Abstract: To provide a noninvasive type blood rheology measuring apparatus capable of simply and conveniently measuring blood rheology information without sampling blood from a subject in measuring the blood rheology and a small-sized and portable apparatus, a blood rheology measuring apparatus of the invention is on a basis of a constitution including means form on invasively detecting a flow velocity of the blood flowing in the blood vessel as a Doppler shift signal by transmitting and receiving a wave from the face of the skin and means for analyzing blood rheology by a temporal change of the flow velocity value of the blood detected by the means.

Abstract: A blood rheology measuring apparatus has a measuring portion for measuring a flow velocity of the blood flowing in a blood vessel of a person in a mode of a Doppler shift signal by transmitting and receiving a wave to and from a surface of the person's skin. An information processing portion calculates an intensity at each of frequency components of the Doppler shift signal, extracts a maximum frequency in a signal at an intensity level equal to or larger than a threshold in the histogram or a maximum frequency when an integrated value from a low frequency component reaches a predetermined rate of a total thereof in the histogram, and provides a temporal change waveform of the extracted frequency. The blood rheology is analyzed based on the maximum frequency in the frequency waveform.

Abstract: A blood rheology measuring apparatus has a measuring portion for measuring blood circulation information inside of a living body from outside of the living body. The blood circulation information is a maximum blood flow velocity for one pulse. An information processing portion processes the measured information from the measuring portion to obtain information concerning a blood rheology of the living body.

Abstract: There is disclosed a miniature blood rheology measurement device and a blood rheology measurement method which are capable of performing measurement of a portion such as a wrist or a fingertip with a high precision and which are simple without requiring measurement of a blood pressure. The method: detects an artery blood flow rate, a pulsatile displacement, an artery diameter, an artery wall thickness, a heartbeat frequency, and a phase difference or an amplitude ratio of the blood flow rate and the pulsatile displacement, which change with elapse of time, by use of a sensor including ultrasonic wave transmitting and receiving elements for transmitting and receiving ultrasonic waves between the surface of a living body and an artery blood flow in the living body; and calculates a blood kinematic viscosity by use of one of the phase difference and the amplitude ratio, the blood vessel diameter, and the heartbeat frequency to obtain an index value of a blood rheology.

Abstract: There is disclosed a blood viscosity measurement device which measures a flow rate of blood and a thickness of a blood vessel to determine a viscosity of the blood. The device substitutes the flow rate of the blood, the thickness of the blood vessel, and a blood pressure into a predetermined calculation formula to calculate the viscosity of the blood. The flow rate of the blood is obtained from a change amount of frequency of a continuous ultrasonic wave transmitted to a blood flow and reflected by the blood flow. As to the thickness of the blood vessel, an inner diameter of the blood vessel is obtained from a pulse ultrasonic wave transmitted to the blood vessel and reflected by an inner wall of the blood vessel. On the other hand, a value measured with a general blood pressure gauge is utilized in the blood pressure.

Abstract: A blood rheology measurement device and a blood rheology measurement method which detect a fingerprint or a vein to thereby measure a positional relation between an artery in a living body and a sensor on the same conditions for each subject during non-invasive measurement and which correctly evaluate a change of blood rheology with elapse of time. A vein pattern or a fingerprint pattern peculiar to a subject is detected, recognized, and stored, a position of a sensor is adjusted so that the detected vein pattern or fingerprint pattern agrees with the stored vein pattern or fingerprint pattern every measurement, and a blood rheology index value indicating blood fluidity (fluidity/viscosity) is measured.

Abstract: A decoding apparatus generates error position sets of data sequence by generating a codeword from positions of soft input values output from a low reliability position detecting circuit and from syndromes computed by a syndrome calculation circuit. The recording apparatus further includes a codeword candidate generating circuit that computes correlation mismatch amounts by adding soft input values at the error positions contained in the error position sets, and updates the correction information according to the error position sets and correlation mismatch amounts. The decoding apparatus can calculate the soft output values accurately by utilizing the generated codeword candidates efficiently, and reduce the circuit scale by decreasing the amount of computation.

