An endoscopic pressure sensor has been evaluated in the measurement of oesophageal variceal pressure and its response to drug ingestion. The variceal pressure showed a highly significant correlation with the splenic pulp pressure (r = 0.97) in six patients with liver disease of diverse aetiology and with hepatic venous wedge pressure (r = 0.92) in eight alcoholic cirrhotic men. Intraduodenal in...

In this paper, we present mathematical analyses to consider the effect of material properties on the sensitivity of the Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) piezoelectric hydrophone and improve the sensitivity by choosing the proper material. The selected structure in the present paper is a piezoelectric hydrophone able to work at low frequencies. The piezoelectric hydrophones are widely used ...

Pressure sensors are a key component in electronic skin (e-skin) sensing systems. Most reported resistive pressure sensors have a high sensitivity at low pressures (<5 kPa) to enable ultra-sensitive detection. However, the sensitivity drops significantly at high pressures (>5 kPa), which is inadequate for practical applications. For example, actions like a gentle touch and object manipulation h...

The reflex that provides rapid neural control of blood pressure is triggered by an unknown molecular pressure sensor. ASIC2, an ion channel in a family that includes a mechanosensor from C. elegans, is shown by Lu et al. in this issue of Neuron to be critical for this reflex in mice, perhaps because ASIC2 is the elusive pressure sensor.

Measuring blood pressure continuously helps monitor health and also prevent lifestyle related diseases to extend the expectancy of healthy life. Blood pressure, which is nowadays used for monitoring patient, is one of the most useful indexes for prevention of lifestyle related diseases such as hypertension. However, continuously monitoring the blood pressure is unrealistic because of discomfort...

Thermal effects in integrated piezoresistive MEMS pressure sensor may be a problem of concern in design for applications requiring high precision measurements and in continuously monitoring array of sensor network. It not only results in the shift of the offset voltage of the pressure sensor but also affects the performance of the adjacent CMOS circuit leading to erroneous values. To address th...