Vital Physiological Parameters Research Articles

Understanding the physiological transmission mechanisms of photoplethysmography signals: a comprehensive review.

The widespread adoption of Photoplethysmography (PPG) as a non-invasive method for detecting blood volume variations and deriving vital physiological parameters reflecting health status has surged, primarily due to its accessibility, cost-effectiveness, and non-intrusive nature. This has led to extensive research around this technique in both daily life and clinical applications. Interestingly, despite the existence of contradictory explanations of the underlying mechanism of PPG signals across various applications, a systematic investigation into this crucial matter has not been conducted thus far. This gap in understanding hinders the full exploitation of PPG technology and undermines its accuracy and reliability in numerous applications. Building upon a comprehensive review of the fundamental principles and technological advancements in PPG, this paper initially attributes the origin of PPG signals to a combination of physical and physiological transmission processes. Furthermore, three distinct models outlining the concerned physiological transmission processes are synthesized, with each model undergoing critical examination based on theoretical underpinnings, empirical evidence, and constraints. The ultimate objective is to form a fundamental framework for a better understanding of physiological transmission processes in PPG signal generation and to facilitate the development of more reliable technologies for detecting physiological signals.&#xD.

Validation Study to Assess the Concurrent Validity of the Beep Test as a Proxy for Cardiopulmonary Endurance, Using VO2 Max as the Criterion Standard

Rowing, characterized as a “velocity-centric sport,” demands high physical and physiological performance. Cardiorespiratory endurance, an integral component of physical fitness, plays a vital role in rowing performance. Optimal physical fitness is essential for injury prevention and success in international competitions. Cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) is the gold standard for assessing maximal oxygen uptake (VO2 max), a crucial indicator of cardiopulmonary endurance. The considerable expense and specialized expertise required for CPET have prompted the utilization of field tests, such as the beep test. The current study aims to validate the accuracy of the beep test in measuring VO2 max uptake as the gold standard. The present cross-sectional observational study involved 16 participants from the national rowing pool of Sri Lanka (11 males, 5 females). The study adhered to the Bruce protocol for implementing CPET to measure VO2 max. Concurrently, the standardized beep test, encompassing 21 progressively challenging levels, was administered to assess the VO2 max of participants. The number of shuttles completed during the beep test underwent meticulous conversion into corresponding VO2 max values, facilitating a comparative analysis with the VO2 max values derived from CPET. Among the key findings, the CPET among Sri Lankan rowers, male rowers exhibited statistically significant disparities across several vital physiological parameters, including VO2 max, VO2 max at anaerobic threshold (VO2 max AT), maximum heart rate (HR max), and minute ventilation (VE), against their female counterparts. A statistically significant and positive correlation was discerned among female rowers between the VO2 max values obtained through the gold standard CPET and those derived from the beep test. However, a consistent trend emerged, revealing that the beep test consistently overestimated VO2 max in both male and female rowers compared to the gold standard CPET method. The study underscores the importance of considering population-specific factors and advocates for developing refined equations to enhance the accuracy of field tests in predicting cardiopulmonary endurance.

IoT Based Health Monitoring System

Abstract: The rapid advancements in the Internet of Things (IoT) have paved the way for revolutionary healthcare solutions. This paper proposes an IoT-based health monitoring system aimed at providing continuous and remote monitoring of patients' vital signs and physiological parameters. This real-time data collection and analysis empowers proactive healthcare, enhancing patient safety and quality of life.

Beauty and health: an intriguing liaison?

The exposure to different form of beauty coming from visual art, music, nature, architecture, improves mental health and exerts neurotrophic effects on different parts of the brain. This in turn improves physical health, prolongs life expectancy, and reduces the risk of serious degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and cancer. These beneficial actions would not be understandable and plausible if one did not accept the mind-body unity. The 'hegemonic' role of the brain in health and illness can be discerned, for example, in the effect of emotions on vital physiological parameters, in the relationships between stress and many medical-clinical pathologies, in the control exercised by the brain over the immune system reflecting also in the inhibition of tumour progression.

