Capillary refill time (CRT) is widely used by health care workers as part of the rapid, structured cardiopulmonary assessment of critically ill patients. Measurement involves the visual inspection of blood returning to distal capillaries after they have been emptied by pressure. It is hypothesized that CRT is a simple measure of alterations in peripheral perfusion. Evidence for the use of CRT in anesthesia is lacking and further research is required, but understanding may be gained from evidence in other fields. In this report, we examine this evidence and factors affecting CRT measurement. Novel approaches to the assessment of CRT are under investigation. In the future, CRT measurement may be achieved using new technologies such as digital videography or modified oxygen saturation probes; these new methods would remove the limitations associated with clinical CRT measurement and may even be able to provide an automated CRT measurement.

Introduction Hospital patients require physiological monitoring throughout their stay. Monitoring requirements depend on the hospital unit (e.g. Admission, OR, ICU, ward). Currently, monitoring devices are stationary and are connected by wires to sensors and patient. This is cumbersome for both patient and health care providers, and sensors must be disconnected when the patient is prepared for transfer between units. Further, sensors located in one unit are often incompatible with those in another.We propose a novel concept that simplifies patient monitoring throughout the hospital. Method Approach:We propose a two level wireless network (Fig. 1). A personal area network (PAN) is private to the patient and is responsible for the control of data communication. The PAN host device connects to all required sensors using a wide range of supported protocols (e.g. serial, USB,WiFi and Bluetooth), and is attached to the patient during the entire hospital stay. The PAN host then wirelessly transmits the standardized data to a local area network (LAN) that records patient health information in a database. This information can be retrieved in real time by either stationary monitoring devices or mobile devices of health care providers throughout the hospital network. Prototype: The prototype consists of two pulse oximeters (Nonin, USA) connected via Bluetooth and wired connection, respectively, to a computer with a Linux operating system that acts as the host for the PAN. The LAN consists of a server running a web-based sensor actuator network portal called Sense Tecnic [1]. AWiFi enabled mobile device is used as the monitoring display. Results & Discussion Blood oxygen saturation and heart rate trend signals are recorded and displayed in real time at a 1 Hz update rate. The web-based data portal allows platform independent, real-time monitoring. The PAN allows for easy connection of sensors to the patient and facilitates monitoring during patient movement and transportation. This approach will facilitate the use of elementary sensors without interruption throughout the hospital. Unit specific sensors can be added to the PAN when required. Future work will include geolocation by indoor triangulation using theWiFi network, and size reduction of the PAN host.

The design of wearable systems comes with constraints in computational and power resources. We describe the development of customized hardware for the wearable discrimination of human sleep and wake based on cardio-respiratory signals. The device was designed for efficient and low-power computation of Fast Fourier Transforms and artificial neural networks required for the on-line classification. We discuss methods for reducing computational load and consequently power requirements of the device. The developed wearable SleePic prototype was tested for autonomy and comfort on eight healthy subjects. SleePic showed an energetic autonomy of more than 36 hours. The SleePic device will require further integration for increased comfort and improved user interaction.

Respiratory rate (RR) is an important measurement for ambulatory care and there is high interest in its detection using unobtrusive mobile devices. For this study, we investigated the estimation of RR from a photoplethysmography (PPG) signal that originated from a pulse oximeter sensor and had a sub-optimal sampling rate. We explored the possibility of estimating RR by extracting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) from the PPG-derived heart rate variability (HRV) measurement using real-time algorithms. Data from 29 children and 13 adults undergoing general anesthesia were analyzed. We compared the RSA power derived from electrocardiography (ECG) with PPG at the reference RR derived from capnography. The power of the PPG was significantly higher than that of the ECG (182.42 ± 36.75 dB vs. 162.30 ± 43.66 dB). Further, the mean RR error for PPG was lower than ECG. Both PPG and ECG RR estimation techniques were more powerful and reliable in cases of spontaneous ventilation than when pressure controlled ventilation was used. The analysis of cases containing artifacts in the PPG revealed a significant increase in RR error, a trend that was less pronounced for controlled ventilation. These results indicate that the estimation of RR from the sub-optimally sampled PPG signal is possible and more reliable than from the ECG.

