Patent ID: 8206324

Claim:
A method for monitoring living body activities involving monitoring human body movements and body activities of a human being sleeping on a bed, futon-bed, pad, or tatami-mat, wherein the method comprises the steps of: (a) disposing an optical fiber flat shaped body sensor comprising a flat shaped body and an optical fiber fitted to or integrated with the flat shaped body, so that living body activities and human body movements, respectively, change a form of the optical fiber flat shaped body sensor; (b) emitting a polarized light wave from a light source into the optical fiber and propagating the polarized wave of light along the optical fiber; (c) producing fluctuations in the polarized wave of light propagating along the optical fiber when living body activities or human body movements bring about changes in the form of the optical fiber flat shaped body sensor; (d) detecting fluctuations in the polarized wave of light using a polarized wave fluctuation measuring apparatus; (e) detecting periodic vibrations specific to respiration or heart pulsation by using a sum of a power spectrum of the fluctuations detected i. by the polarized wave fluctuation measuring apparatus; and ii. by time waveforms of three Stokes parameters, corresponding to polarized wave conditions of light, transformed using a Fourier Transform; (f) discriminating living body activities from human body movements using the detected fluctuations in the polarized wave of light, wherein by using the polarized wave fluctuation measuring apparatus living body activities or human body movements are detected at high speed and with high sensitivity based on a polarized wave fluctuation quantity, wherein the polarized wave fluctuation quantity is computed as a difference between a present value of a first polarized wave condition parameter, expressed by three Stokes parameters, and a second polarized wave condition parameter, found ¼ to ½ of a first period corresponding to periodic vibrations specific to respiration or heart pulsation prior to a time of the present value; and (g) processing the first polarized wave condition parameter and the second polarized wave condition parameter by sampling to obtain a moving average, and setting a width of the moving average to be ¼ to ½ of periodic vibrations specific to respiration or heart pulsation thereby removing random noise in signals employed for discriminating living body activities from human body movements.