Surgery – Diagnostic testing – Structure of body-contacting electrode or electrode inserted...
Reexamination Certificate
1999-12-03
2002-02-12
Dvorak, Linda C. M. (Department: 3739)
Surgery
Diagnostic testing
Structure of body-contacting electrode or electrode inserted...
C600S547000, C600S548000, C600S554000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06347238
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to studying the state of living organisms.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Recognizing, characterizing and evaluating pain in animals, including humans, is a largely subjective activity due to the lack of generally accepted objective criteria for recognizing, characterizing and evaluating the altered state of an animal, such as a human or other animal, in pain. Likewise, in botany, it is often difficult to measure when an edible plant is still edible with firm tissues and is not wilted. It is therefore difficult to provide a non-living model of living systems, which can be quantitatively evaluated.
There are precedents in physiology for the concept of non-living models of living systems. Many examples can be found in the work of J. C. Bose who, at the beginning this century, drew the attention of physiologists to the similarity of certain electrical responses in metals and muscle tissue. Another well-known example of a non-living model is the “iron wire” model of nerve impulse conduction.
In investigating the bioelectric attributes of living systems with pairs of electrodes connected to some kind of amplifying and recording system it has been traditional to work operationally in two stages: an initial stage in which the electrodes are appropriately positioned in relation to the tissue to be studied, followed by a recording stage after bioelectric effects arising during the positioning of the electrodes have largely dissipated.
Any residual bioelectric effects are often referred to by using such terms as “noise”, “interference”, or “non-linearity”, the key point being that these are traditionally unwelcome barriers to the desired ideal steady state condition. (Faupel, U.S. Pat. No. 5,715,821).
The essence of the present invention, in contrast, is to focus on, and follow the time course of, the bioelectric disturbance that arises consequent to the second electrode being brought into proximity, or, more usually, contact with the relevant tissue site.
Various types of electrodes have previously been used to measure bioelectric attributes of the human organism in the form of voltage potentials or electric currents.
Some of these have employed an electric current introduced into the electrodes, such as with a galvanic skin response and others which can only measure the organism's interaction with the introduced current and not the current produced directly by the organism. Hirschowitz, (U.S. Pat. No. 4,328,809) first filters out as noise the kind of rapidly changing signals, which are at the heart of the present invention, and then uses a single value, which is arrived at by averaging the 180 readings, to represent the measurement.
Other methods have been passive but have limited themselves to measuring the strength of the external electrostatic field (Hoogendoorn, U.S. Pat. No. 4,602,639) or to producing a simple numerical value of the voltage potential (Faupel, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,995,383 and 5,099,844; Conway, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,557,273 and 4,321,360), differences between minimum and maximum voltages (Faupel, U.S. Pat. No. 5,715,821; Stoller, U.S. Pat. No. 4,557,271), differences between voltages at two different points or measurements of simple electric current (Alexeev, U.S. Pat. No. 5,409,011).
Many are designed to look at only specific body functions such as the brain (Zhang, U.S. Pat. No. 5,144,554; Kiyuna, U.S. Pat. No. 5,785,653), the gastrointestinal system (Zhang, U.S. Pat. No. 5,144,554) or ovulation (Stoller, U.S. Pat. No. 4,557,273; Conway, U.S. Pat. No. 4,312,360).
Still others have used extremely expensive Superconducting Quantum Interference devices or “SQUIDS” (Takeda, U.S. Pat. No. 5,646,526; Abraham-Fuchs, U.S. Pat. No. 5,417,211) which are extremely expensive and do not detect the types of pulses described in the inexpensive and easy-to-use system of the present invention.
Some have detected waves such as electrocardiograph (EKG) waves, electroencephalograph (EEG) waves or square waves, but not the unique pulses described herein.
The aforementioned methods of analyzing data from other electrode systems have largely concentrated on eliminating irregular, non-periodic fluctuations that comprise the essential data of the present system, considering irregular fluctuations as noise to be averaged out, smoothed out, or filtered out (Hirschowitz, U.S. Pat. No.4,328,809; Faupel, U.S. Pat. No. 5,715,821).
Japanese researchers (Seto et al, “Detection of extraordinary large biomagnetic field strength from human hand during external QI emission,”
International Journal of Acupuncture and Electro-Therapeutics Research
, V. 17 pp. 75-94 (1992)) used an 80,000 turn solenoid experimental probe coil sensitive to electromagnetic fluctuations to measure pulses emanating from the hands of Qi Gong masters. They calculated the amount of electrical energy needed to produce pulses of that size and showed that it exceeds the carrying capacity of the nerves of the arm, thereby excluding nerve signals as the sole source.
Numerous problems with artifacts limit the usefulness of such coils, as the Applicant's research showed in connection with the present invention. For example the palm must be held over the coil at a fixed interval. Any vertical fluctuation of the hand produces extraneous signals, which confuse the readings. Furthermore, many people have trouble holding their hands perfectly still for 30 seconds or more. In addition, the device is far less sensitive than the electrode system of the present invention. While Qi Gong masters produce strong, regular pulses, normal people produce only occasional tiny pulses, making the disturbing effects of movement-generated extraneous signals all the more serious. In addition, the relative lack of sensitivity means that there is far less information, which can be extracted from the signals.
In contrast, as more fully explained later herein, the physical contact with the palms and other areas of the body being measured by the system of the present invention gives much more reliable and informative readings to detect and record changes in bioelectric pulses indicative of the state of health of a human, other animal or plant.
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a device and method for detecting and recording specific types of bioelectric pulses, these being an aspect of the biofield of both human, other animal and plant subjects. The term “biofield” is defined in “Sections on Biofield Diagnostics and Therapeutics”,
Alternative Medicine: Expanding Medical Systems and Practices in the United States
, prepared under the auspices of the Workshop on Alternative Medicine, Chantilly, Virginia, Sep. 14-16, 1992, Part I:
Field of Practice, Manual Healing Methods
, pages 134-146.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a device for detecting changes in biofield energy levels in both animal and plant subjects. This latter has important applications in assessing the nutritional value of plant foodstuffs, both in general and in particular. This is illustrated by studies of the energy differences between fresh and wilted carrots, and the energy changes accompanying a banana ripening.
It is further an object of the present invention to enable investigators to collaboratively create libraries of CDP trace recordings, analogous to the fingerprint libraries in current use. This allows the creation of specific databases for various living tissue conditions.
For example, in a study of human subject persons with traumatic spinal injuries, in connection with the present invention, Applicants-noticed that in certain subjects the dissipative transient bioelectric disturbance recordings contained pulses occurring at a regular rate of from 1.4 to 1.7 Hz, such as, for example, 1.6 Hz. Applicant's studies revealed that all twelve (12) of the subjects who have been shown to exhibit this 1.4-1.7 Hz pulse rate had suffered some form of traumatic spinal injury at some time in the past, sometimes decades before the recording and beyond the memory
Gedye John L.
Levengood William C.
Dvorak Linda C. M.
Ruddy David M.
Walker Alfred M.
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