UCLA

The ability to directly analyze blood perfusion in tissue is essential to a wide range of applications in diagnosing wound conditions, circulatory disorders, and monitoring treatment outcomes. The speed with which these conditions can occur and worsen, combined with their high risk for those afflicted, requires a solution capable of continuously monitoring perfusion status, while remaining easy and cheap to deploy. Both of these objectives require advances in current perfusion sensing technology. The Perfusion and Oxygenation Monitor (POM) system has been developed to provide a solution to these requirements. The POM system utilizes the principles of photoplethysmographic (PPG) sensing in new ways to provide perfusion information beyond the traditionally reported oximetry values. POM introduces sensor diversity by using secondary sensors, detecting pressure and positioning, to allow measurements to be taken accurately and consistently, enabling data from continuously monitored patients or test sites to be directly compared. The development of these sensing methods and creation of the POM sensor platform enable delivery of reliable perfusion information, and experimental validation of the principles applied in its design has been conducted on several healthy subjects.