Objective
Healthcare monitoring is a general concern for patients with limited mobility or requiring a continuous medical assistance and treatment. In order to enlarge the actual capabilities of such a technology, OFSETH targets the investigation of the application of optical sensor techniques to this field. To construct this project an analysis has been carried out the possible optical techniques and on the requirements from medical end-users that are not assessed by more classical healthcare monitoring technologies. It appeared that two main technologies can be pointed out: one based on Fibre Bragg Grating sensors and the other one based on Near Infrared Spectrometry. These technologies can permit to assess various parameters such as cardiac, respiratory rates and oximetry that will be investigated here but also pH or glucose concentration.
Actually OFSETH will investigate the possibility to make these kind of measures through optical devices embedded into textile in order to make these technologies wearable and these parameters assessable continuously. Concerning the application side, one obvious type of applications is all the ones that are required for patient health monitoring when submitted to Magnetic Resonance Imaging. In this case electrical sensors cannot play a role. A passive alternative has to be found and optical fibre sensors can be a solution. Cardiac and respiratory rate combined with oximetry permit to assess to a good evaluation of the patient state. Other interesting application is Sudden Infant Death Syndrom for which an efficient technology has still to be found for the continuous monitoring of young babies. Then OFSETH targets the validation of both application through FBG (both on silica and polymer fibres) and NIRS fibre technology and the demonstration of the wearability of these solutions for an extension of the assessable parameters for actual and future healthcare monitoring system. The duration of the project is planned for 42 months.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensorsoptical sensors
- natural scienceschemical sciencespolymer sciences
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringtextiles
- engineering and technologymedical engineeringdiagnostic imagingmagnetic resonance imaging
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesopticsfibre optics
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
STREP - Specific Targeted Research ProjectCoordinator
MONS
Belgium