Abstract: An image processing system receives an input gradient number m, input image data I(x,y) whose input gradient number is m, and an output gradient number n and calculates output image data O(x,y) having an output gradient number of n on the basis of the following formula (1). O(x,y)=int[?+d(xd,yd)/(gmax+1)]??(1) When ? is an integer, the output image data O(x,y) is calculated on the basis of a formula obtained by substituting the calculated ?? for ? in the above formula (1), whereas when ? is not an integer, the output image data O(x,y) is calculated on the basis of the above formula (1).

Abstract: There is provided a pulse detecting device which resists fluctuations in the quality by locating an ultrasound transmitting piezoelectric element and an ultrasound receiving piezoelectric element with high precision. In the pulse detecting device, a detection sensitivity of the pulse is improved. A transmitting piezoelectric element and a receiving piezoelectric element are fixed onto a substrate by electrodes. The transmitting piezoelectric element is excited in response to an inputted drive voltage signal to generate an ultrasound and transmits the generated ultrasound to a living body. The receiving piezoelectric element receives an echo produced by reflecting the ultrasound transmitted into the living body by a blood flow of the living body and converts it into a voltage signal. A processing arithmetic unit compares the frequency of the ultrasound generated by the transmitting piezoelectric element with that of the echo received in the receiving piezoelectric element to thereby detect a pulse.

Abstract: An error correction encoding method and apparatus, and an error correction decoding method and apparatus are provided without requiring transmission of tail bits. A turbo encoding step (ST41-ST45) and a transmission termination processing step (ST46?ST44-ST47) are included. In the turbo encoding step, a transmission information bit sequence is divided into a plurality of frames. Registers in each recursive systematic convolutional encoder are initialized before turbo encoding of a first frame. After turbo encoding of the first frame is carried out, a second frame and following frames are continuously subjected to turbo encoding without initializing the registers in each recursive systematic convolutional encoder before the turbo encoding of the second frame and following frames. In a transmission termination processing step, tail bits for initializing the registers in each recursive systematic convolutional encoder are calculated only after a final frame has been subjected to turbo encoding.

Abstract: There is provided a pulse detecting device which resists fluctuations in the quality by locating an ultrasound transmitting piezoelectric element and an ultrasound receiving piezoelectric element with high precision. In the pulse detecting device, a detection sensitivity of the pulse is improved. A transmitting piezoelectric element and a receiving piezoelectric element are fixed onto a substrate by electrodes. The transmitting piezoelectric element is excited in response to an inputted drive voltage signal to generate an ultrasound and transmits the generated ultrasound to a living body. The receiving piezoelectric element receives an echo produced by reflecting the ultrasound transmitted into the living body by a blood flow of the living body and converts it into a voltage signal. A processing arithmetic unit compares the frequency of the ultrasound generated by the transmitting piezoelectric element with that of the echo received in the receiving piezoelectric element to thereby detect a pulse.

Abstract: In a conventional turbo-code decoding apparatus, there is a need for calculating a state transition probability for MAP decoding of convolutional codes composing turbo codes in an error correcting decoder and a channel state needs to be measured based on soft decision information to calculate the probability, by which an arithmetic operation amount is enormously increased. Turbo-code error correction decoding is performed by executing operations in a branch metric based forward path metric calculation step of calculating a forward path metric based on a branch metric with calculating the branch metric for a transition to an adjacent time point and a soft decision information calculation step of calculating N bits of soft decision information based on the branch metric, the forward path metric, and a backward path metric with calculating the backward path metric based on the branch metric.

Abstract: A multiple coding apparatus comprises a first encoder for encoding a plurality of input sequences in parallel so as to generate a plurality of output coded sequences in parallel while adding an error-correcting bit sequence to each of the plurality of input sequences. An interleaving circuit interleaves the plurality of output coded sequences applied thereto in parallel from the first encoder without having to use any memory. The interleaving circuit permutes the plurality of input sequences on a bit-by-bit or symbol-by-symbol basis so as to generate a plurality of interleaved coded sequences in parallel. A second encoder then encodes the plurality of interleaved coded sequences applied thereto in parallel from the interleaving circuit so as to generate a plurality of output coded sequences in parallel while adding an error-correcting bit sequence to each of the plurality of interleaved coded sequences.

