A. Fois, F. Tocco, A. Dell'Osa, Laura Melis, Ugo Bertelli, A. Concu, A. M. Bertetto, Carmen Serra
{"title":"Innovative Smart Face Mask to Protect Workers from COVID-19 Infection","authors":"A. Fois, F. Tocco, A. Dell'Osa, Laura Melis, Ugo Bertelli, A. Concu, A. M. Bertetto, Carmen Serra","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478739","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478739","url":null,"abstract":"The most frequent prodromes of COVID-19 infection are fever and signs/symptoms of incipient respiratory diseases such as cough and shortness of breath or tachypnea. However, it is not infrequent that in patients infected with COVID-19, in addition to respiratory manifestations, cardiac rhythm alterations are also present which can be an early sign of an acute cardiovascular syndrome. It is therefore of utmost importance, especially for health care and civil protection workers who are most exposed to the infection, to detect the prodromal symptoms of this infection in order to be able to make a diagnosis of possible positivity to COVID-19 infection as quickly as possible and therefore to provide their immediate insertion in the isolation/therapy protocols. Here a prototype of a smart face mask is presented: the AG47-SmartMask. In addition to having the function of both an active and passive anti COVID-19 filter, the latter by an electro-heated filter brought to a minimum temperature of 38°C, the AG47-SmartMask also allows the continuous monitoring of numerous cardio-pulmonary variables. Several specific sensors are incorporated into the mask in an original way that assess the inside mask temperature, relative humidity and air pressure together with the auricular assessment of body temperature, heart rate and percentage of oxygen saturation of haemoglobin. Sensors work in synergy with an advanced telemedicine platform. To validate the device, twenty workers engaged in a vegetable packaging chain tested the tool simulating, while working, both tachypnea and cough, and the AG47-SmartMask faithfully quantified the simulated dyspnoic events.","PeriodicalId":429222,"journal":{"name":"2021 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA)","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121302662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mohammad Hasan Azad, Ramin Farzam, H. Sadeghi, Nikta Zarif Yussefian, M. Forouzanfar
{"title":"Toward Continuous Estimation of Cardiorespiratory Parameters in Oscillometry: A Simulation Study","authors":"Mohammad Hasan Azad, Ramin Farzam, H. Sadeghi, Nikta Zarif Yussefian, M. Forouzanfar","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478597","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478597","url":null,"abstract":"Blood pressure’s oscillometric waveform (OMW) comprises several cardiovascular components such as cardiac activity, respiration-related changes, and Mayer wave that contribute to its total variability over time. Accurate modeling of the OMW as a function of these components and continuous tracking of their underlying parameters can provide insights into the cardiovascular system dynamics and help determine the role played by each component in blood pressure variability. This paper presents a new state-space model for the OMW consisting of different parameters such as cardiac and respiration frequencies, amplitudes, and phases. Since the dynamic state-space model of the OMW is highly nonlinear and dependent on a large number of parameters, we utilized the extended Kalman filter (EKF). Since the EKF accuracy is highly dependent on the parameter’s initial values, to obtain reasonable estimates of model initial values, a system identification procedure based on frequency domain analysis and curve-fitting was employed. The proposed method’s performance was analyzed on simulated data with and without the proposed system identification procedure. A mean absolute percentage error of 2.68% was achieved in estimating OMW when using the proposed system identification approach. The proposed approach shows promise toward beat-to-beat tracking of cardiovascular parameters in oscillometric devices.","PeriodicalId":429222,"journal":{"name":"2021 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA)","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126693467","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contactless Continuous Monitoring Of Respiration","authors":"L. Scalise, M. Ali, L. Antognoli","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478693","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478693","url":null,"abstract":"Breathing is an important aspect of life. Monitoring of breathing signal plays an important role in clinical practice in order to determine the progression of illness. In this study the contactless modality to detect the breathing signal is assessed. For this purpose, the Laser Doppler Vibrometer (LDV) is used to detect the breathing signal. The test was performed on ten healthy volunteers and one simulator. An automatic algorithm is designed that can determine the efficiency of the contactless modality. The individuals were asked to simulate the conditions of apnea, tachypnea and bradypnea. The simulator was programmed with different respiratory rates in order to assess the functionality of the algorithm. The acquired signals were initially analyzed using manual setting of parameters and then using a standardised algorithm for every individual. The results were compared to determine the functionality. A user-friendly application was designed that allows user to set the ranges of high and low respiration rate along with the percentile value. The applications displays the pre-acquired breathing signal in real time scenarios along with the breathing tachograph and mean breathing rate. The difference between instantaneous respiration rates was found to be ±12.5% (mean value) in the case of signals acquired from human while in case of signal acquired from phantom simulator the same quantity was found to be ±1.6%.","PeriodicalId":429222,"journal":{"name":"2021 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA)","volume":"T156 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125657147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pressure sensors used as bioimpedance plantar electrodes: a feasibility study","authors":"Isabel