New Blood Level Measurement System in Blood Separating Machine

Abstract

Standard versions of blood separators typically use
medium-price color sensors for a detection of a boundary level
between red blood cells and plasma, at the last gate – at hose
clamps. Discrete number of sensors is related to a number of
significant levels to be detected thus making blood separation
potentially faulty and unreliable. Our target was to make
flexible, low cost replacement for level detection system that can
be easily integrated into the existing product. We came up with
an image processing solution that uses USB web-camera, ARM
based off-the-shelf board – BeagleBone black and free OpenCV
library. Flexibility is held in much higher, selectable number of
levels, freely positioned USB camera and brand-free independent
processing platform, as well as semi-automatic calibration
system. By adding minimum additional electronics, we managed
to integrate our solution into existing Blood processing machine.
In conclusion, we added a new value to the machine at lower cost
in production, increasing measurement frequency and resolution
needed for improvement of blood separation process. Next step is
to try to use two USB cameras on a custom-made board, for
simultaneous level detection on two-channel blood separator,
bringing the system integration to the higher level.