Development of Textile Based Temperature Sensors for Medical Applications

The project is all about temperature sensing flexible, easy to wear, comfortable garment which is well known as smart textile. This smart textile will measure temperature of human body comparing it with the environment the human body is involved. It will alert before any emergency occur if the

Project Title

Development of Textile Based Temperature Sensors for Medical Applications

Project Area of Specialization

Mechanical Engineering

Project Summary

The project is all about temperature sensing flexible, easy to wear, comfortable garment which is well known as smart textile. This smart textile will measure temperature of human body comparing it with the environment the human body is involved. It will alert before any emergency occur if the body is facing hypothermia or hyperthermia. The garment is inlayed with conductive yarns to carry difference in resistance due to changes in temperature. It is usually used on patients on which it is difficult to measure temperature continuously, or could be used for sports/military personnel where the garment continuously measure the temperature to have a record of his health during various activities.

Temperature of the body is one the basic and crucial vital sign which effect the human body working performance. Even a small deviation can impact the physiology of human body. Body temperature is measured periodically but proper monitoring of human body temperature is mandatory in some critical clinical conditions such as for extremely ill patients, for paralyze persons, for diagnosis of disease at initial stage and proper health monitoring. The temperature measuring is also crucial for non-clinical environment such as in firefighter uniforms, in military, etc.

Our project is based on conductive yarn which is inlayed in knitted fabric for the continuous measurement in clinical condition which is a contact based analysis. The principle of conductive yarn is based on RTD sensor (resistance temperature detector). we selected it due to its wide range of temperature sensing .We have tested different types of conductive yarn and analyzed which  shows the best detection on even a slight variation of temperature, which is the major property of any sensing element in clinical and non-clinical condition.

Project Objectives

The primary aim of this project is to develop a textile based temperature sensor for health monitoring and skin temperature measurement. Major objective that have been set up are;

• To design or to construct a textile sensing fabric by incorporating conductive yarn as a sensing element.
• To develop a test rig to evaluate the effect of temperature on the resistance of textile sensing fabric.
• To study the temperature-resistance relationship and define the baseline specification such as nominal resistance, sensitivity, accuracy etc.
• To develop a customized circuit to acquire the temperature signals from the wearer’s body.

However, it is different from other similar projects made in past time as it is to be made wearable and comfortable for the wearer for continuous monitoring.

It is used for;

• Diagnosis of diseases at initial stages
• For continuous measurement of temperature of senior citizen, chronic patients, paralyzed patients, etc.
• For non-clinical conditions (military, fire fighters, sports, athletes)

Project Implementation Method

The first method that we applied is used for the selection of conductive yarns that will be used in textile sensing fabric. For that, oven was used to create a uniform thermal environment for the developed yarn samples, thermometer is used to find accurate temperature of the oven and multimeter is used to check the effect of temperature on resistance of conductive yarns.

After the selection of the yarn, we will have to develop the test rig for further testing of the sample made with selected conductive yarn for proper result.  For that we need a hot plate to provide constant temperature in order to maintain textile sensing fabric at a required temperature, two copper plates between which our TSF sample would be sandwiched, K-type thermocouples to check the temperature of the TSF and multimeter to check the 4-wire resistance measurement system to record the changes in electrical resistance.

The most suitable method to make shirt and sensors is double layered knitting method after attaining the expected result from the test rig.

Benefits of the Project

Applications:

• For medical application where continuous monitoring required.
• In sports
• For fire fighters
• In military application
• Any where a controlled temperature monitoring is required.

Pros :

• It is comfortable as compare to other temperature measuring devices
• because of its textile characteristics
• It can be use for longer period without considering as an external device.
• It can give continuous temperature monitoring and cons of the project when any subject will be using.

Cons:

• It is only limited for measuring body temperature it might be little bit expensive than other temperature measuring devices.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

Wearable temperature sensing and monitoring system in the form of flexible, comfortable, easy-to-wear and software integrated will be capable to measure human’s body temperature with amplification, filtering, data processing and wireless data transmission capabilities of the small SMD controller deployed into shirt.

For choosing sensitive and most feasible sensing temperature conductive yarn, we use Oven based testing system to check initial responses of various yarn/s. At later once the yarn is selected, we will develop a proper test rig to measure and analyze the responses of the yarn/s. That test rig will be based on TC-08 Thermocouple based Data Logger that will record the temperature of copper plates and yarn will be sandwiched between these two copper plates. Application program of data logger will show graphs of the responses of various selected yarns.

The shirt will be used by military personal, Sports men/women, in Isolations Systems, Hospitals/clinics/centric care and for normal daily life to keep tracking subject’s most basic and crucial vital sign, temperature, that indicates various signals of the diseases. In That was we can bring wearable system to decrease hospital burden, increase nation’s economy, helps growing innovative R&D academia, medical and textile industries.

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Core Industry

Health

Other Industries

Medical , Manufacturing

Core Technology

Wearables and Implantables

Other Technologies

Others

Sustainable Development Goals

Good Health and Well-Being for People, Decent Work and Economic Growth

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com