Background
A recent study showed the safety and efficacy of a noninvasive acoustic subcision device to improve the appearance of cellulite via delivery of rapid acoustic pulses in a single treatment ...visit.
Objective
To evaluate and compare the safety and efficacy of a single rapid acoustic pulse treatment visit using an equivalent number of rapid acoustic pulses at a pulse rate of 100 or 50 Hz.
Methods
This single‐center, prospective study enrolled 15 adult women with moderate to severe cellulite according to the Cellulite Dimple—At Rest Scale. Each participant would receive nominally 72,000 rapid acoustic pulses at a pulse rate of 50 Hz on the left buttock and thigh, and nominally 72,000 rapid acoustic pulses at a pulse rate of 100 Hz on the right buttock and thigh within one treatment visit. Efficacy was assessed by the ability of blinded, independent reviewers to correctly distinguish the pre‐ and post‐treatment photos, participant satisfaction, and the change in Cellulite Dimple—At Rest scores for each treatment side. Safety was monitored throughout the conduct of the study.
Results
For both 100 and 50 Hz pulse rate treated areas, the majority (two out of three) of blinded reviewers correctly identified 100% of the pre/post‐treatment photos. For both the 100 and 50 Hz treated areas, 80% of participants agreed/strongly agreed that their cellulite appeared improved at the 12‐week follow‐up visit. Significant improvements in Cellulite Dimple—At Rest scores were seen for both the 100 and 50 Hz treated areas. All participants thought both the 100 and 50 Hz pulse rate treatments were tolerable, and the pain (mean score ± SD; 2.2 ± 1.2) associated with each was identical. No unexpected or serious adverse events occurred.
Conclusion
Acoustic subcision delivered via rapid acoustic pulses at 100 Hz, compared to 50 Hz, provides equivalent improvement in the appearance of cellulite while maintaining a similar safety and efficacy profile. For both pulse rates, treatment pain was minimal, and participant satisfaction was high.
In this research work, graphene-based highly, conductive, flexible, washable, and breathable textile electrodes have been developed using the pad-dry-cure method. The results show that the electrical ...conductivity of the graphene-coated textile electrodes was significantly improved from 3.5 MΩ to 400 ± 5.0 kΩ for 12 padding passes. The deposition of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulphonate (PEDOT:PSS) was acquired on reduced graphene oxide (rGO) coated substrate using layer by layer (LbL) technique. The resultant electrodes showed decreased sheet resistance from 150 to 50 kΩ for PEDOT:PSS with a low impedance of 40–150 Hz over the electric potential of 1.0 mV for the detection of high-quality electrocardiograms (ECG) and pulse rate response in different conditions such as rest, walking and running. Consequently, the effect of post-treatment was also analyzed using 5.0 wt% of ethylene glycol (EG) and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), respectively. The sheet resistance was further decreased from 40 kΩ to 130 ±0.5 Ω, which is appropriate for the detection of highly sensitive pulse rate response. The study demonstrates that the pad-dry-cure method can potentially be used for the development of graphene-coated wearable electronic textiles for biomedical and health monitoring devices.
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•Graphene oxide dyeing was accomplished on the woven fabric using pad dry cure method.•The graphene enhanced the electrical conductivity, and tensile strength with the number of dyeing cycles.•The developed nanocomposites improved the electrical conductivity and washing stability against several washes.•The resultant textile electrodes showed better sensor response with higher skin contact and low impedance.
Introduction: More than 3.5 lacs Amarnath Yatries ascend each year to holy Amarnath Cave situated about 3888 meters from the sea level. During ascent for Yatra in the mountains experiences multiple ...environmental stressors, but the stress unique to high altitudes is the oxygen-deficient atmosphere. This work focused on Physiological cardio-respiratory changes of Amarnath Yatries at different heights of Yatra. Methods: An observational study on Blood Pressure, Oxygen Saturation, Respiratory rate, and Pulse rate was conducted among 75 Amarnath Yatries at different heights during Amarnath Yatra from month of June and July in three years 2012, 2013, and 2014 respectively, and the researcher himself accompanied those groups during all 3 years after receiving ethical approval from Institutional Review Committee RIMS Ranchi and informed consent from Yatries. Results: Oxygen saturation (%) was 97.7±1.8 at Ranchi (control value), this value on exposure to high altitude, at Amarnath Cave (12500 feet) decreased to 75.2±4.3 %. Respiratory Rate (RR) was 15.5±1.8 per minute at Ranchi (control value), this value on exposure to high altitude, at Amarnath Cave (12500 feet) increased to 31.3±2.9 per minute. Pulse Rate (PR) was 87.6±11.9 per minute at Ranchi (control value), this value on exposure to high altitude, at Amarnath Cave (12500 feet) increased to 121.2±10.3 per minute. Conclusion: Blood Pressure, Respiratory rate, and Pulse rate of Amarnath Yatries significantly increase while Oxygen Saturation decreases at Holy Amarnath Cave.