Morales, R. González-Landaeta, F. Simini","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478682","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478682","url":null,"abstract":"Diabetic Foot Ulcers are ominous consequence of Diabetic Foot. Only general preventive guidelines are available, and ulcers happen with no previous notice. To develop a multidimensional ulcer opening warning device: temperature, pressure, humidity and friction are usually considered. We use standard flexible Force Sensing Resistors FSR 402 to detect not only plantar pressure, but also plantar bioimpedance. Since FSR includes conductive electrodes covered by polymer films, the interface with the subject can be considered a capacitive electrode. A special bioimpedance detection circuit is required to inject current using two homologous FSR 402 contacts and measuring the resulting voltage from the other two contacts available. This circuit is able to detect the cardiac activity from the foot sole. For the first time, pressure sensors are used as bioimpedance electrodes.","PeriodicalId":429222,"journal":{"name":"2021 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA)","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127714294","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Efficient Compressive Sensing of Biomedical Signals Using A Permuted Kronecker-based Sparse Measurement Matrix","authors":"P. Firoozi, S. Rajan, I. Lambadaris","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478680","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478680","url":null,"abstract":"Compressive sensing (CS) is an innovative approach to simultaneously measure and compress signals such as biomedical signals that are sparse or compressible. A major effort in CS is to design a measurement matrix that can be used to encode and compress such signals. The measurement matrix structure has a direct impact on the computational and storage costs as well as the recovered signal quality. Sparse measurement matrices (i.e. with few non-zero elements) may drastically reduce these costs. We propose a permuted Kronecker-based sparse measurement matrix for sensing and data recovery in CS applications. In our study, we use three classes of sub-matrices (normalized Gaussian, Bernoulli, and BCH-based matrices) to create the proposed measurement matrix. Using ECG signals from the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database, we show that the reconstructed signal quality is comparable to the ones achieved using well known CS methods. Our methodology results in an overall reduction in storage and computations, both during the sensing and recovery process. This approach can be generalized to other classes of eligible measurement matrices in CS.","PeriodicalId":429222,"journal":{"name":"2021 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA)","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116697809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Juri Taborri, Beatrice Stocchi, G. Calabrò, S. Rossi
{"title":"Repeatability and reproducibility in the breathability measurement of surgical masks","authors":"Juri Taborri, Beatrice Stocchi, G. Calabrò, S. Rossi","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478732","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478732","url":null,"abstract":"The pandemic COVID-19 is still requiring several countermeasures to adopted in order to decrease the virus spread. Among others, face masks have shown their potentiality to reduce the person-to-person transmission. For this reason, several research groups and/or industries focused their supply chain in the production of innovative materials for the face mask design. Considering the surgical mask, several parameters have to be checked before their commercialization, as for example the breathability. This study aims at evaluating the repeatability and reproducibility of the breathability measurement in surgical masks, and at assessing the effects induced by the selected measurement points on the mask. Three samples for each type I, II and IIR masks were tested within the experimental protocol. Breathability was measured by following the UNI EN 14683:2019. Fifteen measurement points were identified for each mask and the measure was repeated five times per each point. Standard deviation across the repeated measures on the single point and across the different tested areas were used to evaluate the repeatability and reproducibility of the procedure, respectively. The measurement uncertainty was also computed. In addition, in order to verify the effects induced by the selection of five points out the available fifteen, as requested by the UNI EN 14683:2019, all combinations of points were tested. Results showed a high value of reproducibility error, leading to the consideration that different areas of the same mask are characterized by different values of breathability. Thus, the selection of the five measurement points to perform the breathability measurement according to the standard is a crucial aspect that can influence the result of mask compliance. The results of the present paper could provide useful information for the standardization of the breathability measurement.","PeriodicalId":429222,"journal":{"name":"2021 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA)","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131079628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sarah Tonello, G. Giorgi, C. Narduzzi, Tiziano Fapanni, Edoardo Cantù, M. Serpelloni, E. Sardini, S. Carrara
