2018 Volume 32 Issue 1 Pages 73-79
Chest drainage is frequently used in medical practice as an important treatment for respiratory diseases. For the purpose of quantifying air leak flow rate in a thoracic drainage unit, we will develop a gas flow rate measurement technique at low flow rate range. A test apparatus simulating a thoracic drainage unit is used to grasp and evaluate the process of bubble formation, which is evident from visualization results of exhaust gas, and evaluate the validity of the gas flow rate obtained from image processing. As a result, the correlation between the characteristic frequency of the pressure fluctuation and the bubble diameter was confirmed. Moreover, strong correlation between the bubble generation frequency and pressure changing was confirmed. There are suggested that the gas flow rate could be obtained from pressure measurement.
