School of Fine Art and Artistic Design, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China.
School of Computer Science & Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China.
Sensors (Basel). 2020 Feb 17;20(4):1093. doi: 10.3390/s20041093.
Aging women usually experience menopause and currently there is no single diagnosing highly-sensitive and -specific test for recognizing menopause. For most employed women at their perimenopause age it is not convenient to visit a clinic for the hormone test, which lasts for consecutive days. This paper develops a suit of sensor-based smart clothing used for home-based and ambulatory health monitoring for women's menopause transition. Firstly, a survey analysis is conducted to determine the biological signals measured by sensors for indicating the symptoms of menopausal transition and also the body areas with salient symptoms to implant the sensors on the clothing. Then, the smart clothing is designed with a set of temperature and relative humidity sensors on different locations and with a microcontroller to transmit the measured data to the computer. With the smoothed data as input, a new detection algorithm for hot flashes is proposed by recognition of the concurrent occurrence of heat and sweating rise/down, and can figure out the frequency, intensity, and duration-triple dimension information of a hot flash, which is helpful to achieve precise diagnosis for menopausal transition. The smart clothing and the detection algorithm are verified by involving a group of women subjects to participate in a hot flash monitoring experiment. The experimental results show that this smart clothing monitoring system can effectively measure the skin temperature and relative humidity data and work out the frequency, duration, and intensity information of a hot flash pertaining in different body areas for individuals, which are accordant with the practice reported by the subjects.
绝经期通常发生在老年女性身上,目前尚无单一的高度敏感和特异性的测试方法来识别绝经期。对于大多数处于围绝经期的职业女性来说,去诊所进行连续几天的激素测试并不方便。本文开发了一套基于传感器的智能服装,用于女性更年期过渡的家庭和动态健康监测。首先,通过调查分析确定了用于指示更年期过渡症状的传感器测量的生物信号,以及在身体上具有明显症状的部位,以便在服装上植入传感器。然后,智能服装设计了一组位于不同位置的温度和相对湿度传感器,并带有微控制器将测量数据传输到计算机。利用平滑后的数据作为输入,提出了一种新的热激发现象检测算法,通过识别热量和出汗上升/下降的同时发生,来计算热激发现象的频率、强度和持续时间-三维信息,这有助于实现更年期过渡的精确诊断。通过一组女性参与热激发现象监测实验来验证智能服装和检测算法。实验结果表明,这种智能服装监测系统可以有效地测量皮肤温度和相对湿度数据,并计算出个体不同身体部位的热激发现象的频率、持续时间和强度信息,与被试者报告的情况相符。