A New Wireless Biosensor for Intra-Vaginal Temperature Monitoring

Wireless Body Sensors for medical purposes offer valuable contributions to improve patients’ healthcare, including diagnosis and/or therapeutics monitoring. Body temperature is a crucial parameter in healthcare diagnosis. In gynecology and obstetrics it is measured at the skin’s surface, which is very influenced by the environment. This paper proposes a new intra-body sensor for long-term intra-vaginal temperature collection. The embedded IEEE 802.15.4 communication module allows the integration of this sensor in a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for remote data access and monitoring. We present the sensor architecture, the construction of the corresponding testbed, and its performance evaluation. This sensor may be used in different medical applications, including preterm labor prevention and fertility and ovulation period detection. The features of the constructed testbed were validated in laboratory tests verifying its accuracy and performance.

[1]  K. Shadan,et al.  Available online: , 2012 .

[2]  Ching-Hsing Luo,et al.  A Wireless Body Sensor Network System for Healthcare Monitoring Application , 2007, 2007 IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference.

[3]  E Godehardt,et al.  Estimated maximum failure rates of cycle monitors using daily conception probabilities in the menstrual cycle. , 2003, Human reproduction.

[4]  David R. S. Cumming,et al.  Electromagnetic radiation from ingested sources in the human intestine , 2002, 2nd Annual International IEEE-EMBS Special Topic Conference on Microtechnologies in Medicine and Biology. Proceedings (Cat. No.02EX578).

[5]  I. Khemapech,et al.  A Survey of Wireless Sensor Networks Technology , 2005 .

[6]  Paul Lukowicz,et al.  AMON: a wearable multiparameter medical monitoring and alert system , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine.

[7]  Shih-Lun Chen,et al.  Wireless Body Sensor Network With Adaptive Low-Power Design for Biometrics and Healthcare Applications , 2009, IEEE Systems Journal.

[8]  Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues,et al.  A Novel Intra-body Sensor for Vaginal Temperature Monitoring , 2009, Sensors.

[9]  Deborah Estrin,et al.  Guest Editors' Introduction: Overview of Sensor Networks , 2004, Computer.

[10]  Iain Campbell,et al.  Body temperature and its regulation , 2008 .

[11]  Aleksandar Milenkovic,et al.  Wireless sensor networks for personal health monitoring: Issues and an implementation , 2006, Comput. Commun..

[12]  Aleksandar Milenkovic,et al.  Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation Open Access a Wireless Body Area Network of Intelligent Motion Sensors for Computer Assisted Physical Rehabilitation , 2005 .

[13]  Luca Benini,et al.  Optimizing ZigBee for data streaming in body-area bio-feedback applications , 2009, 2009 3rd International Workshop on Advances in sensors and Interfaces.

[14]  Daeyoung Kim,et al.  A Body Sensor Network Platform with Two-Level Communications , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics.

[15]  Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues,et al.  Intra-body Temperature Monitoring Using a Biofeedback Solution , 2010, 2010 Second International Conference on eHealth, Telemedicine, and Social Medicine.