A Multiparameter Monitoring System for Infant Nutrition Feeding Behavior and Brain Activity

Nutritive sucking is the major feeding approach for infants within six months. However, oral feeding requires precise coordination of sucking, swallowing, and respiration activities, and it can also impact the brain activity of infants. Therefore, the sucking behavior and brain activity may be important indicators for evaluating the maturity of nutrition feeding behavior. In clinical, medical staffs mainly depend on their rich experience for subjective behavioral observation of oral feeding. Although several monitoring systems have been proposed in previous studies, most of these systems focus on monitoring sucking activity, and even nonnutritive sucking. In this study, a novel wireless multiparameter monitoring system was proposed to evaluate infant nutrition feeding ability. Here, a smart milk bottle was designed to monitor sucking activity wirelessly. Based on the near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) technique, a wireless multiparameter device was designed to monitor heart rate and respiratory activity, and even cerebral blood perfusion under sucking behavior. Several indexes reflecting sucking behavior and cerebral blood perfusion were also defined and were further used to recognize the nutrition feeding ability via the artificial intelligence technology. The experimental results showed that several defined indexes could significantly reflect the difference between nutrition feeding behaviors and brain activities in different postmenstrual age (PMA) groups, and the maturity of nutrition feeding ability could effectively be evaluated by the designed system.