Wearable Monitor for Recording the Activity of Brown Adipose Tissue

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Brown Adipose Tissues (BAT) are tissues that when activated become metabolically active and take calories from normal white fat and burn them. Safe methods for creating and activating (BAT) would therefore be of great value in fighting obesity, a leading preventable cause of death with increasing prevalence in adults and children and one of the most serious public health problems of the 21st century. Current efforts to develop BAT stimulation paradigms are hindered by the inability to continuously monitor the activity of BAT with available medical scans. Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans and other similar types of scanners that can detect activated BAT use large, expensive equipment and are only useful for providing single snapshots in time of the existence of activated BAT. The proposed Phase I SBIR program is for the development of monitors that can safely, noninvasively, and continuously record the activity of BAT of an individual over a period of at least 2