International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)

ISSN (Online): 2319-7064

Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2013): 4.438

Analysis and Monitoring of Coma Patients using

Wearable Motion Sensor System
Sneha Chowdary Koganti1, Dr. H N Suma2, Appaji M. Abhishek3
1
M.Tech Medical electronics BMSCE, Bangalore
2
Prof and Head Department of Medical Electronics, BMSCE, Bangalore
3
Assistant Professor, Department of Medical Electronics, BMSCE, Bangalore

Abstract: It is very essential to continuously monitor the unconscious/coma patients to understand their health condition. The main
objective of the proposed is to accomplish two tasks. 1) Monitoring and alerting the medical person, when the comatose gains
consciousness using motion detection system. 2) Continuous recording and analysis of vital signals of the patient such as Pulse rate and
temperature and alert the doctor whenever attention is needed. Wearable Motion sensor system is used to monitor the body movements
such as eye blink movement and hand movement to detect the conscious state of an individual. This system will be helpful in assisting
the doctor about the health condition of the unconscious patient and alerting the doctor whenever care is required. The proposed system
will assist the doctor by giving an alarm about the health condition of the patient, when the set of vital signals recorded are out of the
normal range. These results are displayed on the computer and on the Liquid crystal display(LCD).

Keywords: Attention, Alerting, Coma patient, Monitoring, Motion detection, Physical movement, Vital signal

1. Introduction the burden of continuous supervision and will alert the doctor
or paramedical staff only when attention is needed. This
Coma or unconsciousness is a state of a person where an system will be helpful in assisting the doctor about the patient
individual cannot respond to the internal and external condition whether he is stable or unstable and will monitor
stimulus [1]. Coma is a deep state of unconsciousness. Coma the comatose regularly to see if there are any changes in the
is not a brain-death. A person in the coma state is alive but physical movement of the vegetative state patient.
could not move or respond to the environment. Coma can
occur as a result of injuries such as head injuries or as an 2. Related works Review
aggravation of an underlying illness. Individuals in coma
state will lose their thinking abilities and awareness of their Kansal et. al, has developed advanced coma patient
surroundings, but will retain normal sleep patterns and non- monitoring system using image processing techniques such as
cognitive function. For an individual in a persistent pattern recognition and pattern rejection algorithms.
vegetative state the important functions like circulation and
breathing remains unharmed even though the individual loses Malika et. al [2] has proposed a wireless Zigee based patient
his top level brain functions. Sometimes the person in a coma monitoring system. This system has a PIR sensor,
state can respond to the external environment by voluntary Temperature sensor, Humidity sensor, smoke sensor
movements such as he may open his eyes in response to connected are connected to the patient’s body wirelessly and
external impulse. Even though an individual in a coma state the doctor is alerted whenever there is medical emergency.
appears normal but they could not respond to the external
commands. Since the physical motion of persistent vegetative Navya et. al [3] has developed a Zigbee based wireless
state individual are rare, there is a need for regular attention sensor based network for patient health monitoring. This
and care. system has a heartbeat sensor, MEMS sensor, body
temperature sensor, saline level sensor and the results are
In present system used in hospitals a healthcare professional transmitted via Zigbee which is used the monitor the elderly
is needed to continuously monitor and record all the vital people.
information of a particular subject by maintaining all the
records of that comatose manually. Such methods of Chopade et. al [4] has proposed a remote patient health
continuous supervision by a paramedical assistant are error monitoring system using Zigbee protocol to monitor certain
prone and may lead to difficulties due to human error. In case patients who needs continuous monitoring such as heart
of critically ill patients it requires to measure the vital failure. This system has a Temperature sensor and heartbeat
parameters at least for every 15 seconds until the patient’s sensor and these values are transmitted using ATMEGA and
condition stabilizes. Therefore monitoring of coma patients is the Zigbee unit.
different from monitoring the normal patients. It is very
tough job for the paramedical staff to continuously monitor Chen [5] has developed a wearable inertial sensor for human
each patient’s 24 hours since the proportion of staff to patient motion analysis to continuous track motions and positions of
is very low. So it is not an easy task to monitor each and aging people. This system is comprised inertial measuring
every patient regularly. This system is proposed to eliminate unit such as MEMS sensor for motion tracking.
Volume 4 Issue 9, September 2015
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Paper ID: SUB158295 1154
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 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN (Online): 2319-7064
Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2013): 4.438
AlSharqi et. al [6] has developed a system for monitoring the 3.2 Eye Blink Sensor
health condition of elderly people. Reports are transmitted by
Zigbee to the doctor. This system consists of heart rate This sensor is used to detect any blinks in a comatose. This
sensor, pulse sensor, ECG sensor and Muscle sensor and a sensor works on IR principle. This sensor works by
local monitoring pc and Zigbee transmitter and receiver. illuminating an eye area using an infrared light. It has a
transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter is used to transmit
3. Proposed System an infrared light that is used for illuminating the eye area.
The reflected light is obtained at the receiver. When there is
This proposed system is based on motion detection sensor an eye blink there will be no infrared light received at the
system. The system is used for monitoring physical health receiver end.(Figure 3).
and physical changes in a vegetative state individual. The
various hardware requirements and their working principles
are discussed below(Figure 1).