A 72-h sedated porcine model of traumatic spinal cord injury

IntroductionThere is an increasing focus on the prevention of secondary injuries following traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI), especially through improvement of spinal cord perfusion and immunological modulation. Such therapeutic strategies require translational and controlled animal models of disease progression of the acute phases of human TSCI. Research questionIs it possible to establish a 72-h sedated porcine model of incomplete thoracic TSCI, enabling controlled use of continuous, invasive, and non-invasive modalities during the entire sub-acute phase of TSCI? Material and methodsA sham-controlled trial was conducted to establish the model, and 10 animals were assigned to either sham or TSCI. All animals underwent a laminectomy, and animals in the TSCI group were subjected to a weight-drop injury. Animals were then kept sedated for 72 h. The amount of injury was assessed by ex-vivo measures MRI-based fiber tractography, histology and immunohistochemistry. ResultsIn all animals, we were successful in maintaining sedation for 72 h without comprising vital physiological parameters. The MRI-based fiber tractography showed that all TSCI animals revealed a break in the integrity of spinal neurons, whereas histology demonstrated no transversal sections of the spine with complete injury. Notably, some animals displayed signs of secondary ischemic tissue in the cranial and caudal sections. Discussion and conclusionsThis study succeeded in producing a porcine model of incomplete TSCI, which was physiologically stable up to 72 h. We believe that this TSCI model will constitute a potential translational model to study the pathophysiology secondary to TSCI in humans.

Functional fibers/textiles for smart sensing devices and applications in personal healthcare systems.

Personalized medical diagnostics and monitoring have become increasingly important due to inefficient and delayed medical services of traditional centralized healthcare systems. To enhance the comfort and portability, flexible health monitoring systems have been developed in recent years. In particular, smart fiber/textile-based sensing devices show superiority for continuously monitoring personal health and vital physiological parameters owing to their light weight, good flexibility and inherent miniaturization. This review focuses on the recent advances in smart fiber/textile-based sensing devices for wearable electronic applications. First, fabrication strategies of smart sensing fibers/textiles are introduced in detail. In addition, sensing performances, working principles and applications of smart sensing fibers/textiles such as pressure sensing fibers/textiles, stretchable strain sensing fibers/textiles, temperature sensing fibers/textiles, and biofluid, gas and humidity sensing fibers/textiles in health monitoring are also reviewed systematically. Finally, we propose current challenges and future prospects in the area of fiber/textile-based sensors for wearable healthcare monitoring and diagnosis systems. In general, this review aims to give an overall perspective of the promising field by reviewing various fiber/textile-based sensing devices and highlighting the importance for researchers to keep up with the sequential exploration of soft sensing fibers/textiles for applications in wearable smart systems.

Wearable Devices: Implications for Precision Medicine and the Future of Health Care.

Wearable devices are integrated analytical units equipped with sensitive physical, chemical, and biological sensors capable of noninvasive and continuous monitoring of vital physiological parameters. Recent advances in disciplines including electronics, computation, and material science have resulted in affordable and highly sensitive wearable devices that are routinely used for tracking and managing health and well-being. Combined with longitudinal monitoring of physiological parameters, wearables are poised to transform the early detection, diagnosis, and treatment/management of a range of clinical conditions. Smartwatches are the most commonly used wearable devices and have already demonstrated valuable biomedical potential in detecting clinical conditions such as arrhythmias, Lyme disease, inflammation, and, more recently, COVID-19 infection. Despite significant clinical promise shown in research settings, there remain major hurdles in translating the medical uses of wearables to the clinic. There is a clear need for more effective collaboration among stakeholders, including users, data scientists, clinicians, payers, and governments, to improve device security, user privacy, data standardization, regulatory approval, and clinical validity. This review examines the potential of wearables to offer affordable and reliable measures of physiological status that are on par with FDA-approved specialized medical devices. We briefly examine studies where wearables proved critical for the early detection of acute and chronic clinical conditions with a particular focus on cardiovascular disease, viral infections, and mental health. Finally, we discuss current obstacles to the clinical implementation of wearables and provide perspectives on their potential to deliver increasingly personalized proactive health care across a wide variety of conditions.

