Development of a pulse oximeter robust to measurement errors, with the ability to estimate heartrate and transmit data to smartphones

Abstract

Accurate and real-time monitoring of saturated oxygen level of the blood is an important clinical issue gaining great attention in recent years and during COVID 19 pandemic. Monitoring the patients` ventilation and respiration dynamic is widespread and has been adopted as a standard for anesthesia, neonatal care, and post-operative recovery as well. In this paper the fundamentals of current pulse oximeter devices are reviewed and development of a prototype is explained. Our system has two red and infrared light sources radiating to the tissue. The amount of absorbed and transmitted energy is measured by the photodetector, and finally the amount of oxygen content of the blood is estimated based on these values. We used MAX30100 module. Our system has two advantages relating to similar devices; robustness to errors due to power supply variations, ambient light and motion artifacts. Our system has also the ability to estimate heart rate and transmit the data to a smart phone. This makes our proposed system a potentially good hardware for home monitoring of blood oxygen and respiration efficiency if collaborated with a good mobile application for detecting blood de-saturations.