By: Cedd Bautista, Brijesh Patel, Ben Seiffer (MEC) & Manil Shah
Advisers: Dr. C. Hall & Dr. G. Facas (MEC)
In emergency situations, a capnograph is proven to be very useful to help diagnose and treat a patient. A capnograph is a device that graphs the change in partial pressure of CO2 in expired air over time; the resulting graph is called a capnogram. It can be used in conjunction with vital signs to determine the effectiveness of CPR or help diagnose a variety of respiratory illnesses. The objective of this project is to develop a portable capnograph that displays the end tidal CO2 and wirelessly transmits the capnogram to a separate computer. Sending a digital signal wirelessly allows the device to be much more portable without sacrificing features. A small CO2 gas sensor will be used to detect the CO2 percentage in the expiration of a patient, while an ATmega328™ microprocessor with I/O board and a Bluetooth module will be used to process and transmit the data to a computer. Software, that is to be coded with Processing, specific to the target computer will be designed to receive and compile the data and convert it into a continuous capnogram. The device will be tested for accuracy and reproducibility of CO2 concentrations of 0% to 20% in a CO2/O2 mixture.