Figure 1: Block Diagram of the system Figure 3: Eye Blink Sensor placement

3.1 MEMS Axis Sensor 3.3 Pulse Rate Sensor

This sensor is used to sense the acceleration changes in the This sensor is used to monitor the pulse rate of the person.
person this sensor is placed on the fingers of the patient This sensor works on a principle of light modulation by
(figure 2). Whenever there are an acceleration changes in the blood flow through finger at each pulse. The pulse rate
patient i.e whenever there is any movement it will be sensor compromise of a super bright red light emitting
recorded and a phase demodulation principle is used to diode(LED) for illumination and LDR(Light Dependent
determine the value and direction. This sensor is made up of Resistor) is used as a detector. The finger when placed inside
a polysilicon surface micro machined structure which is built the sensor is illuminated with a super bright red LED. This
on the top of a silicon wafer. The resistance against the LED needs to be super bright so that the light must be able to
acceleration forces is provided by suspending the spring over pass through the finger and could be detected at the detector
the surface of the wafer. It works on a principle of measuring side. When heart pumps blood through the blood vessels the
the deflection using a differential capacitor which has finger gets more opaque which results in absorbing of certain
independent fixed plates that are attached to the moving amount of light and less amount of light will be received by a
mass. These plates are at 180 degree out of phase. When detector. The finger is placed between LED and LDR. The
there is an acceleration there will be a deflection in the amount of light absorbed by the blood depends on the blood
moving mass which unbalances the differential capacitor volume in that area. The signal obtained at the detector end
which results in a output amplitude is proportional to will be in the form of electrical signal which is proportional
acceleration, than a Phase sensitive demodulation process is to pulse rate. LDR works on a principle of its change in
used to estimate the value and direction of acceleration. This resistivity when light is incident on it. The light intensity is
sensor can be used as single structure for a complete 3-axis inversely proportional to resistance change which results in
sensing. voltage drop. The detector signal varies with each
pulse.(Figure 4).

Figure 2: Hand Movement sensor placement

Volume 4 Issue 9, September 2015

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Paper ID: SUB158295 1155
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 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN (Online): 2319-7064
Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2013): 4.438
3.7 LCD

These values along with the movements are also displayed on

the LCD. The LCD used is a 16*2, 8 bit mode. (Figure 6).

Figure 4: Pulse sensor

3.4 Temperature Sensor

Figure 6: LCD display
The body temperature is measured using LM 35 sensor.
Temperature regulation is a main part that keeps the body at 3.8 Buzzer
correct operating temperature due to its impact on the rate of
chemical processes. In normal individual the temperature is The buzzers are designed using piezoelectric materials for
about 30 ℃ to 38 ℃. In LM 35 sensor the output voltage is in high performance and for ease of incorporation into the
direct proportion with the body of the patient. The operating systems. They are low power consumption elements. These
range of LM 35 sensor is from -55 to +150°C. The advantage are used for alerting a doctor whenever the sensed signals are
of this sensor is that it does not require any external outside the normal values and whenever physical movements
calibration. The sensor is sealed to avoid oxidation effects. are recorded.
This sensor generates greater output voltages compared to
that of thermocouples(Figure 5). 4. Methodology
The proposed system consists of four sensor in which two
sensors are used for monitoring vitals of the comatose.
Temperature and pulse rate are the two vitals recorded and
monitored to understand health status of a comatose. The
other two sensors are MEMS accelerometer sensor and Eye
blink sensor which are used recording any physical changes
that occur in a comatose. These signals which provides
information are recorded and monitored continuously to
understand the body functioning. These sets of sensed signals
which are outside normal ranges typically imply the need for
Figure 5: Temperature sensor some care or possible evacuation to a higher level of
treatment during which we alert the doctor.
3.5 Arm controller
5. Program Flow
In this system LPC 2148 controller has been used which is
based on 16 bit ARM7TDMI CPU with embedded real time
The first step in work flow is to set up the controller and the
emulation. It has a high speed flash memory about 32 KB to
sensor. When the eye blink is detected that is when the output
512 KB. These controllers are ideal for use because of their
is high then the result will be displayed as eye blink detected.
tiny size and low power consumption. It also has a serial
If the output is low than it will be displayed as no eye blink
communication interface. The vital signals measured from
detected the need for care or attention. (Figure 7).
the above sensor are interfaced with the arm controller and in
this controller these signal are processed and are compared
with the normal values.

3.6 UART

In this proposed system serial communication interfacing is

done using a MAX232 and RS232 where MAX232 is an
integrated circuit that converts signals from RS232 to signals
suitable for use in digital logic. These measured values are
displayed on the doctor’s computer using this serial
communication interface.

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 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN (Online): 2319-7064
Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2013): 4.438

Figure 7: Program flow

6. Results and Discussions

This system will be helpful in assisting the doctors about
patient’s health condition. The results obtained in the
proposed system will have the information about Eye blinks
and hand movements, pulse rate and body temperature(
Figure: 8). This system eliminates the burden of continuous
recording of vital signal information on the paramedical
person. It is low cost and low power system. With slight
modifications this system can be used to diagnose motion
related disorders such as epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease. A Figure 8: Results obtained
system studying movement disorders featuring tremor can
also be developed. 7. Conclusion
In this proposed system, the vital parameters such as
temperature and pulse rate are monitored. The MEMS
sensors sensitivity was a problem during the process later it
was improved by using potentiometer. The system is
designed for unconscious patients who need continuous care.
Sometimes due to the critical condition of the patient there
will be a difficult in measuring the pulse at the finger,
therefore the pulse sensor can be developed which can be
placed on the neck for the pulse measurement.

8. Acknowledgement
The work reported in this paper is supported by the college
through the TECHNICAL EDUCATION QUALITY
IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMME [TEQIP-II] of the
MHRD, Government of India.

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 International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR)
ISSN (Online): 2319-7064
Index Copernicus Value (2013): 6.14 | Impact Factor (2013): 4.438
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