Novosibirsk State Technical University NETI students have developed a device for medical electrical stimulation that is painless for the patient. It is based on the digital synthesis of the current form.
Electrical stimulation is used in medicine to enhance the motor activity of skeletal muscles, as well as smooth muscles of internal organs. The procedure is painful, because it uses equipment created in the last century. The use of such "ancient" equipment is explained by the general conservatism of the medical equipment industry and the complexity of introducing new developments in this area, believes Alexander Pavlov, Associate Professor of Data Collection and Processing Systems Department, Faculty of Automation and Computer Engineering.
"We proceeded from the fact that it is possible to employ different forms of electrical stimulation making this procedure less painful and even completely painless," said the head of the development team.
According to him, the development is based on the digital synthesis of the current form. The use of a microcontroller and an analog converter allows setting different current forms for electrical stimulation. Sinusoidal form of the current provides the painless intervention. But the device can create other forms with different effects.
What is important is that the effectiveness of the procedure is not reduced. The students also used other original solutions for their invention, for example, they printed the device body on a 3D printer.