Oral care device with sensing functionality

Abstract

An oral care system for sensing blood in an oral cavity and in gum tissue. The sensing is performed magnetically using a magnetic field source (16) and magnetic sensing arrangement (18) incorporated into a cleaning or treatment portion of an oral care device (e.g. a brush head of a toothbrush or mouthpiece part of a brushing mouthpiece device). The field source generates (16) a reference field and the sensing arrangement (18) is arranged to sense the field strength of the reference field at one or more spatial points. Since blood is magnetic, when brought into the reference field, it magnetically interacts with the field, which may alter field strength, field shape, or flux distribution. This enables presence of blood to be detected. It also allows for detecting specific oral features or disease states associated with presence of blood or abnormal amounts or concentrations of blood. For example, this can be based on application of detection criteria which relate to one or more properties of the sensed field.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.