Proceedings of the IEEE ... annual Northeast Bioengineering Conference. IEEE Northeast Bioengineering Conference最新文献

This study aims to develop a wireless EEG system to provide critical point-of-care information about brain electrical activity. A novel dry electrode, which can be installed rapidly, is used to acquire EEG from the scalp. A wireless data link between the electrode and a data port (i.e., a smartphone) is established based on the Bluetooth technology. A prototype of this system has been implemented and its performance in acquiring EEG has been evaluated.

Eating event detection is an important problem in automatic dietary study using a wearable computer, such as the eButton. In this work, we approach this detection problem based on the use of a small magnet marker attached to a finger and a miniature magnetometer installed within the eButton. Our experimental results indicate that our magnetic approach is effective when the distance between the marker and the wearable computer is within 12cm, and the range of detection is approximately 15cm. We also found that the proximity signal patterns corresponding to eating and other daily activities are different, which can be used to reduce the false detection rate. In addition, our approach is convenient, low-cost and energy efficient, suitable for practical applications.

Image-based dietary assessment is important for health monitoring and management because it can provide quantitative and objective information, such as food volume, nutrition type, and calorie intake. In this paper, a new framework, 3D/2D model-to-image registration, is presented for estimating food volume from a single-view 2D image containing a reference object (i.e., a circular dining plate). First, the food is segmented from the background image based on Otsu's thresholding and morphological operations. Next, the food volume is obtained from a user-selected, 3D shape model. The position, orientation and scale of the model are optimized by a model-to-image registration process. Then, the circular plate in the image is fitted and its spatial information is used as constraints for solving the registration problem. Our method takes the global contour information of the shape model into account to obtain a reliable food volume estimate. Experimental results using regularly shaped test objects and realistically shaped food models with known volumes both demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.

A wearable computer, called eButton, has been developed for evaluation of the human lifestyle. This ARM-based device acquires multimodal data from a camera module, a motion sensor, an orientation sensor, a light sensor and a GPS receiver. Its performance has been tested both in our laboratory and by human subjects in free-living conditions. Our results indicate that eButton can record real-world data reliably, providing a powerful tool for the evaluation of lifestyle for a broad range of applications.

The Electroencephalography (EEG) is a common diagnostic tool for neurological diseases and dysfunctions, such as epilepsy and insomnia. However, the current EEG technology cannot be utilized quickly and conveniently at the point of care due to the complex skin preparation procedures required and the inconvenient EEG data acquisition systems. This work presents a portable amplifier design that integrates a set of skin screw electrodes and a wireless data link. The battery-operated amplifier contains an instrumentation amplifier, two noninverting amplifiers, two high-pass filters, and a low-pass filter. It is able to magnify the EEG signals over 10,000 times and has a high impedance, low noise, small size and low weight. Our electrode and amplifier are ideal for point-of-care applications, especially during transportation of patients suffering from traumatic brain injury or stroke.