The design and construction of vein illuminator using near infrared ray

Abstract

The collection of blood samples is widely regarded as the most essential of medical laboratory procedures for analysis, diagnosis, blood disorders, or chemicals within the body. Regularly, this procedure is required to be performed by medical technologists, nurses, or healthcare professionals who are intensively trained and practiced this skill in blood draws via a venous stick. However, in several patients identifying the location of the veins is tremendously complicated and challenging. Therefore, this research aims to develop the vein illuminator system for identifying and locating the veins in the abdomen of the arms, storing the location information, and analyzing the pattern of individual veins. Our system consisted of an infrared range light source of 850 nm, operated with a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ circuit and a Pi NoIR camera. The structure of the designed device was created by a matte black acrylic sheet in terms of reducing reflected light. The images of the arms-abdomen were captured and processed in MATLAB version 2020a for richer quality intravenous images. The system was tested by 20 healthy volunteers aged between 20 and 57 years old. The system was able to identify the vein position visibly. The intravenous images were able to keep data storage information for each individual systematically.