A multipoint thin film polymer pressure/force sensor to visualize traditional medicine palpations

This paper describes a novel multipoint thin film polymer pressure/force sensor enabling detection of pressure/force pulse wave. The sensor features a high sensibility of 11mv/mmHg along with an extremely thin thickness of 100 μm and a high flexibility to adapt to the radial artery portion. The sensor uses charged cellular polymer as sensing layer, which contains 25 separated sensing dots to avoid signal interaction among these sensing points. The sensor attaches to a person's wrist to detect the radial artery vibration, while a physician palpates the artery vibration with his fingertips on it. The sensor is thin and flexible enough to let the artery vibration transmit through it without spoiling the physician's tactile feeling. That makes it possible to correlate the measured pressure/force pulse wave and the physician's pulse diagnosis in real time. That is useful for objectification and quantification of pulse palpation in traditional medicine.