Microsensor For Measurement Research Articles

Treatment monitoring and innovations in amblyopia treatment

Technical innovations, such as computer games and shutter glasses open up elegant treatment options for amblyopia. The lack of monitoring of compliance means that there is no scientific basis on which acomparative study between anew therapeutic approach and occlusion therapy as the standard of care could be designed. An easy to use microsensor for measurement of compliance could have a broad spectrum of applications in scientific studies as well as in routine clinical practice. This article gives abrief overview about emerging and innovative approaches.

A flexible skin piloerection monitoring sensor

We have designed, fabricated, and tested a capacitive-type flexible micro sensor for measurement of the human skin piloerection arisen from sudden emotional and environmental change. The present skin piloerection monitoring methods are limited in objective and quantitative measurement by physical disturbance stimulation to the skin due to bulky size and heavy weight of measuring devices. The proposed flexible skin piloerection monitoring sensor is composed of 3 × 3 spiral coplanar capacitor array using conductive polymer for having high capacitive density and thin enough thickness to be attached to human skin. The performance of the skin piloerection monitoring sensor is characterized using the artificial bump, representing human skin goosebump; thus, resulting in the sensitivity of −0.00252%/μm and the nonlinearity of 25.9% for the artificial goosebump deformation in the range of 0–326 μm. We also verified successive human skin piloerection having 3.5 s duration on the subject's dorsal forearms, thus resulting in the capacitance change of −6.2 fF and −9.2 fF for the piloerection intensity of 145 μm and 194 μm, respectively. It is demonstrated experimentally that the proposed sensor is capable to measure the human skin piloerection objectively and quantitatively, thereby suggesting the quantitative evaluation method of the qualitative human emotional status for cognitive human-machine interfaces applications.