Soft Nanomembrane Sensors and Flexible Hybrid Bioelectronics for Wireless Quantification of Blepharospasm.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Mahmood M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7604814 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:There are more than 3 million people in the world whose mobility relies on wheelchairs. Recent advancement on engineering technology enables more intuitive, easy-to-use rehabilitation systems. A human-machine interface that uses non-invasive, electrophysiological signals can allow a systematic interaction between human and devices; for example, eye movement-based wheelchair control. However, the existing machine-interface platforms are obtrusive, uncomfortable, and often cause skin irritations as they require a metal electrode affixed to the skin with a gel and acrylic pad. Here, we introduce a bioelectronic system that makes dry, conformal contact to the skin. The mechanically comfortable sensor records high-fidelity electrooculograms, comparable to the conventional gel electrode. Quantitative signal analysis and infrared thermographs show the advantages of the soft biosensor for an ergonomic human-machine interface. A classification algorithm with an optimized set of features shows the accuracy of 94% with five eye movements. A Bluetooth-enabled system incorporating the soft bioelectronics demonstrates a precise, hands-free control of a robotic wheelchair via electrooculograms.
| S-EPMC5323068 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Sleep is an essential element to human life, restoring the brain and body from accumulated fatigue from daily activities. Quantitative monitoring of daily sleep quality can provide critical feedback to evaluate human health and life patterns. However, the existing sleep assessment system using polysomnography is not available for a home sleep evaluation, while it requires multiple sensors, tabletop electronics, and sleep specialists. More importantly, the mandatory sleep in a designated lab facility disrupts a subject's regular sleep pattern, which does not capture one's everyday sleep behaviors. Recent studies report that galvanic skin response (GSR) measured on the skin can be one indicator to evaluate the sleep quality daily at home. However, the available GSR detection devices require rigid sensors wrapped on fingers along with separate electronic components for data acquisition, which can interrupt the normal sleep conditions. Here, we report a new class of materials, sensors, electronics, and packaging technologies to develop a wireless, soft electronic system that can measure GSR on the wrist. The single device platform that avoids wires, rigid sensors, and straps offers the maximum comfort to wear on the skin and minimize disruption of a subject's sleep. A nanomaterial GSR sensor, printed on a soft elastomeric membrane, can have intimate contact with the skin to reduce motion artifact during sleep. A multi-layered flexible circuit mounted on top of the sensor provides a wireless, continuous, real-time recording of GSR to classify sleep stages, validated by the direct comparison with the standard method that measures other physiological signals. Collectively, the soft bioelectronic system shows great potential to be working as a portable, at-home sensor system for assessing sleep quality before a hospital visit.
| S-EPMC7825679 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Stress has become a significant factor, directly affecting human health. Due to the numerous sources of stress that are inevitable in daily life, effective management of stress is essential to maintain a healthy life. Recent advancements in wearable devices allow monitoring stress levels via the detection of galvanic skin response on the skin. Some of these devices show the capability of assessing stress relief methods. However, prior works have been limited in a controlled laboratory setting with a short period assessment (<1 h) of stress intervention. The existing systems' main issues include motion artifacts and discomfort caused by rigid and bulky electronics and mandatory device connection on active fingers. Here, we introduce soft, wireless, skin-like electronics (SKINTRONICS) that offers continuous, portable daily stress and management practice monitoring. The ultrathin, lightweight, all-in-one device captures the change of a subject's stress over six continuous hours during everyday activities, including desk work, cleaning, and resting. At the same time, the SKINTRONICS proves that typical stress alleviation methods (mindfulness and meditation) can reduce stress levels, even in the middle of the day, which is supported by statistical analysis. The low-profile, wireless, gel-free device shows enhanced breathability and minimized motion artifacts compared to a commercial stress monitor. Collectively, this study shows the first demonstration of soft, nanomembrane bioelectronics for long-term, continuous assessment of stress and intervention effectiveness throughout daily life.
