Browse Topic: Aged

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New Solution to Elderly Falls: Drones, Smartphones and SensorsTBMG-361543/1/2020
A new system has been designed by a team of researchers from Iraq and the University of South Australia to remotely monitor elderly people, detecting abnormalities in their heart rate and temperature that can lead to falls, and provide urgent first aid via a drone if a fall occurs.
Making a Great Cardio Product Even Better: The Next-Generation Zio Heart PatchTBMG-357791/1/2020
Nearly half of all adults in the United States have some type of cardiovascular disease. This group of over 121 million people are often diagnosed with potential arrhythmias but physicians need to be able to diagnose them quickly and efficiently to ultimately save lives. One company is redefining the way cardiac arrhythmias are clinically diagnosed to help physicians do just that. The new device from iRhythm “combines wearable biosensor devices worn for up to 14 days and cloud-based data analytics with powerful proprietary algorithms that distill data from millions of heartbeats into clinically actionable information,” the company says.
Unpowered, Lightweight Ankle ExoskeletonTBMG-3571712/1/2019
A lightweight, low-profile, inexpensive ankle exoskeleton could be widely used among elderly people, those with impaired lower-leg muscle strength, and workers whose jobs require substantial walking or running.
Wearable Trackers Predict Death RiskTBMG-3562912/1/2019
A recent study shows that wearable accelerometers — mechanical sensors worn like a watch, belt, or bracelet to track movement — are a more reliable measure of physical activity and better than patient surveys and other methods used by physicians at assessing five-year risk of death in older adults.
Development of Subject-Specific Elderly Female Finite Element Models for Vehicle Safety2019-01-12244/2/2019
Previous study suggested that female, thin, obese, and older occupants had a higher risk of death and serious injury in motor vehicle crashes. Human body finite element models were a valuable tool in the study of injury biomechanics. The mesh deformation method based on radial basis function(RBF) was an attractive alternative for morphing baseline model to target models. Generally, when a complex model contained many elements and nodes, it was impossible to use all surface nodes as landmarks in RBF interpolation process, due to its prohibitive computational cost. To improve the efficiency, the current technique was to averagely select a set of nodes as landmarks from all surface nodes. In fact, the location and the number of selected landmarks had an important effect on the accuracy of mesh deformation. Hence, how to select important nodes as landmarks was a significant issue. In the paper, an efficient peak point-selection RBF mesh deformation method was used to select landmarks. The multiple peak points were selected to expand landmarks set, so as to improve the morphing quality compared with the traditional point-selection method. A human head model morphing example was used to verify the effectiveness and stability of the proposed method. Furthermore, the proposed mesh deformation methodology was also applied in a full subject-specific elderly female occupant modeling. The findings of this study demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed mesh deformation method to rapidly develop subject-specific human models in advancing occupant safety.
Dong, Wenxiang, Zhan, Zhenfei, Yin, Yunlei, Li, Junming, Wang, Qingmiao, Jin, Xin
Quantification of Sternum Morphomics and Injury Data2019-01-12174/2/2019
Crash safety researchers have an increased concern regarding the decreased thoracic deflection and the contributing injury causation factors among the elderly population. Sternum fractures are categorized as moderate severity injuries, but can have long term effects depending on the fragility and frailty of the occupant. Current research has provided detail on rib morphology, but very little information on sternum morphology, sternum fracture locations, and mechanisms of injury. The objective of this study is two-fold (1) quantify sternum morphology and (2) document sternum fracture locations using computed tomography (CT) scans and crash data. Thoracic CT scans from the University of Michigan Hospital database were used to measure thoracic depth, manubriosternal joint, sternum thickness and bone density. The sternum fracture locations and descriptions were extracted from 63 International Center for Automotive Medicine (ICAM) crash cases, of which 22 cases had corresponding CT scans. The University of Michigan Internal Review Board (HUM00043599 and HUM00041441) approved the use of crash cases and CT scan data. The sternum morphomics data showed the thoracic depth increased, except for the 60-74-year-old age group. The average sternum thickness was greater in the older age groups. The sternum bone density decreased from youngest to oldest age groups. The angle between the manubrium and the sternum body decreased by 5.6° between the youngest and oldest age groups. The frequency of sternum fractures increased after age 45. Fractures were most frequent in the sternum body. The seat belt webbing was coded as the source of 54% of the sternum fractures.
Bunn, Barbara, Johannson, Suzanne, Kohoyda-Inglis, Carla, Wang, Stewart, Parenteau, Chantal, Holcombe, Sven
Device-Free Motion Tracing Using WiFi SignalsTBMG-2797912/1/2017
Fine-grained human motion tracing — the ability to trace the trajectory of a moving human hand or leg, or even the whole body — is a general capability that is useful in a wide variety of applications. It can be used for gesture recognition and virtual touch-screens (e.g. Kinect-style natural user interfaces), activity recognition, monitoring of young infants and the elderly, or security applications such as intruder detection. Motivated by these applications, depth-sensing-based systems have been developed to implement motion tracing capabilities in cameras; however, these devices are limited because they have a constrained field of view (around 2 to 4 m range with a 60-degree aperture), and do not work in non-line-of-sight scenarios, preventing their use in many applications such as whole-home activity recognition, security, and elderly care.
