Portable stimulator design aimed at differentiating facial nerves from normal tissues

Facial nerves are very prone to risk of being cut away in the facial surgeries. In order to differentiate the normal tissues from the nerves during the surgeries, facial stimulator is very essential. These stimulators are particularly useful in triggering action potentials in the facial muscle tissue. In the case of any damage to these nerves, paralysis is unavoidable. Second use of the stimulator would be to diagnose how severe the facial problems are. Third use, which is a noninvasive application, is the employment of facial stimulator to treat and diagnose facial problems that arose from temperature differences, cuts or strain. The stimulation is achieved through DC voltage pulses that conform to user-specified amplitude, pulse duration and pulse intervals. These variables are set according to the age, sex, and physiological conditions of the patient. Peripheral Interface Controller is used to derive different pulse patterns. The current specifications of our stimulator are a range of 0.1-20 V pulse amplitude, 0.1-2 msec pulse duration, and 0.05-1 sec pulse interval. The main benefits of our stimulator are its graphic display that shows the form of pulse, its compact size, and operation on a battery power supply and adaptability to convert to other stimulation applications.