Abstract
A novel intravenous (IV) infusion monitoring sensor is presented to measure the drop rate in the drip chamber of an IV infusion set. It is based on a capacitive proximity sensor and detects the variation of the longitudinal electric field induced by the drop falling into the drip chamber. Unlike the conventional capacitor sensor with two semi-cylindrical conductor plates, the proximity sensor for IV monitoring is composed of a pair of conductor rings which are mounted on the outer surface of the drip chamber with a specific gap between them. The characteristics of the proximity sensor for IV monitoring were investigated through three dimensional electrostatic simulations. It showed quite superior performances in comparison with the conventional capacitor sensor. Especially, the proposed proximity sensor exhibits consistent sensitivity regardless of its mounting position on the drip chamber, operates normally though the drip chamber is tilted and shows robustness to the changes of the drop size and the drip factor of the IV infusion set. Thus, the proximity sensor for IV monitoring is more suitable for use in actual environment of IV therapy compared with the conventional capacitor sensor.
