Monitoring of the arterial blood waveforms with a multi-sensor system

The structure and properties of a novel multi-sensor optoelectronic system made for noninvasive monitoring of local changes in the arterial blood pulse waveform are presented. The system can cooperate with the transmission as well as reflectance sensors enabling the "transillumination" of optically thin and thick tissue layers. Thus, it is possible to acquire pulse waveforms from several sensors located in various points of the patient's body simultaneously. The variants of reflectance sensors of various configurations of lighting LEDs sources and receiving photodiodes have been designed and tested. They can be attached to practically any body site for monitoring beat-to-beat pulsations as well as shapes of the peripheral pulse waveforms, at the same time allowing the noninvasive examination of any fragments of the cardiovascular system. Examples of the designed sensors and some selected results of representative monitoring are shown. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd.... Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Symposium Cracoviense Sp. z.o.o.