Successful rehabilitation of oropharyngeal swallowing disorders (i.e., dysphagia) requires frequent performance of head/neck exercises that primarily rely on expensive biofeedback devices, often only available in large medical centers. This directly affects treatment compliance and outcomes, and highlights the need to develop a portable and inexpensive remote monitoring system for the telerehabilitation of dysphagia. Here, we present the development and preliminarily validation of a skin-mountable sensor patch that can fit on the curvature of the submental (under the chin) area noninvasively and provide simultaneous remote monitoring of muscle activity and laryngeal movement during swallowing tasks and maneuvers. This sensor patch incorporates an optimal design that allows for the accurate recording of submental muscle activity during swallowing and is characterized by ease of use, accessibility, reusability, and cost-effectiveness. Preliminary studies on a patient with Parkinson’s disease and dysphagia, and on a healthy control participant demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of this system.
threads according to the effective ratio of spiral and radial dimensions; 2) provide greater extensibility to better dissipate force under stretching; and 3) tolerate minor cuts of the threads while maintaining overall strength and function of the entire web architecture. [4-7] Recent studies have demonstrated spider-webinspired synthetic materials for which the fractal web designs provide an unusual combination of strength and stretchiness while being virtually free of stress concentrations even with few cuts of the spiral threads. [8,9] Although these principles have profound impacts on new design variables for multifunctional or/and multidimensional engineering, the fractal web designs are not well utilized in electronics yet due to the lack of necessary combination of advanced materials, mechanics designs, and system-level integration capabilities for practical application. Optoelectronic materials and devices deployed across curvilinear surfaces offer qualitatively expanded levels of functionality enabling a large field of view with no aberration, which resembles the compound-eye vision system of arthropods. [10-16] These 3D optoelectronic architectures are particularly attractive for photodetection systems that require a large field of view and wide-angle antireflection. [14,17,18] To engineer a compound-eye-mimicking system, The vision system of arthropods consists of a dense array of individual photodetecting elements across a curvilinear surface. This compound-eye architecture could be a useful model for optoelectronic sensing devices that require a large field of view and high sensitivity to motion. Strategies that aim to mimic the compound-eye architecture involve integrating photodetector pixels with a curved microlens, but their fabrication on a curvilinear surface is challenged by the use of standard microfabrication processes that are traditionally designed for planar, rigid substrates (e.g., Si wafers). Here, a fractal web design of a hemispherical photodetector array that contains an organic-dye-sensitized graphene hybrid composite is reported to serve as an effective photoactive component with enhanced light-absorbing capabilities. The device is first fabricated on a planar Si wafer at the microscale and then transferred to transparent hemispherical domes with different curvatures in a deterministic manner. The unique structural property of the fractal web design provides protection of the device from damage by effectively tolerating various external loads. Comprehensive experimental and computational studies reveal the essential design features and optoelectronic properties of the device, followed by the evaluation of its utility in the measurement of both the direction and intensity of incident light. The structural architecture of spider webs found in nature inspires the development of next-generation materials that are capable of efficiently resisting various mechanical loads from environments. [1-3] The fractal web designs that exhibit a repeating pattern on all scale (self-similar) provide...
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