A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Signalife (Greenville, South Carolina) reported that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued to the company a patent titled "System For, And Method Of, Monitoring Heartbeats Of A Patient," covering 37 claims.

In conjunction with granting of the patent, the company said it will evaluate the filing a continuation or continuation-in-part application for the purpose of pursuing additional claim coverage in the technology that may have occurred since the time of the original filing.

Signalife is focused on the monitoring, detection and prevention of disease through continuous biomedical signal monitoring.

In other patent news: GlucoLight (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) a development-stage company focused on the non-invasive, continuous measurement of blood glucose levels, reported that it has been awarded U.S. patent No. 7,356,365 for the non-invasive method and apparatus of measuring tissue oximetry. The patent was assigned to the company effective April 8.

The patent, granted to Matthew Schurman, PhD, the company's chief technology officer and co-founder, uses infrared light to measure oxygenation of blood in human tissue. This method uses optical coherence tomography (OCT), which GlucoLight also has used to develop non-invasive, continuous glucose measurement technology, and its first product, Sentris-100.

The oxygenation of blood-perfused tissue is measured by shining light into the perfused tissue and analyzing the light reflected within the tissue.

The light is reflected by cell walls in the tissue and is partially absorbed by hemoglobin in the blood. Since the extent of absorption is sensitive to the extent of hemoglobin oxygenation, measurement and processing of the reflected light provides a measure of the oxygenation of the blood.

GlucoLight is conducting additional clinical trials of its Sentris-100 monitor in the second and third quarters of 2008.

GlucoLight is focused on continuous, non-invasive blood glucose monitoring in the acute-care environment.