Great Toe Dorsiflexion Detection

• US 20120232431A1
• Filed: 05/16/2012
• Published: 09/13/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 04/02/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Stanford P. Hudson
• Original Assignee: Stanford P. Hudson
• Inventors: Hudson, Stanford P.
• Granted Patent: US 8,888,720 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 600/595
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2562/12 Manufacturing methods specially adapted for producing sensors for in-vivo measurements
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2562/242 Packaging, i.e. for packaging the sensor or apparatus before use
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1071 measuring angles, e.g. using goniometers A61B5/1123 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1118 Determining activity level
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/411 Detecting or monitoring allergy or intolerance reactions to an allergenic agent or substance
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/6828 Leg
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/6829 Foot or ankle
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/6833 Adhesive patches

Abstract

A limb movement biosensor for wearing upon a great toe or other appendage, the wearing upon the great toe being particularly useful for sensing dorsiflexion of the great toe as an indicator of contraction of a wearer'"'"'s tibialis anterior muscle. A particular configuration of one embodiment allows for extended, multi-night data collection of limb movements by allowing an embedded microcontroller to sleep until movement greater than a pre-determined magnitude is detected by an accelerometer, by recording into memory such detection, while avoiding recording of the actual magnitude value of the detected movement. According to another optional embodiment feature, a light sensor is configured to wake up the processor from a lower power state, such as when a user removes the device from a light-protected package.

Claims

1. A biosensor for detection of limb movement and collection of biosensor data comprising:

a biosensor housing having a ring portion and a housing portion, the toe ring portion defining a passage way through which a toe, finger, or other appendage may be received; and

an electronics sensor package disposed within or onto the housing portion of the biosensor housing having a power source, a movement processor, an activator, a data memory device, and a communications interface for transmitting data, wherein the movement processor is powered by the power source responsive to the activator, wherein movement of an appendage received in the ring portion is detected and recorded into the data memory device by the movement processor, and wherein the records in the data memory device may be transmitted selectively via the communications interface.

2. The biosensor as set forth in claim 1 wherein the ring portion is proportioned to receive a human great toe, and wherein the movement processor is configured to respond to and detect dorsiflexion of the human great toe in response to contraction of a tibialis anterior muscle of a wearer of the biosensor.

3. The biosensor as set forth in claim 1 wherein the movement processor comprises a microcontroller and at least one accelerometer.

4. The biosensor as set forth in claim 3 wherein the microcontroller is configured to assume an active processing mode responsive to receiving an interrupt signal from the at least one accelerometer

5. The biosensor as set forth in claim 4 wherein the at least one accelerometer is configured to post an interrupt to the microcontroller only upon sensing acceleration above a pre-determined acceleration threshold.

6. The biosensor as set forth in claim 5 wherein the microcontroller is further configured to make a mark in the data memory records responsive to receiving the interrupt, and to assume an inactive processing mode after making the mark.

9. The biosensor as set forth in claim 1 wherein the activator comprises a light sensor.

10. The biosensor as set forth in claim 9 wherein the movement processor is configured to sense a dark period of at least a minimum length of time, and responsive to the detection of the dark period, to assume an inactive processing mode until the activator senses light, responsive to which the movement processor assumes an active processing mode, wherein the inactive processing mode consumes less power by the microcontroller than the active processing mode.

11. The biosensor as set forth in claim 9 wherein the movement processor is configured to enter an administrative mode upon sensing a pre-determined pattern of light and dark periods.

12. The biosensor as set forth in claim 1 wherein the ring portion comprises an elastic portion which may be stretched to receive a wearer'"'"'s appendage, and released to return to an unstretched state to retain the biosensor on the appendage.

13. The biosensor as set forth in claim 1 wherein the housing portion defines a cavity into which the electronics sensor package may be received and retained.

14. The biosensor as set forth in claim 13 wherein the cavity further allows removal of the electronics sensor package.

15. The biosensor as set forth in claim 13 wherein the housing portion comprises an elastic portion which may be stretched to receive the electronics sensor package, and released to return to an unstretched state to retain the electronics sensor package.

16. The biosensor as set forth in claim 1 wherein the housing portion comprises an indicator window through which a portion of the electronics sensor package may be seen by a user.

17. The biosensor as set forth in claim 16 wherein the indicator window comprises an appendage indicator.

18. The biosensor as set forth in claim 16 wherein the activator comprises a light sensor which is configured to sense an ambient light level through the indicator window.

7. The biosensor as set forth in claim 7 wherein reading of a data value by the microcontroller from the accelerometer is avoided.

8. The biosensor as set forth in claim 7 wherein the inactive processing mode consumes less power by the microcontroller than the active processing mode.