Patent ID: 7819811

Claim:
A method of improving the diagnostic performance of a probe system for detecting a medical condition in a patient, which probe system includes at least one probe to be applied to a measurement site of the patient for sensing volume or volume-related changes in a monitored body part thereat due to pulsatile arterial blood flow in the body part, comprising: providing a probe that includes a pressure sensor which senses said volume changes by sensing changes in pressure in a compressible fluid system of volume V F when applied to said monitored body part and of volume V S where not applied to said body part, said body part including a fixed volume V T of non-compressible tissue and a pulsitatively-variable volume V P corresponding to arterial volume changes, such that the pressure in said compressible fluid system changes with the change in pulsatile volume thereof and the gain of said changes varies according to the relative values of the volumes V T and V F ; calibrating said probe system for the respective measurement site of the respective patient according to a predetermined characteristic of said monitored body part of the patient; and quantifying the arterial pulsatile volume thereat using a data processor.