Hand-held medical-data capture-device having optical detection of a vital sign from multiple filters and interoperation with electronic medical record systems to transmit the vital sign and device information

• US 9,782,074 B2
• Filed: 12/31/2014
• Issued: 10/10/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 10/25/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ARC Devices, Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Arc Devices (Ni) Limited
• Inventors: Gross, Irwin, Smith, Michael G., Khachaturian, Mark, Crawley, Martin, Gerst, Steven, Barrett, John, Cronin, Michael, Turnbull, Derek, Bodnick, Jason
• Primary Examiner(s): Murillo Garcia, Fabricio R
• Application Number:
  US14/588,245
• Publication Number:
  US 20160113590A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,014 Days
• Field of Search: 3405731
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2560/0214 of power generation or supply
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2560/0475 Special features of memory means, e.g. removable memory cards
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2562/166 the sensor is mounted on a specially adapted printed circuit board
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2576/00 Medical imaging apparatus involving image processing or analysis A61B1/00009, A61B6/52 and A61B8/52 take precedence; image processing per se G06T; details of algorithms for analysing medical images G06T7/0012
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0008 Temperature signals
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• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0022 Monitoring a patient using a global network, e.g. telephone networks, internet
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• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0075 by spectroscopy, i.e. measuring spectra, e.g. Raman spectroscopy, infrared absorption spectroscopy A61B5/0071 takes precedence
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• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/01 Measuring temperature of body parts ; Diagnostic temperature sensing, e.g. for malignant or inflamed tissue clinical contact thermometers G01K13/20
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/015 By temperature mapping of body part
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/02055 Simultaneously evaluating both cardiovascular condition and temperature
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/021 Measuring pressure in heart or blood vessels A61B5/0205 takes precedence
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• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/02433 for infrared radiation
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0245 by using sensing means generating electric signals, i.e. ECG signals
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0261 using optical means, e.g. infrared light
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/03 Detecting, measuring or recording fluid pressure within the body other than blood pressure, e.g. cerebral pressure; Measuring pressure in body tissues or organs A61B5/205 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/08 Detecting, measuring or recording devices for evaluating the respiratory organs A61B5/0205 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/318 : Heart-related electrical modalities, e.g. electrocardiography [ECG]
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/441 : Skin evaluation, e.g. for skin disorder diagnosis
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/6887 : mounted on external non-worn devices, e.g. non-medical devices
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/6898 : Portable consumer electronic devices, e.g. music players, telephones, tablet computers
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7225 : Details of analog processing, e.g. isolation amplifier, gain or sensitivity adjustment, filtering, baseline or drift compensation A61B5/30, A61B5/316 take precedence; transformers for specific applications H01F38/00; amplifiers H03F
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/725 : using specific filters therefor, e.g. Kalman or adaptive filters A61B5/316 take precedence
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• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7278 : Artificial waveform generation or derivation, e.g. synthesising signals from measured signals A61B5/327 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/742 : using visual displays A61B5/339 takes precedence
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• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/746 : Alarms related to a physiological condition, e.g. details of setting alarm thresholds or avoiding false alarms alarms per se G08B
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• CPC Class Codes: G01J 2005/0077 : Imaging
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• CPC Class Codes: G01J 5/025 : Interfacing a pyrometer to an external device or network; User interface
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• CPC Class Codes: G06F 18/23 : Clustering techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10048 : Infrared image
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/20024 : Filtering details
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/20132 : Image cropping
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30004 : Biomedical image processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30088 : Skin; Dermal
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30104 : Vascular flow; Blood flow; Perfusion
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• CPC Class Codes: G08B 5/36 : using visible light sources
• CPC Class Codes: G08C 17/02 : using a radio link
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 : for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/60 : for the operation of medical equipment or devices
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/63 : for local operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 : for remote operation
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/26 : at least one of which is mobile
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 12/4633 : Interconnection of networks using encapsulation techniques, e.g. tunneling
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/04 : specially adapted for terminals or networks with limited capabilities; specially adapted for terminal portability
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/10 : in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 : specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
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• CPC Class Codes: H04N 25/76 : Addressed sensors, e.g. MOS or CMOS sensors
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• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/12 : Setup of transport tunnels
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 80/04 : Network layer protocols, e.g. mobile IP [Internet Protocol]

Abstract

In one implementation, an apparatus estimates body core temperature from an infrared measurement of an external source point using a cubic relationship between the body core temperature and the measurement of an external source point is described, estimates temperature from a digital infrared sensor and determines vital signs from a solid-state image transducer, or determines vital signs from a solid-state image transducer and estimates body core temperature from an infrared measurement of an external source point using a cubic relationship between the body core temperature and the measurement of an external source point; after which the estimated and/or determined information is transmitted to an external database.

