Primary Diagnosis of Thyroid Stimulating Hormone Using a Non-Invasive Method

Abstract

Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) levels produced by the thyroid gland control various crucial bodily functions. It is important to monitor and control the production level of TSH in a human body. State-Of-The-Art (SOTA) focused on the detection of TSH levels, but the focus was on the functionality only rather than patient’s comfort, convenience or cost. In this research, we propose a non-invasive method of collecting and monitoring patient data associated with symptoms of TSH at the comfort and convenience of the patient with minimal cost. This helps primary diagnoses of the potential patient based on a probabilistic outcome of the proposed algorithm. Four main symptoms are prominent in most cases of abnormal levels of TSH, excessive sweating/dry skin, irregular heart rate, neck swelling and weight change. This paper proposes a framework for the primary diagnosis of TSH by monitoring the most common symptoms, such as response from (1) galvanic skin sensor for the detection of sweat/dry skin, (2) heart rate sensor, (3) image processing module for the swollen neck and, (4) a questionnaire to know of any sudden weight changes of the patient. The proposed system has been developed and tested on patients and obtained promising preliminary results.