Temperature sensing of the brain enabled by directly inscribed Bragg gratings in CYTOP polymer optical fiber implants

Brain temperature is a vital physiological parameter that has a great effect on metabolic processes, enzymatic activity, neurotransmitter function, blood flow regulation, neuroprotection, and cognitive performance. In this framework, the development of accurate and reliable brain temperature measurement tools is crucial in brain-related treatment and research, such as neurosurgery, therapeutic hypothermia, and the understanding of brain function and pathologies. Here, we developed the first large-core flexible low optical loss CYTOP polymer optical fiber (POF)-based brain temperature probe operating in the telecommunication spectral range. The temperature measurements were achieved by detecting the reflected spectrum from a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) directly inscribed at the tip of the POF using femtosecond pulses. A fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP) tube was thermally drawn and used as a sleeve around the FBG structure to eliminate the cross-sensitivity with humidity and microstrain perturbations. The assembled POF implant has a sensitivity of 14.3 pm/°C. The local temperature of the cerebral cortex, corpus callosum, and striatum in a rat brain was measured in vivo. The results indicate that the deep brain regions have higher temperature than the top cortical ones with a relatively linear relationship between the brain structure depth and its temperature. In addition, the rectal body core temperature was detected in parallel with the brain temperature measurement to further validate the developed device. We believe that the presented CYTOP POF-based implantable temperature probe opens the way towards the development of flexible and stable tools for accurate brain temperature recording where large-core fiber-based neural devices are required.

Smartphone-based non-invasive haemoglobin level estimation by analyzing nail pallor

Blood haemoglobin concentration is a vital physiological parameter for assessing disease conditions, such as Anaemia in the human body. Anaemia is one of the most common diseases that affects billions of people worldwide. Especially, in developing countries, like India, the prevalence is quite high according to WHO statistics. Traditional invasive process for screening of anaemia is exorbitant and is hard to orchestrate in a resource-poor environment which raises the demand for cost-effective, reliable, portable, non-invasive solution. Hence, in this work, we aim to design a solution for non-invasive screening of anaemia by combining the cutting-edge Artificial-Intelligence techniques with the conventional practises for rough assessment of anaemia by observing pallor in the finger-nail of hand of a human subject. The proposed method first induces color changes in nail-bed by application of suitable amount of pressure and release thereafter through a customized hardware device. Finally, the captured video by a smartphone camera is analysed to measure the rate of change of color to quantify the blood haemoglobin level after correlating with the clinically determined value of blood haemoglobin. The proposed model with a fusion-based prediction approach outperforms the state-of-the-art solutions, ensuring a mean RMSE and MSE error of 0.63 and 0.61 and standard deviation ± 0.46 g dL−1 and ± 0.73 g dL−1 respectively as compared to clinically tested haemoglobin level for a total of 220 subjects.

Measurement Does Not Take Place in a Legal Vacuum

Measurement Does Not Take Place in a Legal Vacuum

A Classification Method for Workers' Physical Risk.

In Industry 4.0 scenarios, wearable sensing allows the development of monitoring solutions for workers' risk prevention. Current approaches aim to identify the presence of a risky event, such as falls, when it has already occurred. However, there is a need to develop methods capable of identifying the presence of a risk condition in order to prevent the occurrence of the damage itself. The measurement of vital and non-vital physiological parameters enables the worker's complex state estimation to identify risk conditions preventing falls, slips and fainting, as a result of physical overexertion and heat stress exposure. This paper aims at investigating classification approaches to identify risk conditions with respect to normal physical activity by exploiting physiological measurements in different conditions of physical exertion and heat stress. Moreover, the role played in the risk identification by specific sensors and features was investigated. The obtained results evidenced that k-Nearest Neighbors is the best performing algorithm in all the experimental conditions exploiting only information coming from cardiorespiratory monitoring (mean accuracy 88.7±7.3% for the model trained with max(HR), std(RR) and std(HR)).

