Hi all,
I am doing a senior design project involving an infrared temperature sensor. Basically I am struggling to come up with a idea on how to get started on it. I am building an infrared LED heater for surgical patients and basically the IR sensor reads the body temperature and if it goes above allowed temperature it simply shuts off certain LEDs.

Any ideas on how to get started would be much appreciated

 

Are you talking about body core temperature or the surface temperature over a limited area of skin?

If the latter, why not adapt one of the $10 IR thermometers available at many retail stores.
John

 

One step at a time. Start by clearly defining all of the things that your project needs to accomplish. Don't go overboard with features! There are lots of nice things to dream up but in the end, you wont get a good review if you have lots of features but none work. Limit the scope to tasks you KNOW you can accomplish. that's the first step because it will show you what the hardest part of the project will be so you can get working on that right away. Leave the easier things for last (when you have not much time left) and leave the nice-to-have things for the VERY last (when you have no time at all to do them)

 

I am sorry if I went through the project description too fast. I'll go slowly. Our project is a infrared LED strip that heats patients during surgery since their body temperature drops when they are unconcious. In order to measure their body temperature we are incorporating an IR sensor into the control module that regulates the LED lighting. If the body temperature goes above critical, some of the LEDs will turn off automatically.

I did some research and found out about thermopiles and sensor modules and they look what I might need. Any suggestions

 

OK, it sounds like you are talking about body core temperature. Is there anyone with medical experience on your team, like an anesthesiologist? Second, tempanic membrane temperature (i.e., stick a thermometer in the patient's ear) is a pretty good indicator of core temperature, but there are others as well.

Most patients are pretty well covered in surgical drapes during surgery. Why use infrared? Why not use heating blankets? Will infrared heating of the blankets be effective or even desirable?

Like optikon said, it sounds like you need to define the problem (is there one?) and your goals a bit better.
John

 

i would think that you would need some sort of a rectal probe with the heater and thermocouple inside. that way it would be close to the body's core

 

Yea we do have a experienced doctor as our supervisor. He was the one who presented us with the topic and no there is no specific problem statement. Heating air blankets is our competitor, we didn't want to make just another thing that is out there. Usually in hospitals infrared heating techniques are used and they sometimes are expensive and very inefficient,our project is to find a alternative solution that is relatively cheap and efficient. I just really need some good ideas about the IR sensors and how to work it.

 

Since you mention thermopiles then sensors that contact the patient are ok? I was under the impression that you also wanted to do IR body temp measurements. IMO, i fyou can contact the patient for measuring body temp, that will be MUCH easier than non contact solutions. There are tons of app notes about how to make temperature measurements with thermocouples / thermopiles.

 

try Perkins Elmer's thermopiles. They now have thermopiles with integrated microcontroller that is adjusted to translate the thermopile's analog signal to a digital signal,that is allready calibrated to the real temperature