JPH08215157A - Medical telemeter - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To provide a medical telemeter which can provide stable heart beat information to the external equipment such as a medical care equipment, and concurrently materialize the enhancement of a transmission quality for the signal of a living body accompanied by an increase in time delay. CONSTITUTION: An A/D converter 13 converts the analogue signal of a living body such as the electrocrdiography signal from an input amplifier 12 and the like into the digital signal of a living body. An encoder 14 encodes the digital signal of a living body into the general purpose protocol such as HDLC, or the exclusive protocol. A digital modulator 15 digitally converts wireless carriers into digital modulation carriers by the output signal of the encoder 14 directly or indirectly through subcarriers, and the carriers are sent by a wireless through a transmitting antenna 16 thereafter. The output analogue signal of a living body from the input amplifier 12 is electrically insulated by an isolator 17, and it is outputted out of an output terminal 19 through an output amplifier 18 thereafter.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a medical telemeter,
In particular, the present invention relates to a medical telemeter that wirelessly transmits a biosignal such as an electrocardiogram or a blood pressure wave detected from a living body.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, a medical telemeter amplifies a biological signal such as an electrocardiogram or a blood pressure wave detected by a living body and then wirelessly transmits the signal, and the biological signal is received by a monitor and displayed on a screen. It is used for remote monitoring of the patient's condition (for example, Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open No. 2-28150, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2150/1990).
-17029 publication). In addition, the normal monitor has a function to analyze the obtained biomedical signal and issue a warning according to the condition of the patient to call the attention of the nurse, and a function to output the received and restored ECG signal to other devices. Has been done. This signal output function is used for treatment devices that operate with heartbeat rhythms such as aortic balloon pumping devices and measurement devices that measure and analyze using heartbeat information, such as some ultrasonic diagnostic equipment for cardiovascular system. Is provided.

FIG. 4 shows a connection diagram of an example of an external device of a conventional medical telemeter. In the figure, an electrocardiogram signal induced from a living body 31 via a living body electrode is supplied to a transmitter 32, amplified here, converted into a signal form necessary for transmission, and wirelessly transmitted from an antenna to a monitor 33. To do.

The monitor 33 receives the electrocardiogram signal transmitted from the transmitter 32, restores it and displays it on the tube surface, and outputs the regenerated electrocardiogram signal to the aortic balloon pumping device 34. The aortic balloon pumping device 34 assists the circulatory function of the living body 31 by controlling the balloon placed in the aorta of the living body 31 at an appropriate time phase based on the input electrocardiogram signal.

[0005]

However, particularly in the case of a therapeutic device such as the aortic balloon pumping device 34, not only to exert its therapeutic effect but also to ensure safety, there is an accuracy and delay. Although a small number of electrocardiographic signals are required, the electrocardiographic signals transmitted by the medical telemeter have problems that noise during transmission and delays due to transmission cannot be ignored. Therefore, when the combination shown in FIG. 4 is performed, it is necessary to pay close attention to the radio wave condition and the like, and in some cases, it is necessary to prepare for switching to the wired system, which is extremely inconvenient in operation.

In order to monitor the living body, which is the main function of the monitor 33, accurate transmission of the biological signal is the highest priority, and a transfer delay of about 100 ms can be tolerated. . However, in the medical telemeter used conventionally, the transmission delay is set to about 10 ms in consideration of the usage as shown in FIG. 4, and the limitation on the transmission delay makes it difficult to improve the transmission quality. ing.

In particular, in the case of the digital modulation system which has recently become the mainstream of medical telemeters, it is possible to use a high-level transmission error control technique such as error correction used in general digital transmission by digitization, a data compression technique and the like. Although it should be possible to improve transmission quality and frequency usage efficiency by using it, in reality, such a technique is premised on a somewhat long packet length, so it is not adopted because it causes a transmission delay of the minimum packet length. Is the actual situation.

The present invention has been made in view of the above points,
In a patient monitoring system using a medical telemeter,
Providing a medical telemeter that provides stable heartbeat information to external devices such as therapeutic devices, and relaxes the limitation on delay due to wireless transmission, thereby improving the transmission quality of biological signals with increased delay time. The purpose is to do.

[0009]

In order to achieve the above-mentioned object, the present invention comprises a modulating means for modulating a biological signal detected from a living body, a transmitting means for wirelessly transmitting a modulated wave output from the modulating means, An output terminal for outputting a biological signal or a heartbeat timing signal extracted from the biological signal, and a monitor for receiving the modulated wave transmitted by the transmitting means to restore the original data and displaying the restored data on the screen. It is configured to have.

[0010]

In the present invention, the biological signal or the heartbeat timing signal extracted from the biological signal is output from the output terminal. Therefore, the biological signal or the heartbeat timing signal is wirelessly transmitted by wire transmission to the treatment device or the measuring device. There is no noise due to wireless transmission such as treatment and heartbeat information based on biological signals or heartbeat timing signals that were used, and it can be accurately provided to external devices such as therapeutic devices and measuring instruments with less transmission delay, The transmission delay limit can be relaxed.

[0011]

Next, an embodiment of the present invention will be described. 1 is a block diagram of a transmitting side of an embodiment of a medical telemeter according to the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a receiving side of an embodiment of a medical telemeter according to the present invention. As shown in FIG. 1, the transmitting side of the present embodiment includes an input amplifier 12, an A / D converter 13,
It is composed of an encoder 14, a digital modulator 15, a transmission antenna 16, an isolator 17, and an output amplifier 18.

