Presently, neural structure stimulation for diagnosis or prognosis or causing improvement of patient's well-being is performed by magnet therapy methods using low repetition rate or direct current methods. However, direct current methods require contact with the patient and may be even invasive. These methods can result in skin irritation, painful application especially for high intensity stimulus, discomfort during the treatment, lack of deep tissue stimulation by non-invasive methods, and a lack of patient compliance with a prescribed therapy due to these factors.
Existing methods of magnet therapy generally tend to be limited by the key parameters of repetition rate and/or magnetic flux density. These methods may use high values of magnetic flux density at low repetition rate or vice versa. At repetition rates exceeding 100 Hz existing methods and devices generally do not provide magnetic flux density sufficient to provide effective magnet treatment. Therefore the deeper neural structures stimulation is limited. Generally, stimulation of neural structures exceeding 100 Hz is performed by devices requiring physical contact with a patient, such as electrotherapy devices. Additionally, currently used devices and methods of magnet therapy are unable to reach or exceed the repetition rate resolution of the biological structure, therefore the biological structure is stimulated by discrete pulses of the same shape.
Existing methods are also not able to provide non-invasive stimulation of neural structures by time-varying magnetic field at repetition rates exceeding the frequency resolution of the neural structure. Some systems also require physical contact with the patient since the magnetic field is weak or the stimulation cannot be transferred without the electrical contact. Generally, these known methods are limited to repetition rates reaching 120 Hz in order to provide neural structure stimulation.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds