Biomedical subjects

Yuan-Ting Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Yuan-Ting Zhang.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

The effect of local mild cold exposure on pulse transit time.

Pulse transit time (PTT) is a simple, noninvasive technique which shows great promise in the continuous monitoring of blood pressure and the assessment of arterial stiffness, and has potential applications in wearable healthcare devices. Usually, PTT is measured from the electrocardiogram (ECG) R-wave to a characteristic point on the peripheral pulse by photoplethysmography. However, peripheral blood circulation is sensitive to local temperature variation. This study investigated the effect of mild cold exposure on PTT by immersing one finger into cold water. The photoplethysmographic (PPG) signals were recorded from the cooled and adjacent uncooled fingers. The significant change in dc and ac amplitudes of the PPG pulse indicates that the mild cold exposure has a substantial effect on finger blood circulation. Three measurements of PTT were performed by calculating the time delay from the ECG R-wave to three different characteristic points on the PPG pulse, namely, the foot (PTT1), the point on the rising limb with maximal slope (PTT2) and the peak (PTT3), respectively. PTT3 was found to be easily subject to waveform distortion. Significant changes in the difference of PTT1 and PTT2 between two fingers were observed after a 5 min recovery period. The changes in PTT1 and PTT2 on the reference finger also showed close correlation (r = -0.77 and r = -0.80, p < 0.001) with the changes in SBP after recovery, whereas those measured on the test finger have low correlation (r = -0.53 and r = -0.38, p > 0.15). The results suggest that mild cold exposure may have a delay effect on PTT due to cold-induced vasodilatation and could be a potential source of error. The effect of cold exposure should be carefully examined, especially when PTT that includes a large portion of rising time of peripheral pulse is applied.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

[M-health: trends in wearable medical devices].

This paper focuses on the trends in wearable medical devices for the applications in m-health. The state-of-art technologies for the continuous and noninvasive measurements of physiological parameters, implementation platforms of wearable medical devices - e-textile, and body sensor networks are reviewed here with examples of related recent research projects conducted in different countries. In addition, we introduce our recent research project on the e-textile-based health shirt (h-shirt), which can measure arterial blood pressure noninvasively, continuously and cufflessly.

Biomedical Technology↗

PubMed2005

Reduction of motion artifact in pulse oximetry by smoothed pseudo Wigner-Ville distribution.

BACKGROUND: The pulse oximeter, a medical device capable of measuring blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), has been shown to be a valuable device for monitoring patients in critical conditions. In order to incorporate the technique into a wearable device which can be used in ambulatory settings, the influence of motion artifacts on the estimated SpO2 must be reduced. This study investigates the use of the smoothed psuedo Wigner-Ville distribution (SPWVD) for the reduction of motion artifacts affecting pulse oximetry. METHODS: The SPWVD approach is compared with two techniques currently used in this field, i.e. the weighted moving average (WMA) and the fast Fourier transform (FFT) approaches. SpO2 and pulse rate were estimated from a photoplethysmographic (PPG) signal recorded when subject is in a resting position as well as in the act of performing four types of motions: horizontal and vertical movements of the hand, and bending and pressing motions of the finger. For each condition, 24 sets of PPG signals collected from 6 subjects, each of 30 seconds, were studied with reference to the PPG signal recorded simultaneously from the subject's other hand, which was stationary at all times. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The SPWVD approach shows significant improvement (p < 0.05), as compared to traditional approaches, when subjects bend their finger or press their finger against the sensor. In addition, the SPWVD approach also reduces the mean absolute pulse rate error significantly (p < 0.05) from 16.4 bpm and 11.2 bpm for the WMA and FFT approaches, respectively, to 5.62 bpm. CONCLUSION: The results suggested that the SPWVD approach could potentially be used to reduce motion artifact on wearable pulse oximeters.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2003

Implementation of a WAP-based telemedicine system for patient monitoring.

Many parties have already demonstrated telemedicine applications that use cellular phones and the Internet. A current trend in telecommunication is the convergence of wireless communication and computer network technologies, and the emergence of wireless application protocol (WAP) devices is an example. Since WAP will also be a common feature found in future mobile communication devices, it is worthwhile to investigate its use in telemedicine. This paper describes the implementation and experiences with a WAP-based telemedicine system for patient-monitoring that has been developed in our laboratory. It utilizes WAP devices as mobile access terminals for general inquiry and patient-monitoring services. Authorized users can browse the patients' general data, monitored blood pressure (BP), and electrocardiogram (ECG) on WAP devices in store-and-forward mode. The applications, written in wireless markup language (WML), WMLScript, and Perl, resided in a content server. A MySQL relational database system was set up to store the BP readings, ECG data, patient records, clinic and hospital information, and doctors' appointments with patients. A wireless ECG subsystem was built for recording ambulatory ECG in an indoor environment and for storing ECG data into the database. For testing, a WAP phone compliant with WAP 1.1 was used at GSM 1800 MHz by circuit-switched data (CSD) to connect to the content server through a WAP gateway, which was provided by a mobile phone service provider in Hong Kong. Data were successfully retrieved from the database and displayed on the WAP phone. The system shows how WAP can be feasible in remote patient-monitoring and patient data retrieval.

Blood Pressure↗

PubMed2002

The application of bionic wavelet transform to speech signal processing in cochlear implants using neural network simulations.

Cochlear implants (CIs) restore partial hearing to people with severe to profound sensorineural deafness; but there is still a marked performance gap in speech recognition between those who have received cochlear implant and people with a normal hearing capability. One of the factors that may lead to this performance gap is the inadequate signal processing method used in CIs. This paper investigates the application of an improved signal-processing method called bionic wavelet transform (BWT). This method is based upon the auditory model and allows for signal processing. Comparing the neural network simulations on the same experimental materials processed by wavelet transform (WT) and BWT, the application of BWT to speech signal processing in CI has a number of advantages, including: improvement in recognition rates for both consonants and vowels, reduction of the number of required channels, reduction of the average stimulation duration for words, and high noise tolerance. Consonant recognition results in 15 normal hearing subjects show that the BWT produces significantly better performance than the WT (t = -4.36276, p = 0.00065). The BWT has great potential to reduce the performance gap between CI listeners and people with a normal hearing capability in the future.

Cochlear Implants↗