•PRnet can extract PR with a 2s video, and adapt for a sharp variation PR.•PRnet is a complete neural networks pipeline with joint optimization framework.•PRnet is a spatio-temporal frramwork that ...can extract the latent temporal information.•PRnet achieves competitive performance than state-of-the-art methods.
Estimation of the visual pulse rate (also called heart rate) refers to extraction of the pulse rate from a facial video. With the studies on extracting photoplethysmography (PPG) signals from a facial video, the non-contacted measurement method has aroused great interest among researchers over the past few years. In this study, a novel one-stage spatio-temporal framework, namely PRnet, is proposed to estimate the pulse rate from a stationary facial video. First, visual pulse rate estimation is defined as a regression task based on deep neural networks, in which a video is mapped to a pulse rate value. Then, 3D convolutional neural networks (Conv3D) and Long short-term memory (LSTM) modules are used to extract spatial and latent temporal information that is hidden in a video. Subsequently, one fully connected layer is applied in the last layer of PRnet to estimate the pulse rate directly. Based on the exquisite framework design, our proposed method realizes competitive performance, especially in terms of processing latency, since it does not rely on power spectral density (PSD) and traditional Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithms. Using our method, only 60 frames of video (2 s) are required for the robust prediction of the pulse rate, whereas 6–30 s of video are typically required for other methods. Finally, a novel visual pulse rate estimation database, which includes pulse rate range at various times of day, is collected to evaluate the proposed framework. The results of extensive experiments demonstrate that PRnet performs competitively while compared with state-of-the-art methods.
Heart rate measurement has become one of the most widely used methods of monitoring the intensity of physical activity. The purpose of this study was to assess whether in-ear photoplethysmographic ...(PPG) pulse rate (PR) measurement devices represent a valid alternative to heart rate derived from electrocardiography (ECG), which is considered a gold standard. Twenty subjects (6 women, 14 men) completed one trial of graded cycling under laboratory conditions. In the trial, PR was recorded by two commercially available in-ear devices, the Dash Pro and the Cosinuss°One. They were compared to HR measured by a Bodyguard2 ECG. Validity of the in-ear PR measurement devices was tested by ANOVA, mean absolute percentage errors (MAPE), intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC), and Bland-Altman plots. Both devices achieved a MAPE ≤5%. Despite excellent to good levels of agreement, Bland-Altman plots showed that both in-ear devices tend to slightly underestimate the ECG's HR values. It may be concluded that in-ear PPG PR measurement is a promising technique that shows accurate but imprecise results under controlled conditions. However, PPG PR measurement in the ear is sensitive to motion artefacts. Thus, accuracy and precision of the measured PR depend highly on measurement site, stress situation, and exercise.
Background and purpose: Palpation of the radial pulse is a valuable clinical tool and one of the most useful physical examinations in medical care. The aim of the present study was to investigate the ...correlation between the number of pulses measured by the radial artery and the pulses recorded by electrocardiogram (ECG). Materials and methods: We conducted a correlational study and the research population included patients attending Emergency Department in Sari Imam Khomeini Hospital. The pulse rate was recorded by measuring the radial pulse rate of the left hand and the heart rate using an electrocardiogram device. In case of regular rhythm, the number of beats was measured for 15, 30, and 60 seconds using a digital stopwatch and multiplied by 4, 2, and 1, respectively. Results: There was a slight difference in pulse rate between the radial artery measurement for 15 seconds and the ECG that was statistically significant (P<0.001), but this difference was not significant for 30 and 60 seconds (P>0.05). The ICC correlation coefficient between pulse rates for 15, 30, and 60 seconds and ECG was high (above 0.98). Conclusion: Based on the present study, instead of electrocardiogram, radial pulse count for 30 seconds multiplied by 2 can be used in clinical conditions, especially in emergency.
