乳児の吸啜時における舌-人工乳首接触力の計測に基づく舌運動解析の試み

抄録

The aim of this study is to analyse the mechanism of tongue movement in an infant during sucking. We directly measured the force applied on an artificial nipple using small built-in force sensors. Force sensors are cantilever structures with a thin stainless steel beam and an all-purpose foil strain gauge attached to the surface of the beam. The sensors are arranged at the tip, middle and base of the nipple to capture velocity of the tongue elevation. The signal, obtained from the force sensor running through a bridge circuit and amplifier, is A/D converted with a sampling frequency of 1kHz, and a 12bit quantization resolution is input to the PC via a USB port. The measurement data are displayed in a real-time graph on a monitor. Using this system, we continuously measured the force applied on an artificial nipple during effective and ineffective sucking in infants. We found differences between infants with and without established oral feeding with respect to phase difference and the maximum force applied to the nipple. Furthermore, the velocity of the tongue movement was calculated and showed differences between individual infants.