Non-contact measurement system for swallowing time using Fiber grating vision sensor

Recently, our society is rapidly aging, and it's getting more important to evaluate swallowing function for preventing accidents and illness such as aspiration pneumonia. So we developed a new evaluation system for swallowing function. This system can evaluate swallowing function safely and quantitatively without touching by a Fiber grating vision sensor which is a kind of 3D scanning sensor using a CCD camera and Infrared laser. The Fiber grating vision sensor can get movement of a throat at the time of swallowing, and shape of the throat is obtained by image processing. Then, we estimate the movement of the throat using the shape of the throat information, and measure the time of the swallowing movement affected by aging. By this way, the swallowing function ability is quantified. In experiment, we applied this system for the various subjects and verified the Utility.