Apparatus, system, and method for detecting physiological movement from audio and multimodal signals

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12521037-B2
Application number	US-202217871280-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 22, 2022
Priority date	Sep 19, 2016
Publication date	Jan 13, 2026
Grant date	Jan 13, 2026

Abstract

Methods and devices provide physiological movement detection with active sound generation. In some versions, a processor may detect breathing and/or gross body motion. The processor may control producing, via a speaker coupled to the processor, a sound signal in a user's vicinity. The processor may control sensing, via a microphone coupled to the processor, a reflected sound signal. This reflected sound signal is a reflection of the sound signal from the user. The processor may process the reflected sound, such as by a demodulation technique. The processor may detect breathing from the processed reflected sound signal. The sound signal may be produced as a series of tone pairs in a frame of slots or as a phase-continuous repeated waveform having changing frequencies (e.g., triangular or ramp sawtooth). Evaluation of detected movement information may determine sleep states or scoring, fatigue indications, subject recognition, chronic disease monitoring/prediction, and other output parameters.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1 . A non-transitory processor-readable medium, having stored thereon processor-executable instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors of an electronic processing device to electronically detect physiological movement of a user, the processor-executable instructions comprising:
instructions that control electronically generating an electronic speaker control signal comprising a continuous wave (CW) signal for oscillating a component of a speaker coupled to the electronic processing device, to produce, via the speaker, a sound signal, in a vicinity of the user, to detect the physiological movement of the user, the CW signal using only a single continuous sinusoidal tone during detection of a breathing signal; instructions that control electronically generating an electronic sensing signal, via a microphone coupled to the electronic processing device, that includes a reflected sound signal reflected from the user comprising at least a portion of the produced sound signal; instructions that control electronically receiving the electronic sensing signal in a processor of the one or more processors to process the reflected sound signal; instructions that control electronically generating an electronic signal representing detection of the breathing signal of the user from the processed reflected sound signal; instructions that control using the detected breathing signal to detect a sleep disordered breathing condition; and instructions that control treating of the sleep disordered breathing condition with a flow generator configured as a therapy device, wherein the produced sound signal comprises the continuous wave (CW) signal.

2 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the sound signal is in an inaudible sound range.

3 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions that control electronically generating the electronic speaker control signal comprise instructions to modulate, prior to producing, the sound signal using, a CW modulation scheme.

4 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions that control electronically generating the electronic speaker control signal comprise instructions to modulate, prior to producing, the sound signal using, an adaptive CW modulation scheme.

5 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the processor-executable instructions further comprise instructions to control an adaptive continuous wave scheme.

6 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 5 , wherein the instructions to control the adaptive continuous wave scheme comprise instructions to control scanning across inaudible frequencies to iteratively search frequencies for the breathing signal.

7 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 6 , wherein the scanning searches for the breathing signal considering frequency content and time domain morphology.

8 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the processor-executable instructions further comprise signal processing instructions for producing and sensing audio by a continuous wave homodyning technique.

9 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the processor-executable instructions further comprise instructions to perform high frequency automatic gain control on samples of the reflected sound signal to smooth out amplitude modulation unrelated to respiratory motion.

10 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions that electronically process the reflected sound signal comprise instructions that demodulate the reflected sound signal to produce a plurality of baseband motion signals comprising the breathing signal.

11 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 10 , wherein the plurality of baseband motion signals comprise quadrature baseband motion signals.

12 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 11 , further comprising instructions to control electronically processing of the plurality of baseband motion signals to produce a combined baseband motion signal from the plurality of baseband motion signals, the combined baseband motion signal comprising the breathing signal.

13 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 12 , wherein the instructions that control electronically generating the electronic signal representing detection of a breathing signal of the user comprise instructions to detect a breathing rate from the combined baseband motion signal.

14 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the instructions that control electronically generating the electronic sensing signal comprise instructions to store sound data sampled from the microphone.

15 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the processor-executable instructions further comprise:
instructions to calibrate the detection of the physiological movement of the user based on one or more characteristics of the electronic processing device; and instructions to control electronically producing the sound signal based on the one or more characteristics of the electronic processing device.

16 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 15 , wherein the one or more characteristics of the electronic processing device comprise at least one of a hardware characteristic, an environment characteristic, or a user specific characteristic.

17 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the processor-executable instructions further comprise:
instructions to operate a pet set up mode, wherein a frequency for producing the sound signal is based on one or more test sound signals and user input regarding reaction of a pet to the one or more test sound signals.

18 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the processor-executable instructions further comprise:
instructions to discontinue producing the sound signal based on a detected user interaction with the electronic processing device, the detected user interaction comprising any one or more of: a detection of movement of the electronic processing device with an accelerometer, a detection of pressing of a button, a detection of touching of a screen, and a detection of an incoming phone call.

19 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the processor-executable instructions further comprise:
instructions to initiate producing the sound signal based on a detected absence of user interaction with the electronic processing device.

20 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the processor-executable instructions further comprise:
instructions to detect gross body movement based on processing of the electronic sensing signal, wherein the physiological movement of the user comprises the gross body movement.

21 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the processor-executable instructions further comprise:
instructions that control electronically processing audio signals sensed via the microphone to evaluate any one or more of environmental sounds, speech sounds and breathing sounds to detect user motion.

22 . The non-transitory processor-readable medium of claim 1 , wherein the processor-executable instructions further comprise:
instructions that control e

Assignees

• Resmed Sensor Tech Ltd

Inventors

• Mcmahon Stephen
• O'Rourke Damien
• Zaffaroni Alberto
• Shouldice Redmond
• Fagan Tony
• Fox Niall Andrew
• O'Mahony Niall
• Lyon Graeme Alexander

Classifications

• H04R1/222

  for microphones (H04R1/24, H04R1/26 take precedence) · CPC title

• A61B5/7228

  Signal modulation applied to the input signal sent to patient or subject; Demodulation to recover the physiological signal · CPC title

• A61B5/6887

  mounted on external non-worn devices, e.g. non-medical devices · CPC title

• A61B5/4818

  Sleep apnoea · CPC title

• A61B5/4812

  Detecting sleep stages or cycles · CPC title