Micro Motion Detection for Determining at least one Vital Sign of a Subject

Abstract

A system and method for determining at least one vital sign of a subject comprises a plurality of pressure sensors configured to be placed in a vicinity of the subject's body, and configured and operable to sense movements of skin of the subject's body within at least one region on the skin and generate sensing data corresponding to the at least one region; the sensing data comprising a plurality of measured signals being indicative of a common physiological event differentiated in time and intensity from one another and a control unit in data communication with each of pressure sensors of the plurality of pressure sensors; the control unit comprising an analyzer processing utility configured and operable to receive the sensing data corresponding to each of the at least one region; generate, for the pressure sensors associated with each of the at least one region, a pressure variation profile for the region; identify therein one or more predetermined signatures indicative of at least one physiological event of the subject; generate signature data thereof; extract at least one time stamp from the signature data; and generate vital sign data indicative of at least one vital sign of the subject based thereon.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method for determining vital signs of a subject, the method comprising:
 sensing movements of the skin of one or more regions of the subject and generating sensing data for each region;   analyzing the sensing data and generating a variation profile for sensing data of each region;   identifying, in each of the variation profiles, one or more predetermined signatures indicative of at least one physiological event of the subject;   extracting time stamps of the one or more identified predetermined signatures; and   generating vital sign data indicative of at least one vital sign of the subject based on the extracted time stamps.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein generating vital sign data comprises determining time relation between different time stamps. 
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 2 , wherein the relation between different time stamps comprises a difference between time stamps. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein sensing comprises sensing from two or more sub-regions in each region. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 4 , wherein the variation profile is a curvature of an n-dimensional curve, wherein ‘h’ is the number of sub-regions in each region. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 5 , wherein the predetermined signature is characterized by a threshold of at least one projection of the curve. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the sensing data comprises intensities of pressure samples sensed in each region over time. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein at least one region comprises the head of the subject. 
     
     
         9 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein at least one region comprises the chest of the subject and at least one region comprises the abdomen of the subject. 
     
     
         10 . The method of  claim 1 , comprising receiving electrical signal data of the subject; extracting time stamps of physiological events from the electrical signal data; and generating vital sign data indicative of at least one vital sign of the subject based on a relation between time stamps extracted from the electrical signal data and time stamps extracted from the signatures of the pressure variation profile. 
     
     
         11 . The method of  claim 10 , wherein the electrical signal data comprises an ECG signal.