Medical signal monitoring and display: Key Neurotech Patent #3

– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 6,224,549

Today we are shar­ing a 2001 patent assigned to Care­fu­sion 209, Inc. (As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing a foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patent a day, from old­er to new­er by issue date)

U.S. Patent No. 6,224,549: Med­ical sig­nal mon­i­tor­ing and display

• Assignee(s): Care­fu­sion 209, Inc.
• Inventor(s): Wirm van Drongelen
• Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: EEG
• Issue Date: May 1, 2001

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘549 patent address­es this prob­lem by com­bin­ing EEG data with oth­er sen­sor data (e.g., EMG data), togeth­er with a cus­tomiz­able pre­sen­ta­tion that is best suit­ed for the nurse, doc­tor or patient gath­er­ing data.

Bio­met­ric data is detect­ed for a broad range of pur­pos­es that dic­tate the appro­pri­ate types of data gath­ered, applied modal­i­ties and user inter­face pre­sen­ta­tion. Hence, dif­fer­ent appli­ca­tions require dif­fer­ent sys­tem that each pos­sess a con­fig­u­ra­tion spe­cif­ic to the bio­met­ric data appli­ca­tion. The ‘549 patent address­es this prob­lem by com­bin­ing EEG data with oth­er sen­sor data (e.g., EMG data), togeth­er with a cus­tomiz­able pre­sen­ta­tion that is best suit­ed for the nurse, doc­tor or patient gath­er­ing data. The mon­tage of pan­els in the user inter­face is an impor­tant aspect of the dis­clo­sure that facil­i­tates a flex­i­ble sys­tem design. The impor­tance of data visu­al­iza­tion for accu­rate analy­sis and mon­i­tor­ing of health/medical con­di­tions, along with the six inde­pen­dent claims cov­er­ing var­i­ous embod­i­ments of the inven­tive con­cept, are amongst the fac­tors mak­ing the ‘549 patent a key non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent.

Abstract:

The present inven­tion pro­vides a med­ical sig­nal mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem and method for dis­play­ing phys­i­o­log­i­cal sig­nals of dif­fer­ent types and modal­i­ties in dif­fer­ent for­mats on a sin­gle sys­tem. Phys­i­o­log­i­cal sig­nals, e.g., elec­tri­cal phys­i­o­log­i­cal sig­nals from elec­trodes attached to a sub­ject, are pro­vid­ed to the sys­tem. The raw wide band phys­i­o­log­i­cal sig­nals may be record­ed on disk, and may be processed mul­ti­ple times to dis­play desired sig­nals of inter­est. The para­me­ters used to process the sig­nals to be dis­played are selec­table by an oper­a­tor employ­ing a user inter­face. The user inter­face allows an oper­a­tor to define a set of pan­els in which one or more sig­nals will be dis­played. The type of pan­el select­ed to dis­play the sig­nal deter­mines the basic for­mat of the sig­nal to be dis­played, e.g., var­i­ous types of wave­forms. A sig­nal to be dis­played in a pan­el is defined by select­ing, for exam­ple, the sig­nals from two elec­trodes attached to a sub­ject from which a mon­taged pair sig­nal to be dis­played is derived. The modal­i­ty of the sig­nal to be dis­played, e.g., EEG, EMG, or evoked poten­tial (EP) is oper­a­tor selec­table employ­ing the user inter­face. The user inter­face also pro­vides for oper­a­tor selec­tion of oth­er dis­play and analy­sis para­me­ters, such as trig­ger­ing, aver­ag­ing, and spec­tral trend analy­sis. A sig­nal to be dis­played in a pan­el may be trig­gered from an audi­to­ry, visu­al, or elec­tri­cal stim­u­la­tion sig­nal pro­vid­ed to a sub­ject. The char­ac­ter­is­tics of the stim­u­la­tion to be pro­vid­ed to the sub­ject are oper­a­tor selec­table employ­ing the user inter­face. A sep­a­rate stim­u­lus con­text may be estab­lished for each pan­el defined by an oper­a­tor. Switch­ing between dif­fer­ent stim­u­lus con­texts is achieved via the user inter­face by acti­vat­ing a pan­el to which a stim­u­la­tor con­text has been assigned.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 23. A method for dis­play­ing phys­i­o­log­i­cal sig­nals of a sub­ject, com­pris­ing the steps of:

• receiv­ing a plu­ral­i­ty of raw wide band phys­i­o­log­i­cal sig­nals from a plu­ral­i­ty of por­tions of a sub­jec­t’s body;
• select­ing at least one first pair of the plu­ral­i­ty of raw wide band phys­i­o­log­i­cal signals;
• select­ing a first modal­i­ty of interest;
• com­bin­ing and fil­ter­ing the first pair of raw wide band phys­i­o­log­i­cal sig­nals for the modal­i­ty of inter­est to define a first phys­i­o­log­i­cal sig­nal to be dis­played; and
• dis­play­ing the first phys­i­o­log­i­cal sig­nal to be displayed.

To learn more about mar­ket data, trends and lead­ing com­pa­nies in the dig­i­tal brain health space –dig­i­tal plat­forms for brain/ cog­ni­tive assess­ment, mon­i­tor­ing and enhance­ment– check out this mar­ket report. To learn more about our analy­sis of 10,000+ patent fil­ings, check out this IP & inno­va­tion neu­rotech report.