Mobile phones can be used as a platform for clinical decision making in resource-poor and remote areas. Their limited battery and computational resources, however, demand efficient and low-power algorithms. We present a new algorithm for the fast and economical estimation of heart rate (HR) from the photoplethysmogram (PPG) recorded with a pulse oximeter connected to a mobile phone. The new method estimates the HR frequency by adaptively modeling the PPG wave with a sine function using a modified phase vocoder. The obtained wave is also used as an envelope for the detection of peaks in the PPG signal. HR is computed using the vocoder center frequency and using the peak intervals in a histogram. Experiments on a mobile device show comparable speed performance with other time domain algorithms. Preliminary tests show that the HR computed from the vocoder center frequency is robust to noisy PPG. The instantaneous HR calculated with the vocoder peak detection method was more sensitive to short-term HR variations. These results point to further developments using a combination of both HR estimation methods that will enable the robust implementation of adaptive phase vocoders into mobile phone applications.

Heart rate variability (HRV) may provide anesthesiologists with a noninvasive tool for monitoring nociception during general anesthesia. A novel wavelet transform cardiores-piratory coherence (WTCRC) algorithm has been developed to calculate estimates of the linear coupling between heart rate and respiration. WTCRC values range from 1 (high coherence, no nociception) to 0 (low coherence, strong nociception). We have assessed the algorithm's ability to detect movement events (indicative of patient response to nociception) in 39 pediatric patients receiving general anesthesia. Sixty movement events were recorded during the 39 surgical procedures. Minimum and average WTCRC were calculated in a 30 second window surrounding each movement event. We used a 95% significance level as the threshold for detecting nociception during patient movement. The 95% significance level was calculated relative to a red noise background, using Monte Carlo simulations. It was calculated to be 0.7. Values below this threshold were treated as successful detection. The algorithm was found to detect movement with sensitivity ranging from 95% (minimum WTCRC) to 65% (average WTCRC). The WTCRC algorithm thus shows promise for noninvasively monitoring nociception during general anesthesia, using only heart rate and respiration.

Sleep/wake classification systems that rely on physiological signals suffer from inter-subject differences that make accurate classification with a single, subject-independent model difficult. To overcome the limitations of inter-subject variability we suggest a novel on-line adaptation technique that updates the sleep/wake classifier in real-time. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the performance of a newly developed adaptive classification algorithm that was embedded on a wearable sleep/wake classification system called SleePic. The algorithm processed electrocardiogram and respiratory effort signals for the classification task and applied behavioral measurements (obtained from accelerometer and press-button data) for the automatic adaptation task. When trained as a subjectindependent classifier algorithm, the SleePic device was only able to correctly classify 74.94% 6.76 of the human rated sleep/wake data. By using the suggested automatic adaptation method the mean classification accuracy could be significantly improved to 92.98% 3.19. A subject-independent classifier based on activity data only showed a comparable accuracy of 90.44% 3.57. We demonstrated that subject-independent models used for online sleep and wake classification can successfully be adapted to previously unseen subjects without the intervention of human experts or off-line calibration.

Increased fatigue of pilots during long flights can place both humans and machine at high risk. In this paper, we describe our research on a SymBodic (SYMbiotic BODies) system designed to minimize pilot fatigue in a simulated 48 hour mission. The system detected the pilot's sleep breaks and used this information to plan future sleep breaks. When fatigue could not be prevented, the SymBodic system assisted the pilot by providing relevant flight information through a vibro-tactile vest. Experiments showed that it was difficult for the pilot to adapt to the suggested sleep schedule within the duration of the experiment, and fatigue was not avoided. However, during periods of severe sleep deprivation, the SymBodic system significantly improved piloting performance.

Identifying capillary refill time (CRT) is an integral part of the clinical assessment of circulatory status and identification of dehydration in children. However, visual inspection of the finger to assess CRT has low inter-observer reliability, largely due to human limitations in estimating short time intervals. To improve precision, we have developed a mobile phone software application (iRefill) that automatically assesses CRT using a photo-plethysmogram (PPG) sensor. Commonly used to measure blood oxygen saturation and heart rate, this sensor can be adapted to replace the human eye to objectively measure CRT.

We describe a method for the online classification of sleep/wake states based on cardiorespiratory signals produced by wearable sensors. The method was conceived in view of its applicability to a wearable sleepiness monitoring device. The method uses a fast Fourier transform as the main feature extraction tool and a feedforward artificial neural network as a classifier. We show that when the method is applied to data collected from a single young male adult, the system can correctly classify, on average, 95.4% of unseen data from the same user. When the method is applied to classify data from multiple users with the same age and gender, its accuracy is reduced to 85.3%. However, receiver operating characteristic analysis shows that compared to actigraphy, the proposed method produces a more balanced correct classification of sleep and wake periods. Additionally, by adjusting the classification threshold of the neural classifier, 86.7% of correct classification is obtained.

