Rosario Morello

A Smart ECG Measurement System Based on Web-Service-Oriented Architecture for Telemedicine Applications

The opportunity for cardiac patients to have constantly monitored their health state at home is now possible by means of telemedicine applications. In fact, today, portable and simple-to-use devices allow one to get preliminary domestic diagnoses of the heart status. In this paper, the authors present an original ECG measurement system based on web-service-oriented architecture to monitor the heart health of cardiac patients. The projected device is a smart patient-adaptive system able to provide personalized diagnoses by using personal data and clinical history of the monitored patient. In the presence of a pathology occurrence, the system is able to call the emergency service for assistance. An ECG sensor has the task to acquire, condition, and sample the heart electrical impulses, whereas a personal digital assistant (PDA) performs the diagnosis according to the measurement uncertainty and, in case of a critical situation, calls the medical staff. The system has two removable and updatable memory devices: the first memory device stores the clinical and personal data of the patient, and the second memory device stores information on the metrological status of the measurement system. This way, according to the personal data and historical information of the patient, the measurement system adapts itself by selecting the best fitted ECG model as a reference to configure the computing algorithm. Further information on the measurement uncertainty is used to qualify the reliability of the final clinical response to reduce the occurrence of a faulty diagnosis. Through the PDA graphic interface, the user can display his personal data, observe the graph of his ECG signal, and read diagnosis information with the relative reliability level. Moreover, the patient can choose to print his ECG graph through a Bluetooth printer or to send it to a specialist by a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) modem.

A remote doctor for homecare and medical diagnoses on cardiac patients by an adaptive ECG analysis

Today the telemedicine applications are experiencing rapid growth. The possibility of having portable devices to use comfortably at home for monitoring the health of the patient has involved many research areas. In this paper a remote doctor for homecare and medical diagnoses on cardiac patient is proposed. An original smart system has been projected in order to adapt itself to the patient and develop, in this way, a personalized diagnosis taking into account his personal data and his clinical history; a practical and economical device that can adapt to any type of patient. The system is based on a PDA and an ECG sensor which acquires, at a fixed sampling frequency, the heart electrical impulses. In details, a removable and updatable memory is used to store the clinical and personal patient data, while an additional internal and read-only memory stores information on the metrological status of the measurement system. On PDA display, it is possible to observe the ECG signal graph, the information relating to diagnosis and the measurement uncertainty. The patient also has the opportunity to print the results by a Bluetooth printer. Through build-in models the ECG waveform is analyzed in order to diagnose possible arrhythmias occurrences or the happening of a heart attack according to some parameters like age, sex and physical constitution of the patient, and information on the measurement uncertainty. The embedded information on the system metrological performances and patient data are used to configure the computing algorithm and so to reduce the happening of diagnosis faults.

On the Web Service-Based Remote Didactical Laboratory: Further Developments and Improvements

In the paper, the authors report the improvements brought to the remote didactical laboratory, a project to which they have been working for the last two years as presented in P. Daponte et al. (2004). The project has risen from the need to reduce laboratory load, due to the increasing number of undergraduates in Italian University; successively, jointly with the realization of an e-Learning portal for Electric and Electronic Measurement courses, it has represented a way to provide the laboratory experiences to students attending on-line courses. Through the remote laboratory, students are able to execute measurements controlling real instruments, only by means of a common browser. In order to make the laboratory flexible and to grant freedom from software to users, a solution based on Web services, realized in Visual Basic .NET, has been chosen. The recent work has been focuses on the management of connections and queues, for whose aim SQL databases have been involved

A Wireless Measurement System for Estimation of Human Exposure to Vibration During the Use of Handheld Percussion Machines

This paper describes the project of a measurement system for the estimation of the hand-arm exposure to vibration due to percussion machines. The system permits checking the observance of the safety requirements for the worker health during the use of vibrating tools. Pathologies affecting the neurological and vascular systems may be possible consequences due to the frequent exposure to high levels of vibration. The attention is focused on handheld percussion machines. Consequently, the main effects concern syndromes of the bones and muscles of the hand-arm system. Thus, to prevent or reduce possible hazards for health, national laws and international regulations fix maximum tolerable levels for daily vibration exposure. In this view, the authors have projected a measurement system that is able to acquire and process the acceleration levels transmitted to the hand-arm system. The system project has been improved by using radio frequency modules. This way, noises and potential damages to the processing board have been reduced. In fact, wireless communication allows the sensor, which is worn by the workman, to transfer data and available information to a remote DSP unit operating within the covered range. As a result, the vibration affects only the sensing unit. The sensor consists of three accelerometers orthogonally displaced. According to the guidelines of the Standard ISO 5349, the DSP board has the task to remotely process the acquired data by means of embedded algorithms to estimate the daily vibration exposure value. Two memory devices store information on the workman identity and on the metrological characteristics of the measurement system, respectively. When the estimated value of vibration absorption overcomes the safety limits, an acoustic alarm and a warning message on display alert the user to stop the use of the vibrating machine. A Web page keeps track of the vibration exposure history of the worker. Further advances and experimental results concerning the system characterization have allowed the computing algorithms to be optimized. The accuracy and reliability of the systems computation have been improved to reduce possible fault occurrences. The aim of the proposed project is to provide a prevention device for assuring safe working conditions during the exposure to vibration. Therefore, the system assists the exposed workman to avoid the absorption of high levels of vibration according to the regulations.