Kinematics Validation of Age-Specific Restrained 50 th Percentile Occupant FE Model in Frontal Impact2012-01-05654/16/2012
Recently, the global increase of elderly vehicle users has become an issue to be considered in the effort of enhancing safety performance of vehicle restraint system. It is thought that an evaluation tool for the system representing properties of age-specific human body will play a major role for that. In previous research, the authors had developed age-specific component finite element (FE) models for the lower limb, lumbar spine, and thorax representing the adult and elderly occupants. However, the models have not been validated in terms of full body kinematics. It is essential for such models to be validated in terms of full body kinematics in order to ensure validity of the results of the assessment of the safety performance of restraint systems. In the present research, the adult and elderly occupant full body FE models were developed by incorporating the lower limb, lumbar spine and thorax of the adult and elderly FE models established in previous research. To represent the kinematics of the shoulder of the adult occupant model, the shoulder girdle muscles were modeled and incorporated into the models. The full body kinematics of the adult occupant model were validated against published frontal sled test results using post-mortem human subjects (PMHS). The seating position of the model was determined according to the average seating position in the PMHS tests. The frontal impact sled buck model consisted of the seat, knee bolster, footrest and pelvis block. These components were modeled with shell elements and treated as rigid bodies. The occupant restraint system consisted of the shoulder and lap belts, modeled with bar and membrane elements. The trajectories were compared between the model and the average PMHS test results by using the coordinates of the head, the first and eighth thoracic vertebrae, the second and fourth lumbar vertebrae and the pelvis. A published ranking system for the biofidelity was applied to them in order to quantitatively evaluate the appropriateness of the full body kinematics of the adult occupant FE model. Model results include peak displacements of the head, the first and eighth thoracic vertebrae in the X direction of 362 mm at 112 ms, 267mm at 121 ms and 207 mm at 115ms, respectively. The peak displacements of the corresponding body regions in the X direction from the average PMHS test results were 354 mm at 113 ms, 257 mm at 115 ms and 216 mm at 113 ms, respectively. The error was less than 5 % compared with the average PMHS test results. The kinematics of the other points selected from the head to the pelvis on the spine of the model showed agreement with the average PMHS test results as well. In addition, the results of the biofidelity rating obtained by applying the rating system also supported good agreement of most of the kinematic parameters. For the elderly model, the kinematics and the predicted rib fracture were compared with those of the adult model. Little difference was found in the whole body kinematics, while larger deflection was found at the thorax as well as a significant increase in rib fractures, which were assumed to be caused by the lowered body stiffness and tolerance by aging.
Ito, Yuichi, Dokko, Yasuhiro, Motozawa, Yasuki, Mori, Fumie, Ohashi, Kazuki
Rapid Detection of the Varicella Zoster Virus in SalivaTBMG-108799/1/2011
(VZV) causes chicken pox on first exposure (usually in children), and reactivates from latency causing shingles (usually in adults). Shingles can be extremely painful, causing nerve damage, organ damage, and blindness in some cases. The virus can be life-threatening in immune-compromised individuals. The virus is very difficult to culture for diagnosis, requiring a week or longer.
Medical Devices Assess, Treat Balance DisordersTBMG-78665/1/2010
You may have heard the phrase “as difficult as walking and chewing gum” as a joking way of referring to something that is not difficult at all. Just walking, however, is not all that simple – physiologically speaking. Even standing upright is an undertaking requiring the complex cooperation of multiple motor and sensory systems including vision, the inner ear, somatosensation (sensation from the skin), and proprioception (the sense of the body’s parts in relation to each other). The compromised performance of any of these elements can lead to a balance disorder, which in some form affects nearly half of Americans at least once in their lifetimes, from the elderly, to those with neurological or vestibular (inner ear) dysfunction, to athletes with musculoskeletal injuries, to astronauts returning from space.
Remote Diagnostic Technology for Hearing AssessmentTBMG-57479/1/2009
Individuals with hearing loss need to have ready access to hearing screenings, assessments, treatment, and consultation. This diagnostic technology facilitates early detection and intervention of hearing loss. It allows for improved monitoring and expands service scope, reach, and access. By reducing or eliminating travel times, it is also a more efficient utilization of time for audiologists and professional staff. The tele-hearing device and protocol provides clinicians the tools and the ability to remotely assess, diagnose, and remedy hearing loss. This is accomplished either directly or indirectly by facilitating assistance to other less experienced clinicians remotely.
Improved Projector Headlamps Using HID (Litronic) and Incandescent Bulbs9406363/1/1994
A new automotive headlamp has been developed under the designation LITRONIC (Light Electronics). In order to improve the light quality and to increase driver safety on the road, a gas-discharge lamp was chosen as the light source instead of the conventional incandescent bulb. The projector headlamp is well-suited for the application of the LITRONIC system. Especially in the US market, there is currently a potential interest in applying projector headlamps in series production. Compared to conventional headlamps, advantages can be seen in the flexibility of this kind of headlamp from the styling view point. In this paper, newly developed solutions for projector headlamps from Bosch will be presented, for HID as well as for incandescent bulbs. Applications for low beam and for high beam are included. By means of concrete examples, the improvements in light quality compared to conventional systems will be demonstrated. And the boundary conditions in relation to styling aspects (high vertical inclination of the outer lens, lens diameter, overall system length) are taken into account and will be discussed. It will be shown that the projector headlamp system can be ideally applied to result in an improved US-light pattern, thus contributing to safety in night-time driving.
Neumann, Rainer
Headlamp Design Guidelines for Mature DriversJ1606_199303 (Historical)3/19/1993
This SAE Information Report should be used as a supplement to SAE J1383. It is intended to provide additional information which is important to the automotive designer and engineer in the process of designing, developing, and engineering the headlamps of motor vehicles which will take into account the effects of the aging process on the driver.
Road Illumination Devices Standards Committee
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