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Five new HMD patent applications from Apple published today cover Systems for Measuring Cardiac & Respiratory Signals & more

1 cover HMD  Health related

Today the U.S. Patent Office published a series of HMD related patent applications. Apple's first patent relates to  systems and methods for measuring cardiac and respiratory signals using HMDs. Just as with the Apple Watch, Apple's intends is to bring new health sensors and features to future Vision Pro Headsets. Four other patents published today cover a wide range of technologies.

Systems and Methods for Measuring Cardiac and Respiratory Signals

Apple's patent application covers systems and methods for measuring cardiac and with Head-Mountable Devices such as a Vision Pro headset that includes a combination of cameras oriented to capture different regions of interest with respect to a wearing user.

For example, images captured by the cameras may be used for localization and mapping of the head-mountable device in its environment, tracking hand/body pose and movements, tracking jaw and mouth for user representation, tracking eye movements, etc. The cameras may be red green blue (RGB) cameras, infrared cameras, or a combination of these two types of cameras. The subject technology proposes to use these existing cameras in head-mountable devices in place of specialized sensors to measure heart and respiratory signals.

According to aspects of the subject technology, the cameras are used to capture luminance values of different areas of a user wearing the head-mountable device. For example, the cameras may capture the luminance of an area of skin around the user's eyes or around the user's nose. These luminance values captured over time may be used to determine a pulse signal for the wearing user. Similarly, luminance values captured over time of the user's chest may be used to determine a respiratory signal for the wearing user.

2 HMD Health sensors

Apple's patent FIG. 2 above we see Image sensors #125 and #130 may be oriented to capture regions of interest on the upper body of a wearing user such as the chest area and shoulders as represented by regions of interest #230 and #240. Image sensors #105-#130 may be infrared image sensors and may have associated infrared illuminators to illuminate the respective regions of interest with infrared light.

Apple's patent FIG. 4 above depicts a luminance signal and a ground-truth respiration signal according to aspects of the subject technology. As depicted in FIG. 4, graph #400 represents a luminance signal generated from luminance values from a series of images captured of an area of skin around the user's nose. Graph #410 represents a ground-truth respiration signal obtained from a respiratory sensor such as one that measures movements and pressure changes of the chest and abdominal wall of the user using elastic bands placed around the user's torso. The small peaks highlighted by square #420 represent the heart rate of the user while the large peaks highlighted by square# 430 represent the respiratory rate of the user. Comparing graph #400 with graph #410 demonstrates the respiratory rate determined based on the changes in luminance correlates well with the ground-truth respiratory rate obtained using the specialized sensor.

Motion of the user's chest may be captured using image sensors #125 and #130 and used to generate a respiratory signal. According to aspects of the subject technology, a luminance signal may be generated in manner similar to that described above using images periodically captured of the user's chest area and filtered to determine a respiratory rate. The changes in the light reflected from the user's chest may be due to changes in shadow, light direction, etc. as a result of movement of the chest while breathing.

Apple's patent FIG. 5 above depicts examples of respiratory analysis of a signal according to aspects of the subject technology. For example, graph #510 depicts a detected breath rate represented by the dots relative to a ground-truth signal captured using a mechanical chest strap worn by a user. The breath rate may be detected using data of the generated oscillatory signal described above accumulated over a period of time (e.g., one minute, five minutes, etc.). A power-spectrum analysis may be performed on the accumulated data to determine power levels of the different frequencies within the oscillatory signal. Limiting the analysis of the power spectrum to frequencies within a breathing frequency range (e.g., 4 breaths/minute to 15 breaths/minute), the frequency with the highest power level in that range may be used as the detected breath rate for the period of time (e.g., 6 breaths/minute). The detected breath rate may be detected and presented to the user at the end of a period of time or session of activity, or detected and presented periodically during the period of time or session of activity.

For full details, review Apple's patent application 20240423484.

Some of Apple's Inventors

  • Grant Mulliken: Izzet Burak Yildiz: Sr. Research Scientist and Technical Manager at Apple - Vision Products Group
  • Senior Manager - R&D, Product Design
  • Jonathan Hadida: Computational Scientist at Apple
  • Dimitri Diakopoulos: R&D for Vision Pro at Apple

 

Other HMD-Related Patent Applications Published Today

  • 20240430561 Head Mountable Display (994 pages). Mike Rockwell (VP of the Technology Development Group and Jonathan Ive, former head of Industrial Design are listed on this patent along with 25 other team members.
  • 20240428539: Graphical User Interfaces For Selectively Accessing System Functions And Adjusting Settings Of Computer Systems While Interacting With Three-Dimensional Environments
  • 20240428502: Displays With Varying Update Frequencies For Different Content Types

 

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