Patent ID: 11963789
Assignee: THE TRUSTEES OF INDIANA UNIVERSITY
Field: Medical technology (Instruments)
Classification: CPC A | IPC A

Claim 52:
53. A fully automated system for measuring or characterizing activity comprising nutritive sucking, comprising:
a computing device having a processor and a memory;
the computing device arranged to access digital data derived from one or more monitoring instruments indicating the feeding activity during a period of time;
the processor arranged to determine a suck-pressure baseline for the digital data;
the processor arranged to employ a two-pass suck-recognition strategy comprising a first pass identifying sucks comprising relatively larger deflections in the digital data relative to the suck-pressure baseline, and a second pass identifying further sucks comprising relatively smaller deflections relative to the suck-pressure baseline that are not superimposed on the relatively larger deflections;
the processor arranged to determine features of the digital data relating to the feeding activity based on the identified sucks and identified further sucks from the employing the two-pass suck-recognition strategy, including one or more of:
measures related to sucking comprising suck amplitude, suck frequency, or consistency of sucking;
measures related to suck bursts comprising duration or suck-burst pauses;
measures comprising use of Fourier transform to infer suck frequency and number of sucks without relying upon identification of individual sucks or bursts of sucks;
ratio of active feeding time to pauses;

the processor arranged to determine consistency and strength of feeding based on the determined features of the digital data relating to the feeding activity; and
the processor arranged to report consistency and strength of feeding or quantitative values for the determined features of the digital data relating to the feeding activity.