device form a personal area network that monitors the patient’s health status. It gives advice to the patient, adjusts the environmental conditions according to the patient’s needs, and in the case of an emergency, notifies the patient’s doctor or the corresponding medical center. In the current work the authors present a new attention-based architecture for health monitoring emphasizing on the identification of attention seeking and dangerous health states. The experimental results indicate that the proposed architecture responses very fast to the changes of the patient’s biosignals and accurately in decisions concerning the patient’s health status.