A new extremely small sensor for measuring a blood flow and a contact pressure simultaneously

Abstract

A number of laser Doppler blood flow sensors have been developed over the past few decades. However, they remain uncommon in practice. This is because the contact pressure between the skin and the sensor is not measured simultaneously with blood flow, despite the fact that blood flow is greatly affected by contact pressure. Thus, reliable and highly reproducible measurement of blood flow could not be realized. Therefore, we have developed a micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) blood flow sensor which has a built-in pressure sensor, for reliable and highly reproducible measurement.