{"title":"Preliminary Study of a Flexible Printed Multi-Sensing Platform for Electromyography and Lactate Measuring during Rehabilitation","authors":"Sarah Tonello, G. Giorgi, C. Narduzzi, Tiziano Fapanni, Edoardo Cantù, M. Serpelloni, E. Sardini, S. Carrara","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478729","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478729","url":null,"abstract":"Real-time measure of muscular fatigue during physical exercise is highly demanded in fields as rehabilitation and physiotherapy, both hospital and home-based. In addition to the well-accepted features extracted from EMG measurements, an increasing interest has been recently addressed to the investigation of biochemical fatigue markers to drive additional information on fatigue evolution. We propose here a multi-sensing non-invasive approach to measure fatigue through EMG and lactate sensing. A printed unobtrusive sensing patch was developed as first prototype by means of the emerging Aerosol Jet Printing technique, ensuring high repeatability and stability even on a flexible substrate. To study the behavior of this patch, preliminary measurements were acquired to perform an analysis of both the printed sensors. EMG electrodes, with skin-electrodes impedance magnitude and phase angle with trends comparable to commercial electrodes, showed the possibility to successfully extract mean and median frequencies from EMG and to detect their decrease after intense exercise. Preliminary results on lactate static measure showed a limit of detection of 3.1±0.3 mM with the highest linearity (R=0.9995) and sensitivity (0.39 µA/mM) in the range 0-20 mM. Furthermore, dynamic tests permitted a preliminary analysis on the ability of the sensor to measure changes in the concentration of lactate continuously. Overall, reported measures represent a promising starting point to develop a patch easily integrable in any wearable for noninvasive and totally customized fatigue measure during physical exercise.","PeriodicalId":429222,"journal":{"name":"2021 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128083958","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
G. Pagano, L. Donisi, V. Marsico, E. Losavio, M. Cesarelli, G. D'Addio
{"title":"Reliability of kinematic parameters related to the Timed Up and Go Test in patients with gait impairments","authors":"G. Pagano, L. Donisi, V. Marsico, E. Losavio, M. Cesarelli, G. D'Addio","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478762","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478762","url":null,"abstract":"Pathologies which imply motor impairment are most common and very studied. The aim of the study is to explore the repeatability of kinematic parameters related to the Timed Up and Go test in different pathologies: hemiparesis, femur fracture, hip replacement and knee replacement. We performed the study instrumenting the patients with a commercial wearable inertial system for gait analysis: G-WALK System by BTS Bioengineering Inc. A cohort of 40 patients with neurological and orthopedic pathologies was enrolled in the study. Repeatability was assessed through the calculation of the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient. Study results showed that the motion parameters exhibited different repeatability. Moreover their repeatability changed on the basis of the kind of pathology under examination. The study demonstrated the importance of a repeatability study to be a valuable approach to select the kinematic parameters which are be able to better characterize a specific pathology and consequently the rehabilitation outcome of patients. The future investigations on enriched datasets will further confirm these preliminary results.","PeriodicalId":429222,"journal":{"name":"2021 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA)","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131617001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dynamic Shear and Normal Forces on Patient Skin in Sling Lift Transfers","authors":"Steven Cramp, Bruce Wallace","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478758","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478758","url":null,"abstract":"The sling lift transfer system is commonly used in hospital and care home settings to transfer immobile and limited mobility patients from bed to chair or gurney. Even though this is the current standard of care, injuries to patients because of the forces applied to skin by the lift occur frequently. The lifts cause both normal and shear forces on the skin, and previous studies have only measured and reported on the applied normal forces with no assessment of shear. In this work, we use a novel shear and normal force sensor designed specifically to assess forces on skin and report the dynamic normal and shear forces during a sling lift. The shear forces are shown to be up to 8N for a partial lift of an adult male and occur both laterally and longitudinally along the thigh. Shear forces pull the skin and can cause injury, especially as skin tends to thin with age and become more susceptible to damage. This is the first reporting of shear forces during patient lifts.","PeriodicalId":429222,"journal":{"name":"2021 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA)","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114969190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Autonomic Nervous System Assessment During Physical Rehabilitation Serious Game","authors":"M. Rodrigues, O. Postolache, F. Cercas","doi":"10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478742","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/MeMeA52024.2021.9478742","url":null,"abstract":"This study is aimed to analyze the correlations between heart rate variability (HRV) and a virtual reality (VR) serious game for physical rehabilitation. The possibility to use serious exergames as tools of ambient assisted living to promote physical activities during the COVID-19 pandemic lock-down period is considered appropriate to enhance patients’ engagement in physical rehabilitation exercises performed at home. The analyzed data in this study provides HRV information collected from a small group of healthy volunteers that participated in two gameplay sessions of the VR serious exergame. Two levels of difficulty were considered. HRV parameters were calculated from the analysis of electrocardiograms (ECG) for an imposed protocol characterized by three different periods (rest, play and rest) The HRV analysis was based on time-domain and frequency-domain methods and the experimental results showed significant changes associated with different game sessions. Higher values of HF components and RMSSD were obtained for a less physical demanding gameplay session, whereas the predominance of LF components was observed for the game session with high level of difficulty. These findings suggested that this serious game had an important impact on both physical and cognitive stimulation, and therefore its implementation in home-based assisted environments can help increase weekly performance of physical activity, enhance balance and limbs mobility, help to reduce anxiety levels, and maintain high levels of HRV.","PeriodicalId":429222,"journal":{"name":"2021 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131834731","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}