Written by Especially when one is a newbie in the marketplace it is critical to be as responsive as possible to the demands of customers who are just beginning to know you.
This fact became eminently clear recently when a number of requests filtered in from prospective customers of our research product who were interested in testing muscle activity in small, facial muscles and wondered if Sonostics had plans to produce a transducer with a smaller footprint than the one currently available through our partner, BIOPAC Systems.
Fortunately, Sonostics is not yet akin to an ocean-going freighter that cannot change course on a dime. While our roadmap for product development is clear, this request made a lot of sense and from an engineering perspective was rather trivial. Thus, we set about trying to satisfy this new customer need, which resulted in a working prototype within two weeks.
The existing transducer includes a highly sensitive (2G) accelerometer plus a variety of filters and amplifiers packed onto a silicon chip that enables us to zero in on the precise frequencies of sound that correlate most directly with muscle effort. 
We chose to deploy the accelerometer in “differential mode”, meaning that we could take advantage of the most sensitive setting the sensor offered which necessitated doubling some of the components and the wires. It was a tradeoff we were happy to make but it did impact the size of the end product.
In addition, because the enclosure currently used small screws the actual footprint of the resulting sensor ended up a bit larger than what is most convenient for testing muscles on the face, such as the zygomaticus or corrugator.
While the current sensor reported results just fine when a subject raises eyebrows, smiles or frowns, the challenge of affixing the transducer persuaded us that developing an alternative that would be easier to handle made a lot of sense.
The end result is the BPS-IIm mini-transducer, which deploys the accelerometer in its own, much smaller, enclosure, tethered via four very thin wires (so that we can maintain our differential mode) to a secondary enclosure that now houses the necessary filters and amplifiers.
This new offering directly addresses the needs of researchers who struggle with the constraints of electromyography on smaller muscles in a neat new package that requires no skin preparation, only a single point of contact and great reproducibility.
The graph below shows the output from the new BPS-IIm transducer first on the Zygomaticus, then on the Corrugator muscle. The top graph is raw data received by a BIOPAC MP150 using AcqKnowledge 4.1 software. The bottom graph shows the data after it has been translated by the Sonostics vibromyograhpy filter, a new module in the AcqKnowledge software.
A lot of companies give lip service to the phrase “we are customer-first” but not too many actually deliver on that promise. We think the new BPS-IIm is a great testament to walking the walk in terms of responding to market demand. Hopefully the market agrees.
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