A portable three-channel data collector for Chinese medicine pulses

Abstract

Visualization of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) could offer an opportunity for doctors and patients have a perspective of life and health, while TCM visualization is difficult to achieve because large amounts of pulse data needed to be collected for big data analyses and diagnoses. However, existing data-collecting devices still don’t have the ability to substitute for doctor’s fingers to accurately recognize the pulse signals from the different positions on different genders and ages of detecting objects, under different levels and directions of applied forces. Herein, we introduce a portable three-channel data collector on a human hand as a transitional scheme for visualization of TCM to make use of human fingers’ flexibility. This data collector was made up of three homemade flexible pressure sensors, three-channel transmitting circuit, and a signal processing software, in which the sensors fabricated by conductive carbon fiber beams were present high-sensitivity and reliability, make them suitable for the monitoring of pulse signals. Comprehensive researches and analyses on the pulse signals further demonstrated that this portable three-channel data collector could accurately capture and identifying the slightly distinctions of radial artery pulse waves under different positions, different level forces, different directions of applied forces, different genders and ages of detected objects. Moreover, this three-channel data collector has been successfully applied to remote TCM diagnosis, indicated that the data collector could be a promising personal medical equipment for the application of TCM visualization.