A pipeline for utilizing facial, motor, and cardiac signals to measure an individual’s pain threshold
Invention Summary:
Selfâreporting of a person’s subjective level of pain is highly variable. This is due to individual differences in the way human beings experience pain. At present, no objective physiological scale of pain exists that also reflects the person's level of pain tolerance. This creates several challenges such as appropriately managing pain in patients with chronic conditions or communication disorders, and the ability to accurately measure the impact of pain relief medications during clinical trials.
Rutgers researchers have developed a method for measuring a patient’s standardized pain level using biorhythm and biosignal data, such as facial movements and cardiac rhythms. Using this data, the method determines a parameter that calculates a person’s pain threshold and current pain level. The method then standardizes the pain level to an individual’s baseline, enabling a more significant result than a self-reported pain level.
Market Applications:
- Medical appointments and medical intake surveys and software
- The ability to provide improved pain management, especially for chronic pain patients, elderly patients, or nonverbal patients
- Provides a method for quantitative pain measurement for clinical trials
Advantages:
- Improved pain assessment impacts a market estimated to grow to USD 93 billion in 2029
- Standardizes pain measurement compared to current subjective measurement
- Computationally light, and able to be executed on small footprint devices such as mobile phones
- Requires only routinely used clinical tools, such as a short video, heart monitor and blood pressure cuff
Intellectual Property & Development Status: Patent pending. Software available for licensing and/or research collaboration. For any business development and other collaborative partnerships contactmarketingbd@research.rutgers.edu
