IASIS · Intelligent Adaptable Surface with Optical Fiber Sensing for Pressure-Tension Relief

IASiS addresses pressure ulcer incidence and treatment and aims to develop and demonstrate an Intelligent Adaptable Surface for serving as the skin/machine interface in therapy beds and wheelchair seating systems. This surface is envisaged to be capable of redistributing the pressure, strain and shear applied on the skin. A controller and an algorithm optimizes the load-time curve as pre-specified by the pressure-duration threshold curve, thus protecting the tissues against prolonged and excessive epidermal pressure-shear. This will in turn prevent the onset or deterioration of pressure ulcers. Diagnosis and prevention will rely on intelligent optical fiber sensing devices that can identify the values and coordinates of excessive epidermal loadings and will provide feedback information to an adaptable mattress or seat mechanism. This adaptable mechanism comprises of self-shaping elements and is responsible for relieving pressure and strain in a timely manner according to the information received by the sensing modules. To this end, IASiS intends to develop optical fiber-based two-dimensional pressure/strain/shear sensing elements and demonstrate their performance for the first on rehabilitation applications. It will also integrate the intelligent fiber-based sensing surface with the adaptable surface mechanism, and finally IASiS will evaluate the performance of the developed Intelligent Adaptable Surface through extensive Laboratory as well as Clinical Trials.