Status
* Larry: He is working on the Daily Sphygmochron, the same
report but on 24 hours of data. Germaine uses that to look for
issues that show up on 1-2 days of data that don't show up on
7 days because they are get "averaged out". He expects
to complete it in 2-8 weeks. DeeDee has been making some progress
on the website.
* Bob Schlentz: Wants to talk about how we get our project done.
* Chris Adams: Has made progress on requirements. Additionally,
Franz has asked: 1) can you write a reference database, 2) can
you write a paper, and 3) can you review the paper. Though this
would be helpful, he needs to and wants to work on the ABPM requirements
so that the many people outside of the Twin Cities and the US
who have asked to work on the Phoenix Project will have clear
requirements to use.
* Dwayne: Is working on plotting software. Germaine described
it as modifying old plotting programs from Cal comp plotters.
* Germaine: Wants to get her Cosinor from no programming in a
spreadsheet to being more programmable. It works, but she wants
to improve it so that fewer mistakes are made and would like to
include El's "indexing" technique. Wants to show others
how they can program a Cosinor with a more general version, and
show how you go from the data to the final products. Additionally,
Halberg Center has shown the merit going for 7 days. Visitors
from Switzerland arrived to the Center with data from growth of
tumor cells, goes for 444 days, and showed a huge 7 day component.
They compared it with growth of unicells, and with similar results.
Also, we should additional evidence with eye pressure, that if
you have CHAT it predicts hypertension.
* Franz: 1) Dwayne produced results in plotting, 2) Four cultures
in dermal cells, showing 7 day cycles in ATP concentration as
a measure of metabolism activity. Franz would like articles written
by engineers in the IEEE to set expectations within the IEEE for
7 day blood pressure measurement.
Issues
* Chris: We are getting requests to reference, write papers,
review papers.
Though this would be helpful in developing use scenarios, he needs
to and wants to work on the ABPM requirements document so that
the many people outside of the Twin Cities and outside the US
who have asked to work on the Phoenix Project will have clear
requirements to use.
* Bob: Getting our device built.
The last issue of EE Times, Aug 6, 2007, page 12:
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=ZV1VDMD1IHEPIQSNDLRCKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=201202710
contains an article of a young boy using as FPGA from Actel and
a development system Libro at Level8, is able to build things
using a small computer to do things: a computer, a development
kit, an oscilloscope, and Kensington multiple disk drive using
it. He is 8 years old. If he can do this, we all can do this.
Bob recommends that we use an FGPA as a portable blood pressure
monitor. The next step is what to use as a sensor. He recommends
a piezo electric strip that is being used in the development lab.
There appears to be a practical roadblock, getting a large enough
strip. The 4-inch strip seems to be too small. Jim Holte brought
a "Yellow Paper", he would like to identify the source
and email of the materials, what else is available. Bob said we
need something to go completely around the appendage so it covers
the entire area of potential points you would like to measure
from. Now, what to measure it with? Let's run it into an oscillator,
a voltage controlled oscillator, make it with two transistors,
4 resistors, 1 capacitor (like a pacemaker), and the input from
the pressure sensor. and the output goes to a capacity coupled
to the outside world.
We need a way to hold it there. Let's use an ordinary elastic
adhesive bandage. Next step is: how do we get the information
out? The least complex way is to have a connector that we plug
into a computer. See another article in same issue that someone
is shipping a $99 computer, allowing the information to be stored.
This will not be the digested information and you'll need the
computer and/or the FPGA to identify the peaks and valleys and
store them. The oscillator will allow us to find the peaks and
valleys, and we'll find them by a running average. The power source
will probably be size AA alkaline battery. The connection can
be a USB connector. Much of this I worked out in 2002. The data
would be a stream of bits that would have a repetition rate proportional
to the pressure, so it would be the pulse stream, data would represent
mmHg (MiniHogs).
* Chris: the sensor is interesting, but what makes this project
difficult is that it must be an open source embedded firmware
system. Bob: Let's quit calling it open source and just build
it! Chris: There is almost nothing about building firmware that
doesn't require a specific physical facility to do it, you can't
test it without special hardware. El: doesn't LabView address
this problem? Bob: Yes, but there is a physical facility that
goes with it, that is 36x24 inch piece of hardware that makes
it run. Chris: We need an open source firmware development process
model - a model for developing firmware in an open source environment
- so that we can replicate it, so that others can build it, so
that we are not stuck on something that someone built in their
basement and we can get it working done even if that person left
the Project.
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