Assistive medical device to help localizing veins for intravenous access...
Medication that can’t be ingested through the gastrointestinal tract has to be injected intravenous - usually by a doctor but in chronic diseases it can also be carried out by yourself ("home treatment", for example, venous puncture with medication 3 times per week). Venous blood vessels used for medication are not always easy to recognize and if the needle is not secure in the vein, it must be punctured again at another point. Here our project comes into play: Using NIR (near infrared) Illumination and real-time image processing, we can make the veins more visible!
We (my brother Elias, Lucie [a friend of mine] and me) submitted this project to Jugend Forscht. It will take part in the German Final in a week! Please keep your fingers crossed... Our aim was to develop an assistive technology for venous puncture for diagnostic purposes (blood sampling) or for medical drug administration. Easy reproduction and low costs are important criteria for development.
In addition to the research and review of specialist literature on methods of venous localization and optical characteristics of human skin, we carry out our own experiments. This Project contains the Python code needed for a mobile version that uses a smartphone or tablet as a display as well as the 3d-files needed to print it. Please check the setup-file for a detailed description.
This Project is licensed under the Creative Commens license: CC BY NC SA.