CHARACTERIZATION OF THE RADIATIVE HEATING CAPACITY OF AN INFRARED EMITTER FOR BIOMEDICAL PURPOSES

Inadvertent perioperative hypothermia is a severe problem in surgical settings today. This work begins to explore the use of infrared emission from semiconductors for these purposes. Radiation from a commercial infrared LED used in telecommunications is applied to a temperature sensor at different distances under 7 mm. The mass of the encapsulated sensor is considered as the mass to be heated. The intensity of the current is constant throughout the measurement process. The obtained temperature data was manually processed to model the heating effect versus distance and target mass to be heated. The traces from the oscilloscope clearly shows a remote heating capacity from the infrared emitter. The speed of temperature increment gets reduced with the distance between the emitter and the sensor exponentially. We estimate the number of emitters for a hypothetical heating lamp. In this estimation, our team considered the minimum possible distance between a surgical patient and a lamp; besides, data related to skin weight was considered.t; the number of emitters for a hypothetical heating lamp is estimated. Due to the estimated number of emitters required, despite the power consumed, this technology is feasible for inclusion in a remote surgical warming system to decrease heat transfer from the patient's body to the environment.