Preliminary study on the new wound monitoring technology using co-planar waveguide sensor: Modeling and simulation

BACKGROUND: Wound monitoring is very meaningful for the clinical research, diagnosis and treatment. But the existing wound monitoring technology is hard to meet the needs of modern medical care in terms of real-time, non-invasive and anti-interference. OBJECTIVE: To solve this problem, this paper proposed a new kind of monitoring technology based on the co-planar waveguide transmission line theory and assessed the application value of this method as a wound monitoring technology. METHODS: The simplified wound model included the skin, fat, muscle, tissue fluid and bandage and a new co-planar waveguide sensor were designed and established. All of the simulation was achieved in the electromagnetic special software. The data processing method was based on the transmission line theory. RESULTS: Detailed analyses of the results from the simulation were conducted. The sensor has a good monitoring effect in the low frequency band. The monitoring results could be influenced by the thickness of the bandage outside the wound. The thickness of the bandage should not be larger than 10 mm. The effective monitoring area of the sensor is 30 × 20 mm2. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed sensor based on the CPW transmission principle in this paper has good wound monitoring potential.