The state of intelligent wearable monitor systems and methods: Key neurotechnology patent #40

Today we high­light a 2011 patent by Dart­mouth Col­lege, The Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health (NIH), and the U.S. Depart­ment Of Health And Human Ser­vices, aimed at fine-tun­ing treat­ment of Parkin­son’s dis­ease, stroke and oth­er dis­eases affect­ing motor func­tion. (As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing a foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patent a day, from old­er to new­er by issue date)

U.S. Patent No. 7,981,058: Intel­li­gent wear­able mon­i­tor sys­tems and methods

• Assignee(s): The Trustrees of Dart­mouth Col­lege; The NIH, U.S. Dept. Of Health And Human Ser­vices Government
• Inventor(s): Metkin Akay
• Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Neuro-monitoring
• Issue Date: July 19, 2011

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘058 patent relates to wear­able sys­tems that allow for enhanced assess­ment of a patien­t’s phys­i­cal move­ment and there­by fine-tun­ing treat­ment of Parkin­son’s dis­ease, stroke and oth­er dis­eases affect­ing motor func­tion. By includ­ing two accelerom­e­ters on the patient to dis­cern rel­a­tive changes in body posi­tion­ing (e.g., between a tor­so and appendage), a patients move­ment and time data is plot­ted on a graph next to sim­i­lar move­ment pat­terns asso­ci­at­ed with a healthy indi­vid­ual. The ‘058 patent describes how com­par­ing such move­ment pro­files and relat­ed para­me­ters may allow for more spe­cif­ic diag­nos­tics and treat­ments. The sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of appli­ca­tion for­ward cita­tions (76 total), com­bined with the impor­tant con­tri­bu­tions to increas­ing pre­ci­sion in treat­ing neu­ro­mo­tor afflic­tions, are among the fac­tors mak­ing the ‘058 patent a key non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent.

Abstract:

An intel­li­gent wear­able mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem includes a wire­less per­son­al area net­work for extend­ed mon­i­tor­ing of a patien­t’s motor func­tions. The wire­less per­son­al area net­work includes an intel­li­gent accelerom­e­ter unit, a per­son­al serv­er and a remote access unit. The intel­li­gent accelerom­e­ter unit mea­sures accel­er­a­tion data of the patient, in real-time. The per­son­al serv­er process­es the accel­er­a­tion data, apply­ing lin­ear and non-lin­ear analy­sis, such as frac­tal analy­sis, to gen­er­ate motor func­tion infor­ma­tion from the accel­er­a­tion data. Motor func­tion infor­ma­tion is trans­mit­ted to a remote access unit for sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis and for­mat­ting into visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions. A data man­age­ment unit receives the for­mat­ted motor func­tion infor­ma­tion and dis­plays the infor­ma­tion, for exam­ple, for view­ing by the patien­t’s physician.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 1. A method of mon­i­tor­ing the motor func­tion of a patient, comprising:

• cap­tur­ing accel­er­a­tion data from the patient with at least a first accelerom­e­ter and a sec­ond, biax­i­al accelerom­e­ter locat­ed on an appendage of the patient, the first accelerom­e­ter cap­tur­ing objec­tive accel­er­a­tion data, and the sec­ond, biax­i­al accelerom­e­ter cap­tur­ing sub­jec­tive accel­er­a­tion data rel­a­tive to at least the first accelerometer;
• wire­less­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ing the accel­er­a­tion data to a per­son­al serv­er posi­tioned on the patient at a loca­tion spaced from the accelerom­e­ters; and
• pro­cess­ing the accel­er­a­tion data by com­put­ing non­lin­ear para­me­ters for the accel­er­a­tion data to gen­er­ate at least two lev­els of motor func­tion infor­ma­tion, the non­lin­ear para­me­ters cho­sen from the group of a max­i­mum like­li­hood esti­ma­tor frac­tal, an approx­i­mate cross entropy method, and an aver­age amount of mutu­al infor­ma­tion measure.

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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.