Automatic multi-weigh-station for assessing sheep liveweight in small flocks

Sheep liveweight is a vital physiological parameter to monitor as it is directly correlated with the animals internal energy balance. Increases in liveweight in mature sheep coincide with an increase in fat and protein tissue while weight loss denotes an inverse relationship. This relationship underscores appropriate pasture stocking rates, production outputs, the correct dosing of medicinal treatments for maintaining a healthy flock and finding target markets. The sheep production industry is yearning for an accurate platform to provide real-time and accurate liveweight measurements without extensive labour. The two main methods for measuring sheep liveweight include; static yard weighting, which while accurate is labour intensive, and walk-over-weighing — which has the advantage of autonomy but lacks accuracy and requires the flock to be trained. In this work we describe a custom platform that accurately measures the liveweight of up-to three sheep simultaneously while they drink or eat from a field trough. A plywood frame consisting of three separated static weigh platforms — each with two commercially available weigh bars — was constructed to fit along side a conventional 3 metre trough. These strain gauges plug directly into a custom circuit board with a Teensy 3.6 microcontroller connected to several Analog-to-Digital converters, SDI-12, I2C and OneWire interfaces for additional environmental/agricultural sensors — all powered by a commonly available 12 V lead–acid battery and commercial solar charger. The device can communicate over LoRaWAN — a long range, low-power wireless communication architecture — making it suitable for remote deployment on large farms where traditional 3/4G telecommunications are unavailable. Firmware on the device sends device status updates every 15 min and calculates/transmits liveweight parameters in real-time — as animals use the trough. Five untrained mature wethers were given access to the device over a period of 57 days. A total of 1149 weights were captured, of that 853 were automatically flagged as reliable using algorithms provided in this work — equating to ∼74% of the original dataset. This work aims to enable producers to a quantify the physiological state of their flock without extensive labour, acting to increase their available decision making information in regards to flock productivity, stocking rates and animal welfare.

Microbial assemblies with distinct trophic strategies drive changes in soil microbial carbon use efficiency along vegetation primary succession in a glacier retreat area of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau

Soil microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) is a vital physiological parameter in assessing carbon turnover. Yet, how the microbial assemblies with distinct trophic strategies regulate the soil microbial CUE remains elusive. Based on the oligotrophic-copiotrophic framework, we explored the role of microbial taxa with different trophic strategies in mediating microbial CUE (determined by a 13C-labeled approach) along the vegetation primary succession in Hailuogou glacier retreat area of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau. Results showed that soil microbial CUE ranged from 0.54 to 0.72 (averaging 0.62 ± 0.01 across all samples) and increased staggeringly along the vegetation succession. Microbial assemblies with distinct trophic strategies were crucial regulators of soil microbial CUE. Specifically, microbial CUE increased with microbial oligotroph: copiotroph ratios, oligotroph-dominated stage had a higher microbial CUE than copiotroph-dominated ones. The prevalence of oligotrophic members would be the underlying microbial mechanism for the high microbial CUE. Given that oligotrophs predominate in more recalcitrant carbon soils and their higher microbial CUE, we speculate that oligotrophs are likely to potentially enhance carbon sequestration in soils. In addition, the responses of the microbial CUE to fungal oligotroph: copiotroph ratios were higher than bacterial ones. Fungal taxa may play a dominant role in shaping microbial CUE relative to bacterial members. Overall, our results constructed close associations between microbial trophic strategies and CUE and provide direct evidence regarding how microbial trophic strategies regulate microbial CUE. This study is a significant step forward for elucidating the physiological mechanisms regulating microbial CUE and has significant implications for understanding microbial-mediated carbon cycling processes.

Evaluation of blood pressure using a flexible and wearable capacitive pressure sensor.