Abstract: There is provided a pulse detecting device which resists fluctuations in the quality by locating an ultrasound transmitting piezoelectric element and an ultrasound receiving piezoelectric element with high precision. In the pulse detecting device, a detection sensitivity of the pulse is improved. A transmitting piezoelectric element and a receiving piezoelectric element are fixed onto a substrate by electrodes. The transmitting piezoelectric element is excited in response to an inputted drive voltage signal to generate an ultrasound and transmits the generated ultrasound to a living body. The receiving piezoelectric element receives an echo produced by reflecting the ultrasound transmitted into the living body by a blood flow of the living body and converts it into a voltage signal. A processing arithmetic unit compares the frequency of the ultrasound generated by the transmitting piezoelectric element with that of the echo received in the receiving piezoelectric element to thereby detect a pulse.

Abstract: When a wave is noninvasively inputted through a surface of a living body to be reflected by a body fluid flowing through the living body, and the state of blood and the like is analyzed on the basis of the motion and the position to obtain circulation information in order to evaluate the health state, the circulation information can be accurately measured irrespective of the degree of strain of a blood vessel of a part to be measured in the living body. In a circulation dynamics measuring apparatus having a circulation sensor portion for transmitting/receiving a wave to/from the inside of the living body through a surface of the living body, and a processing portion for calculating a circulation dynamics from the received wave, the circulation sensor portion has a portion for measuring a blood pressure and a portion for measuring a blood flow rate, and information concerned with viscosity of blood is calculated by the processing portion.

Abstract: In a conventional turbo error-correcting decoder, the soft-decision information is corrected by using an average value (A) and a variance value (&sgr;2) of reliability of received bits. From the reliability-corrected soft-decision information, the hard-decision information is obtained. This process of calculation is complex, giving rise to a problem of reduced processing speed and complicated circuit. To deal with this problem, an average value of reliability of received information bits is determined and then a ratio between the average value and the soft-decision information is also determined. This ratio is converted by the conversion table into the reliability-corrected soft-decision information, from which the hard-decision information is obtained.

Abstract: An RS encoding circuit encodes for error correction bits for information symbols in which information bits are assigned to low-order bits and dummy bits are assigned to high-order bits so as to generate bits for parity symbols such that the number of bits per information symbol is equal to the number of bits per parity symbol. A symbol conversion circuit subjects high-order bits for parity symbols to symbol conversion.

Abstract: A decoding apparatus generates error position sets of data sequence by generating a codeword from positions of soft input values output from a low reliability position detecting circuit and from syndromes computed by a syndrome calculation circuit. The recording apparatus further includes a codeword candidate generating circuit that computes correlation mismatch amounts by adding soft input values at the error positions contained in the error position sets, and updates the correction information according to the error position sets and correlation mismatch amounts. The decoding apparatus can calculate the soft output values accurately by utilizing the generated codeword candidates efficiently, and reduce the circuit scale by decreasing the amount of computation.

Abstract: To provide an ultrasonic diagnosis device which can be simply manufactured and can detect an ultrasonic wave with excellent sensitivity and accuracy. An ultrasonic diagnosis device in which a transmitting piezoelectric element and a receiving piezoelectric element are supported on a substrate supported parallel to a radial artery by support means such that their widths a, c are respectively 0.38-1.1 mm and a gap b between them is 0.05-4.0 mm, an ultrasonic wave is transmitted from the transmitting piezoelectric element, a reflected wave from the radial artery is received by the receiving piezoelectric element, and a pulse wave is detected on the basis of a detection result of the reflected wave.

Abstract: To provide a noninvasive type blood rheology measuring apparatus capable of simply and conveniently measuring blood rheology information without sampling blood from a subject in measuring the blood rheology and a small-sized and portable apparatus, a blood rheology measuring apparatus of the invention is on a basis of a constitution including means for noninvasively detecting a flow velocity of the blood flowing in the blood vessel as a Doppler shift signal by transmitting and receiving a wave from the face of the skin and means for analyzing blood rheology by a temporal change of the flow velocity value of the blood detected by the means.