접촉력 보정이 가능한 열적 방식의 혈류량 측정기

Abstract

This paper proposes a thermal peripheral blood flowmeter integrated with a force sensor that is capable of contact force compensation. We fabricate this blood flowmeter using a nickel RTD (resistance temperature detector) and piezoresistive force sensor by using microfabrication technology. In an experiment, we obtained a decreasing trend for the blood flow under an increasing contact force with a linear tendency of 31.7%/N. We then performed a compensation process based on this obtained trend. As a result, the maximum variance in the blood flow at 1-3N was 9.8%. Thus we achieved consistent blood flow measurement independent of the contact force. In this work, we verified that the thermal blood flowmeter integrated with a force sensor has the ability to accurately measure the blood flow independent of the contact force.