A Smart Measurement and Stimulation System to Analyze and Promote Non-Nutritive Sucking of Premature Babies

Abstract

This paper presents a complete system that can be used to measure and to stimulate sucking abilities of premature babies. The system integrates measurement and stimulation capabilities that can be used separately or together. The sensing unit includes mainly a pressure sensor, a conditioning circuit and a microcontroller device. The stimulation unit includes a miniature and lowcost pneumatic pump, an electro-valve, and a conditioning circuit. The microcontroller is shared by both units. The system's software includes a routine that is used to define the waveform parameters of the synthesized pressure signals, a wavelet based routine that is used to process measurement data and a software component to perform fault detection and diagnosis. The system capabilities include self-calibration and self-testing. Throughout the paper several implementation details and experimental results will be presented and discussed.

A silver nanowire-based flexible pressure sensor to measure the non-nutritive sucking power of neonates

“…The sensor was not put inside the infant's mouth nor in contact with the artificial nipple, unlike the previous studies. The detected pressure range and frequency of NNS were in the ranges reported in literature [7,11,12,14,[16][17][18]. In addition, the sensor showed an excellent sensitivity, stability, and resolution high enough to measure NNS from even very preterm and extremely preterm infants, in a range of pressure as low as 150 Pa [7,19].…”

“…In this work, a compact device to fit in the pacifier was designed, a wireless system was implemented to eliminate wires and tubes, and a small rechargeable battery was used. The system design focused on reducing the size and weight, but the resolution of the pressure sensor was 1 kPa, which limits the measurements from infants with very weak sucking power [7,11,12,14]. A company called Innara Health developed the NTrainer [15], an FDA approved device for both assessment of NNS parameters and therapy through patterned and frequency-modulated oral stimulation with therapeutic pulses to train the infant's NNS skills.…”

Non-Nutritive Suckling System for Real-Time Characterization of Intraoral Vacuum Profile in Full Term Neonates

“…In recent years, several devices and systems have been developed to quantify the suckling profile and oral-motor coordination of premature infants [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30]. These systems principally address the challenge of oral feeding readiness in premature infants by measuring their intraoral suction (vacuum) and expression (contact) pressure.…”

“…Geddes et al, utilizes ultrasound along with pressure transducers to correlate vacuum characteristics to milk intake during nutritive sucking [7]. These devices, along with many others [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25] proposed in the literature, all reflect an effort to provide objective quantification of infant intraoral vacuum.…”

The Performance Tested of Multichannel Data Acquisition System In Measurement of Soil Moisture

“…While the indirect method, the sensor is not in contact with the object, for example, image processing technique [8,9], frequency [10,11], satellite [7] and computation technique [5,10]. Various developments of measurement techniques to obtain better results have also been made, not only on the methods but also on the equipment that accompanies the measurement like a type of microcontroller, communication data method etc [12][13]. Currently, the real time [14] and continuously of measurement system will provide more value than existing tools.…”