Development of Complex Inspection Device for Cutaneous Sense Diagnosis

Nurses and physical therapists in the hospital, when inspecting patient´s cutaneous sensation, use the various implements which respond to the type of sense. For example, they use a needle for pain inspection, a test tube for thermal sensibility inspection, and a piece of cotton for tactile inspection. These inspection methods are troublesome and inspection time is long. Furthermore, these inspections aren´t quantitative and are only the subjective assessment of inspector. It is necessary for medical workers to do simple, efficient, and fast inspection. In our laboratory, we are researching the indicating device about thermal sensibility and pressure pain sensibility now. The device indicating thermal sensibility is composed by a Peltier element as the stimuli presentation device. We constructed the experimental device which does the heat control of this Peltier element. And, we did some fundamental experiment using this. Moreover we contrived newly the device indicating pressure pain sensibility composed by DC solenoid.