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Friday, October 13, 2006The Vein Viewer is a 5-foot-tall mobile machine with a computer at its base that locates subcutaneous veins and projects their images onto the surface of the skin, using infrared light. Rainbow says it is the first hospital in the Great Lakes region to use the Vein Viewer, made by Memphis-based Luminetx. "Our goal, right now, is one stick in the [blood] vessel," Deptola said. "It doesn't always happen the first time because the vein blows or you just can't find it. With the Vein Viewer we want to improve our record to 100 percent on the first try." Here's what it looks like and how it works: Knowing that finding another source of light was the lynch pin to this challenge, ML scientists developed the vein viewer device, which uses night vision goggles (NVGs) equipped with special filters, developed by the Air Force, to see infrared light as it passes through a patient’s body. During initial experiments, using a TV remote control infrared light source and standard military NVGs, ML scientists realized that they could clearly see infrared light as it was partially blocked by blood in veins. This provided users a clear view of the network of veins in fingers, hands, lower arms, and feet. Their research showed that this capability to view veins was due to the absorption of infrared light by deoxygenated hemoglobin traveling in veins, while bone, muscle and other tissue transmit or scatter the infrared light rather than absorbing it. Additional experiments proved that a needle beneath the skin would also be visible because metal blocks infrared light. Pretty dang cool. posted by Sydney on 10/13/2006 06:47:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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