Abstract
Sensing technologies in physiology gain a lot of importance for the assessment of the human functional state. The registered biomedical signals—referred to as biosignals here—are important not only for timeless classical applications concerning medical diagnosis and subsequent therapy, but also for future applications such as daily driver monitoring.
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Notes
- 1.
Usually the source of the biosignal exhibits nonsinusoidal behavior. However, the nonsinusoidal waveform can be represented as a sum of sinusoidal functions (according to Footnote 150), thus the equivalent circuit from Fig. 1.3a is also applicable here.
- 2.
Georg Simon Ohm (1789–1854) was a German physicist after which Ohm’s law was named. The law states that the strength of electric current I through a conductor is directly proportional to the voltage U across the conductor divided by the impedance Z of the conductor, if a constant Z is given, e.g., over conductor temperature or oscillation frequency of the current. For complex values, it can be written as
$$\begin{array}{rcl} \underline{I} = \frac{\underline{U}} {\underline{Z}}.& & \\ \end{array}$$For the continuum form of Ohm’s law see Footnote 45.
- 3.
Generally, the diagnostic area of biomedical technologies can be classified into functional evaluation of the physiological state, clinical evaluation, and bioimaging (Turchetti et al. 2010); compare Footnote 4.
- 4.
The therapeutic area of biomedical technologies can be classified into noninvasive treatments, invasive treatments (minimally invasive and surgical), artificial organs and prosthesis, and rehabilitation (Turchetti et al. 2010); compare Footnote 3.
- 5.
Erasistratus (about 310 bc–250 bc), Greek physician, regarded by some as the “father of physiology,” already used the pulse in clinical diagnosis. As a curiosity, the lover’s pulse or love-sickness became a well-documented clinical entity and an integral part of pulse lore through the centuries. The love-sickness was described as pulse quickening in the presence of a beloved person (Hajar 1999).
- 6.
For instance, Kurt Karl Stephan Semm (1927–2003), German gynecologist, who performed the first appendicectomy in 1980 in a laparoscopic way, was heavily criticized by his colleagues and public. Later it was recognized that it not only helps patients recover faster and with less pain, but also prevents deaths in the operating room. Another example would be Ignaz Semmelweiss (1818–1865), Hungarian physician, who was largely ignored or ridiculed when in 1847 he suggested that childbed fever could be drastically reduced if doctors sterilized their hands.
- 7.
There is data from the UK (Flemons et al. 2003) which suggest that the wait for investigation with the polysomnography ( = comprehensive clinical monitoring in sleep lab, Sect. 3.2.4) versus portable monitoring was reduced from a median of 47 days to 18 days.
- 8.
As reported in Flemons et al. (2003), the portable monitoring was 30% up to 50% the cost of the polysomnography.
- 9.
For instance, patients measuring their own blood pressure by oneself may leave out unsatisfactory numbers (Asada et al. 2003).
- 10.
In Wisconsin (USA), 93% of women and 82% of men with moderate-to-severe sleep apnea, i.e., temporal cessation of effective respiration during sleep, did not receive diagnoses (Flemons et al. 2003).
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Kaniusas, E. (2012). Fundamentals of Biosignals. In: Biomedical Signals and Sensors I. Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24843-6_1
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