| S-EPMC8093317 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Recent advances in flexible materials, nanomanufacturing, and system integration have provided a great opportunity to develop wearable flexible hybrid electronics for human healthcare, diagnostics, and therapeutics. However, existing medical devices still rely on rigid electronics with many wires and separate components, which hinders wireless, comfortable, continuous monitoring of health-related human motions. Here, we introduce advanced materials and system integration technologies that enable a soft, active wireless, thin-film bioelectronics. The low-modulus, highly flexible wearable electronic system incorporates a nanomembrane wireless circuit and functional chip components, enclosed by a soft elastomeric membrane. The bioelectronic system offers a gentle, seamless mounting on the skin, while offering a comfortable, highly sensitive and accurate detection of head movements. We utilize the wireless wearable hybrid system for quantitative diagnostics of cervical dystonia (CD) that is characterized by involuntary abnormal head postures and repetitive head movements, sometimes with neck muscle pain. A set of analytical and experimental studies shows a soft system packaging, hard-soft materials integration, and quantitative assessment of physiological signals detected by the SKINTRONICS. In vivo demonstration, involving ten human subjects, captures the device feasibility for use in CD measurement.
| S-EPMC7546326 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Biomimetic properties allow soft robots to complexly interact with the environment. As the bridge between the robot and the operating object, the gripping hand is an important organ for its connection with the outside world, which requires the ability to provide feedback from the grasped object, similar to the human sensory and nervous system. In this work, to cope with the difficulty of integrating complex sensing and communication systems into flexible soft grippers, we propose a GO/PI composite bilayer film-based gripper with two types of tactile sensors and a LC passive wireless transmission module to obtain the grip information and transmit it to the processor. The bilayer film structure demonstrates good photothermal driving performance. Pressure and material sensors are located at the tips of the gripper's fingers to acquire tactile information which is wirelessly transmitted to the processor for analysis via the LC circuit. The grasping and feedback of the gripper are presented through an intelligent display system, realizing the wireless interconnection between the robot terminal and processing system, exhibiting broad application potential.
| S-EPMC9642356 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Vital signs monitoring is a fundamental component of ensuring the health and safety of women and newborns during pregnancy, labor, and childbirth. This monitoring is often the first step in early detection of pregnancy abnormalities, providing an opportunity for prompt, effective intervention to prevent maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality. Contemporary pregnancy monitoring systems require numerous devices wired to large base units; at least five separate devices with distinct user interfaces are commonly used to detect uterine contractility, maternal blood oxygenation, temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and fetal heart rate. Current monitoring technologies are expensive and complex with implementation challenges in low-resource settings where maternal morbidity and mortality is the greatest. We present an integrated monitoring platform leveraging advanced flexible electronics, wireless connectivity, and compatibility with a wide range of low-cost mobile devices. Three flexible, soft, and low-profile sensors offer comprehensive vital signs monitoring for both women and fetuses with time-synchronized operation, including advanced parameters such as continuous cuffless blood pressure, electrohysterography-derived uterine monitoring, and automated body position classification. Successful field trials of pregnant women between 25 and 41 wk of gestation in both high-resource settings (n = 91) and low-resource settings (n = 485) demonstrate the system's performance, usability, and safety.
| S-EPMC8157941 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Increasing amounts of attention are being paid to the study of Soft Sensors and Soft Systems. Soft Robotic Systems require input from advances in the field of Soft Sensors. Soft sensors can help a soft robot to perceive and to act upon its immediate environment. The concept of integrating sensing capabilities into soft robotic systems is becoming increasingly important. One challenge is that most of the existing soft sensors have a requirement to be hardwired to power supplies or external data processing equipment. This requirement hinders the ability of a system designer to integrate soft sensors into soft robotic systems. In this article, we design, fabricate, and characterize a new soft sensor, which benefits from a combination of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag design and microfluidic sensor fabrication technologies. We designed this sensor using the working principle of an RFID transporter antenna, but one whose resonant frequency changes in response to an applied strain. This new microfluidic sensor is intrinsically stretchable and can be reversibly strained. This sensor is a passive and wireless device, and as such, it does not require a power supply and is capable of transporting data without a wired connection. This strain sensor is best understood as an RFID tag antenna; it shows a resonant frequency change from approximately 860 to 800 MHz upon an applied strain change from 0% to 50%. Within the operating frequency, the sensor shows a standoff reading range of >7.5 m (at the resonant frequency). We characterize, experimentally, the electrical performance and the reliability of the fabrication process. We demonstrate a pneumatic soft robot that has four microfluidic sensors embedded in four of its legs, and we describe the implementation circuit to show that we can obtain movement information from the soft robot using our wireless soft sensors.
