Subcutaneous vein detection using pigeon hole imaging: Simulation study

Detection and localization of subcutaneous vein is important in health care for intravenous drug administration and blood drawing procedures. This paper presents a simple and non-ionizing method based on Pigeon Hole Imaging (PHI) for mapping subcutaneous vein patterns. In PHI, localized impedance values on multiple adjacent positions are measured placing an electrode array on the surface of a volume conductor and the conductivity distribution beneath the electrode array is obtained. In this study, the impedance measurements were simulated in an FEM based software COMSOL Multiphysics. An FEM model of a human forearm with different domains including skin, muscle, subcutaneous layer and veins was created. The conductivity of blood is higher compared to that of its surroundings which is the basis of localization of subcutaneous vein in the current study. It is shown that the proposed method can detect and map the pathways of subcutaneous veins fairly accurately using 5×5 matrix of PHI electrode array. However, the resolution of the image needs to be increased and the method needs to be evaluated in human subjects to justify its usefulness in practice.