In recent times, the high demand for flexible and wearable pressure sensors to monitor human health, particularly for patients afflicted with hypertension or high blood pressure (BP), has captured the keen interest of researchers. Capacitance-based flexible sensing devices offer real-time metrics regarding vital physiological parameters of the human body, such as BP and pulse rate (PR), thereby enabling the identification of cardiovascular complications. In this regard, we have developed a capacitive pressure sensor using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and deionized water (DIW) and improved its key parameters by adding baking powder to PDMS-DIW. The sensor demonstrated excellent performance in static pressure measurements with a sensitivity of 0.021 Pa-1, detection limit of 1 Pa, and response time of 100 ms. We further investigated its application in human BP monitoring. The sensor successfully captured the oscillometric waveform (OMW) for all 160 participants and demonstrated excellent performance in accurately measuring BP, meeting all criteria outlined as the universal standard when compared with the reference devices: OMRON BP device and the gold-standard mercury-based sphygmomanometer. Furthermore, the sensor accurately provided the PR and agreed well with the reference BP device. Therefore, the developed BP sensor can be a viable alternative to replace the pressure sensors in existing BP devices.

Application of Unconditioned Nanostructured Thermoplastic-Based Strain Gauge Sensor in Wearable Electronics

Wearable electronics is now revolutionizing the world of smart sensors offering tremendous solutions to a variety of applications that span from biomedical market to gaming and fashion sectors. In this scenario, physical sensors play a crucial role since they offer fast and reliable feedback on human motion, even for fine gestures, and can detect vital physiological parameters such as breathing and heart beating, while being able to be easily integrated into textile. Among wearable physical sensors, thermoplastic materials are utilized for their sensitivity and high stretchability. Moreover, these materials exhibit a good chemical resistance and implement low-cost manufacturing processes. In this work, we report a full characterization of a new thermoplastic nanocomposite material comparing its performances with and without preconditioning for strain up to 20%. Together with a measured gauge factor (GF) of about 10, sensors without preconditioning exhibit very good stability and they result to be a good candidate for wearable applications. We demonstrate this statement by analyzing the performance of a smart wristband prototype that integrates these strain gauges, obtaining very high performance of the sensors without prestrain in gesture recognition tasks with an accuracy and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${F}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -score of about 94%.

Study on Some Clinical Important Physiological and Hematological Reference Values for Indigenous Apparently Healthy Donkeys in Around Asella Town, Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia

In the tropical regions Donkeys are exposed to the effects of various environmental factors that alter their physiological and hematological values, which is particularly significant in working Donkeys. However, very little has been done to establish hematological and physiological reference values of local breeds of donkeys in Ethiopia. This study was aimed to determine hematological and physiological reference values for apparently healthy indigenous donkeys breeds in order to form a basis for clinical interpretation in and around Asella town of Oromia regional state, Ethiopia. The study was conducted from January to July 2021 by taking into account vital physiological parameters like body temperature, heart rate, and respiration rate from a total of 32 study animals. All appropriate records for physiological and blood samples for hematological analysis were collected from 32 donkeys. There was a statistically significant difference (P&lt;0.05) in the physiological heart and respiratory rates against the age of the study donkeys. However, there was no statistically significant (P&gt;0.05) difference in all hematological values of donkeys among sex groups. The mean values of body temperature obtained in this study were: young (37.12±.6.05 o C) and adult (37.55±0.58 o C) donkeys. Similarly, for female and male donkeys were 37.55±0.58 and 37.12 ±6.05 o C, respectively. The mean values of heart rate for young and adult donkeys were 46.93±5.31 and 38±3.98, respectively. The mean values of heart rate for female and male donkeys were 58.08±11.2 and 52.46±7.32, consecutively. The present study result should serve as a reference purpose after proper validation in the study animals and further studies in a various agro-climatic zone of the country, Ethiopia. Keywords: Age, Asella, donkeys, hematological, parameters, physiological, sex. DOI: 10.7176/ALST/94-02 Publication date: August 31 st 2022

