Development of a real-time, semi-capacitive impedance phlebography device

Chronic venous insufficiency of the lower limbs is a disease which is caused by an increased blood pressure inside the veins of the leg and the resulting increase of the contained blood volume. This work focuses on developing a device which uses impedance plethysmography, also known as impedance phlebography, to obtain information about the blood volume in the lower leg and provides the possibility to measure the impedance semi contact-less, e.g. through compression stockings. Furthermore a real-time beat-to-beat interval detection algorithm was implemented. Finally, the function of the developed impedance measuring system and the whole system was verified by comparing it with a gold standard. In comparison to the conductive coupling, the system performed similarly. The analysis showed that the developed system is suitable for semi-capacitive IPG. The algorithm was implemented conservatively since it provided a good false-positive rate of 0%, but only a moderate sensitivity of about 68%. Reliable and continuous measurement of the pulse signal was only possible in periods of immobility.