Claims

1. An apparatus of variation amplification to communicate biological vital signs, the apparatus comprising:

a microprocessor that is programmed to execute;

a cropper that is operable to receive at least two images and that is operable to crop each of the images to exclude a border area of the images, generating at least two cropped images;

a skin-pixel-identifier that is operably coupled to the cropper and that identifies pixel values that are representative of skin in the at least two cropped images, generating identified skin pixels;

a spatial bandpass filter that is operably coupled to the skin-pixel-identifier and that processes the identified skin pixels, generating spatial bandpassed filtered identified pixel values of skin;

a regional facial clusterial module that is operably coupled to the spatial bandpass filter and that applies spatial clustering to the spatial bandpassed filtered identified pixel values of skin, generating spatial clustered spatial bandpassed filtered identified pixel values of skin;

a temporal bandpass filter that is operably coupled to the regional facial clusterial module and that is applied to the spatial clustered spatial bandpassed filtered identified pixel values of skin, generating temporal bandpass filtered spatial clustered spatial bandpass filtered identified pixel values of skin;

a temporal-variation identifier that is operably coupled to the temporal bandpass filter and that identifies a temporal variation of the temporal bandpass filtered spatial clustered spatial bandpass filtered identified pixel values of skin, generating temporal-variation identified temporal bandpass filtered spatial clustered spatial bandpass filtered identified pixel values of skin;

a vital-sign generator that is operably coupled to the temporal-variation identifier that generates at least one vital sign from the temporal-variation identified temporal bandpass filtered spatial clustered spatial bandpass filtered identified pixel values of skin; and

a display device that is operably coupled to the vital-sign generator that is operable to display the at least one vital sign; and

a wireless communication subsystem that is operably coupled to the microprocessor and that is operable to transmit a representation of the at least one vital sign,

wherein the wireless communication subsystem further comprises a component that is operable to transmit a representation of date and time, operator identification, patient identification and manufacturer, model number and firmware revision of the apparatus.

2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the regional facial clusterial module further comprises:

a fuzzy clusterer.

3. The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising:

a storage device that is operably coupled to the vital-sign generator and that is operable to store the at least one vital sign in a nonvolatile memory.

4. The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising:

a storage device that is operably coupled to the vital-sign generator and that is operable to transmit the at least one vital sign to another apparatus.

5. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the vital sign further comprises blood pressure.

6. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the vital sign further comprises respiration.

7. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the vital sign further comprises pulse.

8. The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising:

a camera operably coupled to the microprocessor and operable to capture the at least two images to a microprocessor through a memory.

9. The apparatus of claim 1 further comprising:

a digital infrared sensor operably coupled to the microprocessor, the digital infrared sensor having only digital readout ports, the digital infrared sensor having no analog sensor readout ports.

10. The apparatus of claim 9 further comprising:

wherein the microprocessor is operable to receive from the digital readout ports a digital signal that is representative of an infrared signal detected by the digital infrared sensor and the microprocessor is operable to determine a temperature from the digital signal that is representative of the infrared signal.

11. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the temperature further comprises a body core temperature and wherein determining the body core temperature is based on a cubic relationship representing three thermal ranges between a numerical representation of electromagnetic energy of an external source point and the body core temperature, wherein the cubic relationship includes a coefficient representative of different relationships between the external source point and the body core temperature in the three thermal ranges.

12. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the vital sign further comprises blood-flow and the vital-sign generator further comprises:

a blood-flow-analyzer module that analyzes the temporal variation to identify motion changes and color changes in the skin of the images to generate a pattern of flow of blood.

13. The apparatus of claim 12 further comprising:

a blood-flow display module that is operably coupled to the vital-sign generator and operably coupled to the display device that displays the pattern of flow of blood on the display device.

14. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the vital sign further comprises a heartrate and the vital-sign generator further comprises:

a heartrate-analyzer module that analyzes the temporal variation to generate the heartrate.

15. The apparatus of claim 14 wherein the heartrate is generated from a frequency spectrum of the temporal variation in a frequency range for heart beats.

16. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the wireless communication subsystem transmits to a static Internet Protocol address in order to reduce Internet Protocol discovery burden on the apparatus.

17. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the apparatus does not support specific discovery protocols or domain name service.

18. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein a connection is established and data is pushed from the apparatus through the wireless communication subsystem, thereafter an external device controls flow of the data between the apparatus and the external device, wherein the connection further comprises:

an authenticated communication channel.

19. The apparatus of claim 1, the wireless communication subsystem is configured to operate on a specific segment of a network.

20. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the wireless communication subsystem transmits through an Internet Protocol tunnel.