Stethoscope
AssigneeJapan Science and Technology Corporation
InventorTsutomu Nakada
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A simple always-portable stethoscope for enabling accurate diagnosis. A radiation/light-receiving fiber (11) serving as a probe part for noninvasively irradiating a diseased part with near-infrared light is applied to the diseased part so as to measure, e.g., a change of the cerebral circulation blood flow. The change is hard as sound pulse modulation to examine the change of the cerebral function. For example, a light beam of three wavelengths λ=760, 800, 830 nm from a semiconductor laser light source (22) is applied to the diseased part, the reflection data from the diseased part is processed by a control device (21), and the doctor can make a diagnosis with the doctor's ears by hearing with a receiver (32) the change as the change of the frequency of the sound the pitch and volume of which are constant.
Claims5
A portable stethoscope comprising:
- (a) a probe section for noninvasively irradiating a diseased part with near-infrared light, the probe having radiation and light-receiving fibers;
- (b) a control device connected to the probe section via a lead wire, the control device including a semiconductor laser light source connected to the radiation fiber, an optical detector connected to the light-receiving fiber, a controller for detecting a change in cerebral circulation blood flow on the basis of data output from the probe section, and a sound source device for converting the change in cerebral circulation blood flow to sound pulses;
- and
- (c) a pair of lead wires and receivers connected to the sound source device of the control device, wherein
- (d) auscultation is performed on the basis of the sound pulses from the sound source device in order to diagnose a change in cerebral function.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.