We are going to meet with the high aging society in the near future. The problems had to be solved are the treatment and nursing of the high age people at their homes. We have to get the result of reaching solutions so that the high age people may spend the rich and comfortable life. The human causes the lowering of some physical functions with the aging, and the welfare equipments and nursing machinery are requested. A kind of remote medical services is treated in this study. The changes of the human facial expression seem to become a scale of the body condition and the change of the situation change. When he is in the bad condition. His facial expression shows the bad degree of his body condition. The discrimination of the human facial expression is tried using EED (Evaluation by Euclid Distance) method which authors have developed. Some kinds of human facial expression can be discriminated. We will construct the remote medical system using the gained results.

View full abstract

This paper describes an integrated optical sensor having a DFB LD with a Wavelength of 1310nm for a flow monitoring system. This sensor can measure every flow like air, water and blood. In-vivo experiments concerning blood perfusion in a finger confirm the feasibility of the flowmeter.

View full abstract

In this study, the contagion of the cold contraction is distinguished by the remark of human voiceprint and by analyzing the voiceprint pattern. The electric diagnosis of the medical region which the doctor has done in the individual judgment is tried. The basic research is evolved for developing as a healthy instrument like blood pressure manometer.

View full abstract

It is necessary in the optical communication system that the optical fiber are able to be connected and separated each other. The optical fiber connectors are used in the above operations. The end face of the optical fiber is polished and processed at the fixed curvature. If the configuration of the processed optical fiber is good, the optical fibers can be connected with small return loss. In this study, the method for measuring the end shape of the optical fiber easily is developed using the scattered beam from the processed end face of the fiber.

View full abstract

We developed a new tactile sensor for robotic hand using a phase shift system. The new sensor, which consists of a piezoelectric transducer (PZT) and a phase shift circuit, is able to detect, very much like the human hand, the hardness and/or softness of an object. Conventional tactile sensors, which are of many types, and for example, consist of a strain gauge and conductive elastomer, and their use in the various fields is multifold. However they are confined to solely to data acquisition relating to pressure or force, and do not provide information on the physical characteristics, such as the hardness and /or softness, of an object. We carried out several experiments to investigated the possible applications of a new sensor in robotics and medicine. The experimental results demonstrate that the new sensor is capable of sensing clear differences in hardness and possesses of human-hand-like qualities.

View full abstract

Clinically, blood pressure and pulse wave are very important vital signs of a patient, and sometimes continuous, 24-hours-a-day monitoring of these sings is required. However, most existing equipment is cumbersome for a long time use and can be painful and the accuracy of the measurements need improvement. Thus, we developed a new system which is capable of measuring both blood pressure fluctuation and pulse without being burdensome to the patient, the new system uses a photo sensor and the phase shift method which provides for a very high sensitivity. We tested the new system on several patients and compared the measurements to data from an electrocardiogram. Results show that the new system provide more accurate data than of existing equipment and is easier on the patient.

View full abstract

Nowadays, endoscopic surgery is performed regularly in the clinical domain. Using this technique, the surgeon performs operations remotely with various tools and without internal manual contact. Thus, typical palpation cannot be performed and therefore tactile information is unavailable. In order to measure stiffness internally, we developed a new tactile sensor using the phase shift method with ultrasonic waves and demonstrated its feasibility with stiffness measurements of silicone gum. The tactile sensor could clearly distinguish different degrees of silicone gum stiffness at different levels of pressure and is thus useful for relative internal stiffness measurements.

View full abstract

In the recent past, atomic force microscopy (AFM) has been successfully applied to local elasticity measurement especially in the biological fields. However, inevitable use of cantilever results in difficulties in measurements and in sample preparing. Furthermore, the high cost of AFM systems prevents their widespread use. In this paper, characteristics of local elasticity are evaluated by Micro Tactile Sensor (MTS) developed with inexpensive and simple technology. MTS technology is based on simple ultrasonic contact sensing, and its high sensitivity is appropriate for micro scale measurement. High stability and resolution are accomplished by applying a novel phase shift method. Using this new MTS technology, Tactile Mapping of the slice preparation of prostate cancer (PC3) was performed.

View full abstract

This paper describes the development of a catheter sensor for measurement of stiffness of the blood vessel wall. The basic sensor is constructed with a piezoelectric transducer (PZT), which acts as the tactile sensor and employs the phase shift principle. Two type of catheter sensor were developed. One type was built with a contact tip angle at 45 degrees in order to emit ultrasonic waves directly to the inside wall. The objective of the construction of the other type was to miniaturize its outside diameter as much as possible. Different concentrations of silicone gum and rubber models of blood vessels were used for measurements. Result show that the sensors could distinguish between silicone gum samples of different levels of hardness and determine the hardness/softness of neoplasm in blood vessel model. Thus, the catheter sensor developed here may prove very useful for inner measurements of blood vessels and may also be useful in detecting intraluminal obstruction due to tumor presence.

View full abstract

Conventional X-ray computer tomography (CT) is usually used for obtaining information on size, position, and shape of objects. This basic research examines the possibility of using this technology for non-contact measurement of stiffness of tissue. We use animal organs and silicone gum to show that X-ray CT can be used to calculate values that are highly correlated with independently obtained values of stiffness. Results show correlations of R^2 =0.9421 for silicone gum and R^2 =0.9649 for animal organs. Thus, current X-ray CT technology could be a valuable tool for non-contact stiffness measurement. Furthermore, the measured hardness can be visualized from the contrast of an X-ray CT image.

View full abstract

The effects of fluid viscosity on a swimming magnetic micro-robot are studied experimentally. The micro-robots are composed of an annular neodymium permanent magnet and a polyethyleneterephthalate film. The micro swimming robot without the wire for supplying the energy is driven by the alternating magnetic field. The driving mechanism of the micro swimming robot utilizes the hydrodynamics of swimming uniflagellar micro-organism. Test liquids used in the experiment are water and glycerine. Locomotive characteristics of the swimming robot are analyzed by a high speed video camera system. Locomotive velocities of the robot in two diffent liquids are revealed.

View full abstract