The operation on the transmitting side will be described. An analog biosignal such as an electrocardiogram signal has a corresponding input terminal 11
After being amplified by the input amplifier 12 via, the signal is supplied to the A / D converter 13 and subjected to analog / digital conversion to be converted into a digital biological signal. This digital biomedical signal is supplied to the encoder 14 and encoded into a general-purpose protocol such as a high-level data link procedure (HDLC) or a dedicated protocol.

The output signal of the encoder 14 is supplied to a digital modulator 15 to digitally modulate a radio carrier by a predetermined modulation method (pulse duty modulation or the like) or indirectly via a subcarrier to obtain a digital modulated wave. After being converted, it is emitted into the air as a radio wave from the transmitting antenna 16. On the other hand, the output analog biological signal of the input amplifier 12 is electrically insulated by the isolator 17 and further amplified by the output amplifier 18 and output from the output terminal 19.

The digital modulated wave thus emitted in the air as a radio wave is received by the receiving section shown in FIG. The receiving unit of this embodiment includes a receiving antenna 21, a wireless receiver 22, a digital demodulator 23, a serial communication controller 24 and a decoder 25, and a display unit for displaying ECG waveforms on the screen, though not shown. And is also called a monitor.

The operation of this receiving section will be described. The digitally modulated wave transmitted by radio is received by the radio receiver 22 via the receiving antenna 21, and then demodulated into a digital signal by the digital demodulator 23. The demodulated digital signal is supplied to the serial communication controller 24 and subjected to processing such as synchronization detection and error control according to the communication protocol, and then decoded by the decoder 25.
For example, 4-channel data is reconstructed and output, supplied to a display unit (not shown), and displayed on the tube surface as an electrocardiogram waveform.

FIG. 3 shows the output terminal 19 of the embodiment shown in FIG.
The signal output from the aortic balloon pumping device 3
4 shows an example of connection when used in 4. In FIG. 3, a transmitter 36 is the transmitter of the embodiment shown in FIG. 1, and the digitally modulated wave is wirelessly transmitted from the transmission antenna 16 thereof, while a cable 38 is connected from the output terminal 19 to the aortic balloon pumping device 34. Wired transmission via.

The monitor 37 is the receiving section of the embodiment shown in FIG. 2 and receives and demodulates the digital modulated wave as described above and displays the demodulated data on the screen.
Unlike 3, there is no output terminal for an electrocardiogram signal or a heartbeat timing signal. The monitor 37 digitally demodulates the digitally modulated wave using a sophisticated transmission error control technique, data compression technique, etc., so that higher quality demodulated data can be obtained.

On the other hand, the aortic balloon pumping device 34
Receives an analog biometric signal transmitted by wire from the transmitter 36 via the cable 38 as an input signal, and controls a balloon placed in the aorta of the living body 31 at an appropriate time phase based on the input analog biometric signal. The living body 3
Assists the circulation function of 1.

Here, the aortic balloon pumping device 3
Since the analog biometric signal input to 4 is a signal transmitted by wire from the transmitter 36, it is not affected by noise caused by wireless transmission or transmission delay compared to wireless transmission, and thus heartbeat rhythm information with less transmission delay. It is possible to simultaneously obtain remote monitoring of a patient with stable transmission quality.

In the above embodiment, the modulation system is the digital modulation system, but the present invention is not limited to this, and analog modulation systems such as frequency modulation and amplitude modulation may be used. The signal output from the output terminal 19 of FIG. 1 is not limited to the electrocardiogram signal, but may be any biological signal that reflects a heartbeat rhythm such as a blood pressure wave or a photoelectric pulse wave. It may also be a timing signal extracted from these signals. The cable 38 also includes an optical fiber cable that transmits a signal in the form of an optical signal, in addition to a coaxial cable that transmits in the form of an electric signal.

[0021]

As described above, according to the present invention,
Since there is no noise due to wireless transmission and biological signals or heartbeat timing signals that were conventionally wirelessly transmitted can be accurately provided to external devices such as therapeutic devices and measuring devices, accurate heartbeat information to external devices can be transmitted. The provision and the remote monitoring of the patient with stable transmission quality can be realized at the same time. Therefore, it is possible to improve the connection condition between the remote monitoring system by the medical telemeter and the external device, which has been inconvenient because of many restrictions.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a transmission unit according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a receiving unit according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a connection diagram of an embodiment of an external device of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a connection diagram of an example of an external device of a conventional medical telemeter.

[Explanation of symbols]

 11 analog biometric signal input terminal 12 input amplifier 13 A / D converter 14 encoder 15 digital modulator 17 isolator 19 analog biometric signal output terminal 22 wireless receiver 23 digital demodulator 24 serial communication controller 25 decoder 36 transmitter 37 monitor 38 cable

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A modulation means for modulating a biological signal detected from a living body, a transmitting means for wirelessly transmitting a modulated wave output from the modulating means, the biological signal or a heartbeat timing signal extracted from the biological signal. A medical telemeter comprising: an output terminal for outputting; and a monitor for receiving the modulated wave transmitted by the transmitting means, restoring the original data, and displaying the restored data on a screen. 2. The biological signal or the heartbeat timing signal taken out from the output terminal is wire-transmitted to a therapeutic device or a measuring device, and the modulating means modulates the biological signal based on a digital modulation method. The medical telemeter according to claim 1.