Development of traditional Chinese medicine pulse diagnosis information collection gloves based on flexible sensing technology
With the increasing demand of people for health and medical services,auxiliary pulse diagnostic equipment has the advantages of remote diagnosis,real-time monitoring,convenient self-help,high efficiency and so on,and is increasingly favored by consumers.Currently,pulse diagnostic equipment,such as intelligent pulse monitoring system and dynamic pulse waveform analyzer,has high requirements for environmental conditions,low sensitivity and slightly cumbersome operation.Therefore,the equipment with smaller volume,more convenience,stable performance,simple operation and data visualization has attracted the attention of a wide range of researchers.Our team has developed gloves for collecting pulse information of traditional Chinese medicine.The device can fit perfectly with the skin and has good collection performance.This paper discusses the functional structure design and implementation of pulse collection gloves,including device preparation,structure design,system construction,operation test and so on.The carbon fiber dimension material independently developed by our team is used in the sensing material in the pulse collection gloves.Two carbon fibers are used as a cross structure and are fixed on the flexible printed board through copper holes,which is used as a single sensing unit.The flexible sensor is placed at the fingertips of the index finger,middle finger and ring finger of the glove.It can not only read the key pulse information of the human body such as Cun,Guan and Chi,but also accurately identify the pulse information of the wrist and neck.The copper wire in the mezzanine channel is used as the transmission line to connect with the sensing unit,and the pulse information is transmitted to the circuit acquisition module on the back of the hand.The pulse information data are processed here and sent to mobile phones,computer terminals and uploaded to the cloud database.The structural highlight of the pulse collection glove is the sandwich design on the back.When the glove works,with the bending and straightening of the fingers,the transmission line carried by the glove is frequently in a tight and relaxed state.The design of the glove mezzanine channel can realize the relatively loose state of the transmission line all the time,avoid the phenomenon that the transmission line is easy to be stretched and broken during use,and it fits well with the skin,ensuring the stable transmission of pulse diagnosis data.The pulse diagnosis collection gloves can assist users to digitize and standardize pulse information,provide more stable and rich data tips and references for clinical diagnosis of traditional Chinese medicine,and provide more possibilities for home self-help pulse diagnosis and cloud diagnosis.