Compact breath monitoring based on helical intermediate-period fiber grating

Tiny and soft breath sensors offer unique capabilities in a continuous and long-term recording of vital physiological parameters for human health monitoring. Here, we propose an all fiber-optic breath sensor based on helical intermediate-period fiber grating (E-HIPFG) written in an elliptic core polarization-maintaining fiber. This E-HIPFG-based breath sensor shows ultrafast response time and recovery time, which are 34.46 ms and 41.34 ms, respectively. The response time and recovery time are three orders faster than the corresponding values of conventional optical fiber-based breath sensors with humidity-sensitive material. In addition, this sensor does not combine with any additional coating materials or fiber architectures, increasing the stability in a continuous and long-term detection for breath monitoring. The E-HIPFG sensor is insensitive to external influences, such as temperature, torsion and strain, endowing the possibility of stable detection in the moving body. Particularly, the temperature sensitivity of the sensor is 2.75 pm/°C, which is two orders lower than the corresponding value of previous reports. Due to its considerable stability, quick response, and insensitivity to external influences, the E-HIPFG-based breath sensor offers significant potential for long-term and compact breathing monitoring devices.

Empowering People with a User-Friendly Wearable Platform for Unobtrusive Monitoring of Vital Physiological Parameters.

Elderly people feel vulnerable especially after they are dismissed from health care facilities and return home. The purpose of this work was to alleviate this sense of vulnerability and empower these people by giving them the opportunity to unobtrusively record their vital physiological parameters. Bearing in mind all the parameters involved, we developed a user-friendly wrist-wearable device combined with a web-based application, to adequately address this need. The proposed compilation obtains the photoplethysmogram (PPG) from the subject’s wrist and simultaneously extracts, in real time, the physiological parameters of heart rate (HR), blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) and respiratory rate (RR), based on algorithms embedded on the wearable device. The described process is conducted solely within the device, favoring the optimal use of the available resources. The aggregated data are transmitted via Wi-Fi to a cloud environment and stored in a database. A corresponding web-based application serves as a visualization and analytics tool, allowing the individuals to catch a glimpse of their physiological parameters on a screen and share their digital information with health professionals who can perform further processing and obtain valuable health information.

Implementation of an Intelligent Neonatal Monitoring System Using Raspberry Pi

An incubator is a biomedical apparatus used to keep neonates if they are ill and in need of further investigations. This is also useful for observation and care of newborn babies who were premature or of low birth weight. There will be loss of lives of neonates if the incubator is not appropriately monitored and this may even lead to accidents. In view of these, it has been proposed to implement an Intelligent Monitoring System for Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). For monitoring the premature infants continuously it requires sensors. It has been learnt that the temperature, breathing rate, body movements, loudness, or cry are some of the features to be monitored in incubator. Hence, in this paper, a wireless communication and body area network based system that constantly examine the vital physiological parameters of the baby kept in the NICU has been discussed. The analog signals from the sensors are processed using a Raspberry Pi. The system has been developed with Raspberry Pi B+ module as the controller. Sensors are used to monitor the physiological parameters and Pi camera is used to detect the baby movements. Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) module is incorporated in the proposed system to transmit the parameters via a short message service (SMS). Hence, this system offers a suitable method for parents and nurses to monitor premature infants.

Biodegradable Molybdenum (Mo) and Tungsten (W) Devices: One Step Closer towards Fully-Transient Biomedical Implants

Close monitoring of vital physiological parameters is often key in following the evolution of certain medical conditions (e.g., diabetes, infections, post-operative status or post-traumatic injury). The allocation of trained medical staff and specialized equipment is, therefore, necessary and often translates into a clinical and economic burden on modern healthcare systems. As a growing field, transient electronics may establish fully bioresorbable medical devices capable of remote real-time monitoring of therapeutically relevant parameters. These devices could alert remote medical personnel in case of any anomaly and fully disintegrate in the body without a trace. Unfortunately, the need for a multitude of biodegradable electronic components (power supplies, wires, circuitry) in addition to the electrochemical biosensing interface has halted the arrival of fully bioresorbable electronically active medical devices. In recent years molybdenum (Mo) and tungsten (W) have drawn increasing attention as promising candidates for the fabrication of both energy-powered active (e.g., transistors and integrated circuits) and passive (e.g., resistors and capacitors) biodegradable electronic components. In this review, we discuss the latest Mo and W-based dissolvable devices for potential biomedical applications and how these soluble metals could pave the way towards next-generation fully transient implantable electronic systems.