Blood flow meter
AssigneeBoston Scientific Medical Device Limited
InventorDeepak Kumar Sharma
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A blood flow meter includes a rotor configured to be placed within a flow of blood and to be driven to rotate by the flow of blood; a magnetic encoder configured to sense the rotation of the rotor and to generate a rotation signal based on the sensed rotation of the rotor; a first pressure sensor configured to measure an upstream pressure; a second pressure sensor configured to measure a downstream pressure; and a control unit. The control unit is configured to determine a differential pressure, the differential pressure including a difference between the downstream pressure and the upstream pressure; and cause an alteration to the rotation of the rotor based on the differential pressure.
Claims9
A method of using a blood flow meter having a rotor placed in the flow of blood to determine a blood flow rate, the method comprising:
- initially permitting the rotor to rotate due to flow of blood over a plurality of blades of the rotor;
- and thereafter
- measuring, using an upstream pressure sensor, an upstream pressure, wherein the upstream pressure is the blood pressure upstream of the rotor;
- measuring, using a downstream pressure sensor, a downstream pressure, wherein the downstream pressure is the blood pressure downstream of the rotor;
- determining that a differential pressure is not zero, the differential pressure comprising a difference between the downstream pressure and the upstream pressure;
- causing an alteration to the rotation of the rotor in response to determining that the differential pressure is not zero;
- sensing, using a magnetic encoder, the rotation of the rotor;
- generating, using the magnetic encoder and based on the rotation of the rotor, a rotation signal;
- and
- determining, based on the rotation signal, the blood flow rate.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.