Koninklijke Philips Corporation N.V.

Priscilla Brandao Silva

Mark Thomas Johnson

Lutz Christian Gerhardt

Bart Gottenbos

Gerardus Johannes Nicolaas Doodeman

The invention provides for an oral treatment unit, or an assembly of a plurality of oral treatment units, for confining an electromagnetic field having a frequency in the range of 100 kHz to 300 MHz and adapted to be inserted into an oral cavity, which may form part of an oral cleaning device in combination with a base unit, including a first cleaning element coupled to the oral treatment unit. The oral treatment unit further includes a material structure coupled to the oral treatment unit adapted to receive an initial electromagnetic field and output a focused electromagnetic field, wherein the material structure has a passive electromagnetic field focusing function, which focuses the received initial electromagnetic field in the near-field region of the material structure. A further aspect of the invention provides for an oral treatment unit, or an assembly of a plurality of oral treatment units, for confining and modulating an electromagnetic field having a frequency in the range of 1 MHz to 300 GHz and adapted to be inserted into the mouth, which may form part of an oral cleaning device in combination with a base unit, including a first cleaning element coupled to the oral treatment unit. The oral treatment unit further comprises an electromagnetic field focusing element adapted to receive an electromagnetic field having an initial frequency and output a focused electromagnetic field. The electromagnetic field focusing element comprises a first material structure having a first passive electromagnetic field focusing function, which confines the modulated electromagnetic field at a given distance from the first material structure by performing one or more of: an attenuation rate control function in the near-field region of the first material structure; or a propagation direction modification function on the electromagnetic field. The electromagnetic field focusing element has a modulation function that modulates the confined electromagnetic field, thereby generating a modulated electromagnetic field.

Oral treatment device

A personal care device () comprising an RF signal generator () for generating RF-frequency electromagnetic emissions for a cleaning or treatment function. The RF emissions may be output from a set of two or more RF electrodes () (e.g. electrodes) upon stimulation with an RF drive signal in a frequency range from 3 kHz to 30 GHz from an RF signal generator. The device further includes a controller () for detect a degraded functional state of the RF electrodes () via monitoring changes or variations in one or more electrical characteristics of the RF signal generator (), e.g. drift in one or more electrical characteristics from reference factory levels, or sudden changes in the characteristics, indicating a short-circuit. A response action can be generated based on the electrical characteristics meeting pre-defined criteria indicative of a certain degraded functional status, for example generating a sensory alert for a user or data output, or performing remedial action such as deactivating sensed defective or worn electrodes.

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Eindhoven, Netherlands

Priscilla Brandao Silva