The Design of an Automatic Temperature Compensation System through Smart Heat Comparison/Judgment and Control for Stable Thermal Treatment in Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy (HIPEC) Surgery.

After surgery for ovarian cancer or colorectal cancer, residual tumors are left around. A practical way to treat residual tumors is to destroy them with heat by injecting high-temperature drugs into the abdominal cavity. The injected medicinal substances are induced to flow out of the abdominal cavity; then, the spilled drug flows back into the abdominal cavity through feedback. During this process, the heat starts to decrease; thus, the treatment performance reduces. To overcome this problem, this study compares and assesses the temperature needed to maintain the heat for treatment and transmits a command signal to the heat exchanger through a look-up table (LUT). When the temperature decreases during the circulation of medications leaking out of the abdominal cavity, the LUT transmits a control signal (Tp) to the heat exchanger, which increases or vice versa. However, if the temperature (To) is within the treatment range, the LUT sends a Ts signal to the heat exchanger. This principle generates a pulse signal for the temperature difference (Tdif) in TC by comparing and determining the temperature (To) of the substance flowing out of the abdominal cavity with the reference temperature (Tref) through the temperature comparator (TC). At this time, if the signal is 41 °C or less, the LUT generates (heats) a Tp signal so that the temperature of the heat exchanger can be maintained in the range of 41 °C to 43 °C. If the Tdif is 44 °C or higher, the LUT generates (cools) the Ta signal and maintains the temperature of the heat exchanger at 41-43 °C. If the Tdif is maintained at 41-43 °C, the LUT generates a Tx signal to stop the system performance. At this time, the TC operation performance and Tdif generation process for comparing and determining the signal of To and Tref for drugs leaking out of the abdominal cavity is very important. It was observed that the faster the response signal, the lower the comparison and judgment error was; therefore, the response signal was confirmed to be 0.209 µs. The proposed method can guarantee rapid/accurate/safe treatment and automatically induce temperature adjustment; thus, it could be applied to the field of surgery.

NIR Irradiation Based on Low-Power LED Drive Module Design for Fat Reduction.

In this study, we designed a low-power visible ray (V) drive module based on a light-emitting diode (LED) to initiate fat reduction using light source irradiation. A chemical phantom of muscle and fat was fabricated, and the performance of the proposed LED drive module was tested using this chemical phantom. The LED light source could reduce fat by irradiating the skin 4-5 cm deep. The device exhibits a negative feedback and parallel amplification to maintain a stable circuit based on low-power consumption. Muscles have a high-water content and low impedance, whereas fats have a low water content and significant salt content. Therefore, fat exhibits high impedance. Chemical phantoms were fabricated according to these impedance values, and the fat reduction effect using the LED circuits was analyzed. When the fat phantom was irradiated by the light source, the fat impedance lowered, and we confirmed that fat reduction could be obtained. This study is expected to be applicable to family medicine and weight management health care.