Sleep problems and disorders have a serious impact on human health and wellbeing. The rising costs for treating sleep-related chronic diseases in industrialized countries demands efficient prevention. Low-cost, wearable sleep / wake detection systems which give feedback on the wearer's "sleep performance" are a promising approach to reduce the risk of developing serious sleep disorders and fatigue. Not all bio-medical signals that are useful for sleep / wake discrimination can be easily recorded with wearable systems. Sensors often need to be placed in an obtrusive location on the body or cannot be efficiently embedded into a wearable frame. Furthermore, wearable systems have limited computational and energetic resources, which restrict the choice of sensors and algorithms for online processing and classification. Since wearable systems are used outside the laboratory, the recorded signals tend to be corrupted with additional noise that influences the precision of classification algorithms. In this thesis we present the research on a wearable sleep / wake classifier system that relies on cardiorespiratory (ECG and respiratory effort) and activity recordings and that works autonomously with minimal user interaction. This research included the selection of optimal signals and sensors, the development of a custom-tailored hardware demonstrator with embedded classification algorithms, and the realization of experiments in real-world environments for the customization and validation of the system. The processing and classification of the signals were based on Fourier transformations and artificial neural networks that are efficiently implementable into digital signal controllers. Literature analysis and empiric measurements revealed that cardiorespiratory signals are more promising for a wearable sleep / wake classification than clinically used signals such as brain potentials. The experiments conducted during this thesis showed that inter-subject differences within the recorded physiological signals make it difficult to design a sleep / wake classification model that can generalize to a group of subjects. This problem was addressed in two ways: First by adding features from another signal to the classifier, that is, measuring the behavioral quiescence during sleep using accelerometers. Conducted research on different feature extraction methods from accelerometer data showed that this data generalizes well for distinct subjects in the study group. In addition, research on user-adaptation methods was conducted. Behavioral sleep and wake measures, notably the measurement of reactivity and activity, were developed to build up a priori knowledge that was used to adapt the classification algorithm automatically to new situations. This thesis demonstrates the design and development of a low-cost, wearable hardware and embedded software for on-line sleep / wake discrimination. The proposed automatic user-adaptive classifier is advantageous compared to previously suggested classification methods that generalize over multiple subjects, because it can take changes in the wearer's physiology and sleep / wake behavior into account without adjustment from a human expert. The results of this thesis contribute to the development of smart, wearable, bio-physiological monitoring systems which require a high degree of autonomy and have only low computational resources available. We believe that the proposed sleep / wake classification system is a first promising step toward a context-aware system for sleep management, sleep disorder prevention, and reduction of fatigue.

Actigraphy for long-term sleep/wake monitoring fails to correctly classify situations where the subject displays low activity, but is awake. In this paper we propose a new algorithm which uses both accelerometer and cardio-respiratory signals to overcome this restriction. Acceleration, electrocardiogram and respiratory effort were measured with an integrated wearable recording system worn on the chest by three healthy male subjects during normal daily activities. For signal processing a Fast Fourier Transformation and as classifier a feed-forward Artificial Neural Network was used. The best classifier achieved an accuracy of 96.14%, a sensitivity of 94.65% and a specificity of 98.19%. The algorithm is suitable for integration into a wearable device for long-term home monitoring.

This paper describes hardware and behavior implementation of a miniature robot in size of a match box that simulates the behavior of cockroaches in order to establish a social interaction with them. The robot is equipped with two micro-processors dedicated to hardware processing and behavior generation. The robot can discriminate cockroaches, other robots, environment boundaries and shelters. It has also three means of communication to monitor, log, supervise the biological experiment, and detect the other robots in short range. The behavioral model of the robot is a mixture of fusion in low-level and arbitration in high-level. In arbitration level a stochastic state machine selects the proper subtask. Then in fusion level, that subtask is decomposed to a hierarchy of sub-tasks. Each sub-task generates a potential field. The resultant force is then mapped to an action.

This paper describes the hardware and behavior implementation of a miniature robot, in size of a match box, that is able to interact with cockroaches. The robot is equipped with two micro-processors dedicated to hardware processing and behavior generation. It is also equipped with 12 infra-red proximity sensors, 2 light sensors, a linear camera and a battery that allows 3 hours autonomy. The robot can discriminate cockroaches, other robots, environment boundaries and shelters. It has also three means of communication: a wireless module for monitoring and logging, an IR remote receiver for fast supervision of biological experiment and a simple local communication protocol via infrared proximity sensors to detect robots in short range