| S-EPMC6386780 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundDifficulties in establishing diagnosis of small bowel (SB) disorders, prevented their effective treatment. This problem was largely resolved by wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE), which has since become the first line investigation for suspected SB disorders. Several types of WCE pills are now used in clinical practice, despite their limitations and complications. WCE pills are large, rigid and immotile capsules. When swallowed, they provide SB enteroscopy downloaded to a data logger carried by the patient. Most of the complications of WCEs result from lack of intrinsic locomotion: incomplete examination, capsule retention and impaction within strictures. In addition, the rigid nature and size of current generation of WCE pills is accompanied by 0.1% inability to swallow the pill by patients with normal esophageal motility.MethodsThe aim of this communication is to describe the initial prototype, P1, which is thinner and slightly longer than the current generation of WCEs. In addition, it exhibits intrinsic active locomotion, produced by vibrating silicon legs. These generate a controlled-skid locomotion on the small bowel mucosal surface, rendered slippery by surface mucus and intraluminal surfactant bile salts. We demonstrate the mechanism responsible for the active locomotion of P1, which we consider translatable into a working prototype, suitable for further R&D for eventual clinical translation.ResultsThe shape and attachment of the rubber vibrating legs to vibrating actuators, have been designed specifically to produce a tight clockwise circular motion. When inserted inside a circular tube in vitro of equivalent diameter to human small intestine, the intrinsic circular clockwise motion of P1 translates into a linear locomotion by the constraints imposed by the surrounding circular walls of SB and rest of the gastrointestinal tract. This design ensures device stability during transit, essential for imaging and targeting lesions encountered during the enteroscopy. We preformed two experiments: (i) transit of P1 through a phantom consisting of a segment of PVC tube placed on a horizontal surface and (ii) transit through a transparent slippery nylon sleeve insufflated with air. In the PVC tube, its transit rate averages 15.6 mm/s, which is too fast for endoscopy: whereas inside the very slippery nylon sleeve insufflated with air, the average transit rate of P1 is reduced to 5.9 mm/s, i.e., ideal for inspection endoscopy.ConclusionsThese in-vitro experiments indicate that the P1 hybrid soft robot prototype has the potential specifically for clinical translation for SB enteroscopy.
| S-EPMC9085689 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Recent advances in wearable electronics combined with wireless communications are essential to the realization of medical applications through health monitoring technologies. For example, a smart contact lens, which is capable of monitoring the physiological information of the eye and tear fluid, could provide real-time, noninvasive medical diagnostics. However, previous reports concerning the smart contact lens have indicated that opaque and brittle components have been used to enable the operation of the electronic device, and this could block the user's vision and potentially damage the eye. In addition, the use of expensive and bulky equipment to measure signals from the contact lens sensors could interfere with the user's external activities. Thus, we report an unconventional approach for the fabrication of a soft, smart contact lens in which glucose sensors, wireless power transfer circuits, and display pixels to visualize sensing signals in real time are fully integrated using transparent and stretchable nanostructures. The integration of this display into the smart lens eliminates the need for additional, bulky measurement equipment. This soft, smart contact lens can be transparent, providing a clear view by matching the refractive indices of its locally patterned areas. The resulting soft, smart contact lens provides real-time, wireless operation, and there are in vivo tests to monitor the glucose concentration in tears (suitable for determining the fasting glucose level in the tears of diabetic patients) and, simultaneously, to provide sensing results through the contact lens display.
| S-EPMC5787380 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The continuous monitoring of hemodynamics attainable with wireless implantable devices would improve the treatment of vascular diseases. However, demanding requirements of size, wireless operation, and compatibility with endovascular procedures have limited the development of vascular electronics. Here, we report an implantable, wireless vascular electronic system, consisting of a multimaterial inductive stent and printed soft sensors capable of real-time monitoring of arterial pressure, pulse rate, and flow without batteries or circuits. Developments in stent design achieve an enhanced wireless platform while matching conventional stent mechanics. The fully printed pressure sensors demonstrate fast response times, high durability, and sensing at small bending radii. The device is monitored via inductive coupling at communication distances notably larger than prior vascular sensors. The wireless electronic system is validated in artery models, while minimally invasive catheter implantation is demonstrated in an in vivo rabbit study. Overall, the vascular system offers an adaptable framework for comprehensive monitoring of hemodynamics.
| S-EPMC9094660 | biostudies-literature