Remote monitoring of building structural integrity by a smart wireless sensor network

The present paper proposes a wireless sensor network in order to verify the building structural health by monitoring the vibration levels transmitted. In particular the network allows to assess if the vibration levels may cause damage to the building or if it needs further study. The vibration levels are compared with fixed thresholds suggested by studies and regulations. The attention has been focused on the reliability of measurement results and, for this purpose, two algorithms have been implemented. The first takes into account the measurement uncertainty of each sensor network node in order to verify the overcoming of fixed threshold through the use of appropriate decision-making rules. The second algorithm allows to detect possible faulty sensors in order to ensure suitable levels of reliability about the decisions taken on the basis of measurement data, of nearby sensors and of historical calibration information. The common sensor networks used for structural monitoring consist of wired data acquisition system; differently the proposed solution uses the ZigBee technology for wireless communication in order to improve the flexibility and capability of the network.

Diffusion Tensor Imaging measurements for neuro-detection

The interest of scientific community on brain activities and issues are well-known, especially for neuro-detection of variety of impairments that affect cerebral areas. Various techniques and methods have been using to characterize and to try to understand brain activities for many purposes. Epilepsy, one of them, is a topic of great impact in brain research as well as in Alzheimer issues. Thanks to the development of new biomedical instrumentation it is possible to use appropriate techniques to diagnose the specific pathology. DTI (Diffusion Tensor Imaging) is one of the ultimate technique to have a comprehensive approach to brain activities. This interdisciplinary research highlights the use of DTI to determine preliminarily the ROI (Region Of Interest) for patients with suspected cases of epilepsy. A specific algorithm has been developed to trace out the ROI and the fibers.

A smart energy meter for power grids

The growing demand of energy and the need of finding alternative energy sources to the traditional ones, due to the progressive decrease of fossil fuels and an increasing concern towards the environment, have led to a revolution in terms of energy production in the last decade. As a consequence, the distributed generation is more and more widely spreading. The network, in this new dimension, has to change its management and the energy distribution so to achieve and maintain high efficiency requirements. Coming to drop the concept of centralized production, it is immediate to conclude that an efficient distribution of energy must necessarily bring into account the energy footprint of the area, because the energy transport should be always as short as possible, to minimize losses and maximize the efficiency of the network. This concept is the core of the smart-grid idea, on which the global scientific community is investing heavily in research, the idea is a power distribution grid, based on the experience in the information and communications technology field, which can route the energy through appropriate algorithms that are able to determine the optimal path. Of course, behind all this there must be a network structure capable of acquiring detailed data from widespread production and consumption of energy and make them easily available along with additional information, e.g. the Power Quality of the energy exchanged. This information is demanded by simple user, who wants to personally evaluate the functioning of the system, and also by technical personnel, who needs to access to reliable data to perform targeted and efficient interventions. In the present paper, the authors propose a smart energy meter for energy management in power grids. The measurement system has been projected and developed according to the IEEE 1451 (ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451) guidelines. The system is based on a mobile application in order to improve the data exchange and availability.

A virtual instrument for estimation of optimal calibration intervals by a decision reliability approach

This paper leads to provide a methodological procedure, in order to establish optimal calibration intervals according to the reference standards. At this aim a virtual instrument has been developed to perform the proposed procedure. Generally speaking, the goal of a calibration process is to reduce out-of-tolerance occurrences to an acceptable level with respect to the desired quality target. The inevitable calibration uncertainty contributions can affect the measurement capability, and an inappropriate estimation of these aspects could lead to incorrect calibration intervals. So, the proposed methods base themselves on a statistical procedure for the evaluation of the impact of calibration process uncertainty on the decision risks. The adopted statistical approach is suitable for estimating the maintenance time needed to meet desired reliability goals. By evaluating the erroneous decision probabilities regarding the in-tolerance state within fixed limits, the statistical and metrological features of the calibration process take part in computing the most reliable interval according to an acceptable decision reliability target. The proposed methodology presents full compliance with the standards of the sector and the guidelines of ISO-9000 for quality assurance.

Use of TEDS to Improve Performances of Smart Biomedical Sensors and Instrumentation

This paper aims to highlight the advances and the latest novel and emergent technologies, implementations, and applications in the field of biomedical smart transducers and sensors according to the guidelines of the ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451 Standards. I focus attention on the use of transducer electronic data sheet (TEDS) to suggest new features and ideas in order to improve performances of biomedical sensors and instrumentation. The final aim is to address the design and development of smart transducers and sensors using the guidelines of the above-mentioned family of Standards. ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451-x (previously known as IEEE 1451.x) is a family of Standards, which allows designer to project smart transducers and sensors with reference to protocols, extensible messaging and presence protocol, TEDS, signal treatment, networks, Web services, radio frequency identification, and so on. In detail, this paper proposes the use of TEDS to store information concerning patient clinical history and diagnostic criteria in order to project learned and patient-adapting devices. In this way, the sensing system uses the built-in information to optimize the data processing by adapting the diagnostic algorithm to the specific patient. Such a new approach in designing biomedical sensors allows to improve reliability and accuracy of final diagnosis. Three application cases are proposed and discussed to guide designers and developers in projecting smart biomedical sensors.

Image-based detection of Kayser-Fleischer ring in patient with Wilson Disease

In the paper the authors propose an image processing algorithm for detection of Kayser-Fleischer ring in eye cornea. This is a common symptom of a rare genetic disorder known as Wilson Disease. This pathology is cause of a malfunction in the copper excretion from the organism. So copper accumulates in tissues being responsible of oxidative processes in the organs affected. Copper deposit in the cornea is visible as a golden-brown, sometimes orange or greyish, pigmentation called Kayser-Fleischer ring. So it is considered a diagnostic sign of Wilson disease more than ever in individuals with neurological disorders. The proposed algorithm is based on an image processing approach. In detail, eye image is analyzed by means of a segmentation algorithm to detect the Kayser-Fleischer ring. The proposed screening method is non-invasive and automated. The innovative diagnostic tool aims to improve accuracy of actual methods used in practice. So the described technique reduces possible interpretation errors and assists doctor to diagnose the pathology.