Background: Noise intensity that exceeds Threshold Limit Value (TLV) can give impacts on non-auditory on the workers in a factory, in the form of an increase in blood pressure and pulse rate. ...Currently, health problems due to noise have caused the company’s total loss to reach 300 billion dollars due to absenteeism rate, decreased productivity, and treatment for occupational diseases. Research in Indonesia, especially the textile industry in the city of Surakarta, shows that noise from weaving machines with an intensity above 100 dBA affects blood pressure and pulse rate. This research was conducted at textile industry in Surakarta, one of the largest textile companies in Surakarta where the company has not been able to overcome the problem of noise intensity that exceeds the TLV which has the potential to cause blood pressure and pulse disturbances, and even decreased hearing function. This study aims to determine the relationship between noise intensity with blood pressure and pulse rate in textile industry workers. Method: This research is a correlation study, which is connecting the measurement variables of noise intensity with blood pressure and pulse rate. The sample in this study were 30 female workers in the weaving division who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The instruments used in measuring noise were sound level meters and sphygmomanometers. Data analysis used the Pearson correlation test to determine the relationship between noise intensity with blood pressure and pulse rate disturbances.Result: The study showed significant correlation between noise intensity and pulse rate with a p value of 0.029, but noise intensity with blood pressure disturbances does not correlate, with a p value of 0.443.Conclusion: There is a relationship between noise intensity and pulse rate of the workers in a factory.
Noncontact imaging photoplethysmography (PPG) can provide physiological assessment at various anatomical locations with no discomfort to the patient. However, most previous imaging PPG (iPPG) systems ...have been limited by a low sample frequency, which restricts their use clinically, for instance, in the assessment of pulse rate variability (PRV). In the present study, plethysmographic signals are remotely captured via an iPPG system at a rate of 200 fps. The physiological parameters (i.e., heart and respiration rate and PRV) derived from the iPPG datasets yield statistically comparable results to those acquired using a contact PPG sensor, the gold standard. More importantly, we present evidence that the negative influence of initial low sample frequency could be compensated via interpolation to improve the time domain resolution. We thereby provide further strong support for the low-cost webcam-based iPPG technique and, importantly, open up a new avenue for effective noncontact assessment of multiple physiological parameters, with potential applications in the evaluation of cardiac autonomic activity and remote sensing of vital physiological signs.
Introduction:
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and Pulse Rate Variability (PRV), are non-invasive techniques for monitoring changes in the cardiac cycle. Both techniques have been used for assessing the ...autonomic activity. Although highly correlated in healthy subjects, differences in HRV and PRV have been observed under various physiological conditions. The reasons for their disparities in assessing the degree of autonomic activity remains unknown.
Methods:
To investigate the differences between HRV and PRV, a whole-body cold exposure (CE) study was conducted on 20 healthy volunteers (11 male and 9 female, 30.3 ± 10.4 years old), where PRV indices were measured from red photoplethysmography signals acquired from central (ear canal, ear lobe) and peripheral sites (finger and toe), and HRV indices from the ECG signal. PRV and HRV indices were used to assess the effects of CE upon the autonomic control in peripheral and core vasculature, and on the relationship between HRV and PRV. The hypotheses underlying the experiment were that PRV from central vasculature is less affected by CE than PRV from the peripheries, and that PRV from peripheral and central vasculature differ with HRV to a different extent, especially during CE.
Results:
Most of the PRV time-domain and Poincaré plot indices increased during cold exposure. Frequency-domain parameters also showed differences except for relative-power frequency-domain parameters, which remained unchanged. HRV-derived parameters showed a similar behavior but were less affected than PRV. When PRV and HRV parameters were compared, time-domain, absolute-power frequency-domain, and non-linear indices showed differences among stages from most of the locations. Bland-Altman analysis showed that the relationship between HRV and PRV was affected by CE, and that it recovered faster in the core vasculature after CE.
Conclusion:
PRV responds to cold exposure differently to HRV, especially in peripheral sites such as the finger and the toe, and may have different information not available in HRV due to its non-localized nature. Hence, multi-site PRV shows promise for assessing the autonomic activity on different body locations and under different circumstances, which could allow for further understanding of the localized responses of the autonomic nervous system.
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