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This story is from the category Sensors
Date posted: 10/04/2009 Tracking the health of muscles over time is not always easy or precise. The best way to diagnose and evaluate muscle degeneration involves an uncomfortable needle test; both this test and other approaches like questionnaires are subjective and not easy to reproduce over multiple sessions. A new device, under development by Seward Rutkove, a neurologist and scientist at Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues at MIT could provide a painless, noninvasive, and quantitative alternative. The prototype handheld probe, similar to an ultrasound probe, measures electrical impedance in the muscle, which changes depending on the health of the tissue. The approach, also known as electric impedance myography (EIM), is a modification of the basic technology used in body composition devices to measure the percentage of fat or muscle in the body. A high-frequency electric current is applied to the skin through a set of noninvasive electrodes, while another set of skin electrodes records the resulting voltages from the tissue. The properties of the current change depend on the composition and microscopic structure of the underlying tissue. See the full Story via external site: www.technologyreview.com Most recent stories in this category (Sensors): 14/06/2013: Autonomous energy-scavenging micro devices will test water quality, monitor bridges, more |
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