Design Considerations of Small Size Reflective Type Pulse Oximeter Heads in Special Applications

Many pulse oximeter types are available on the market but development of reflective pulse oximeters is still required by health care players. An approach to determine optimal conditions of such measurements by means of objective methods and a pilot experiment is described in this paper. The optimal distance between the light sources and the detector and the optimal force to press a reflective pulse oximeter sensor head onto the skin are characterisable by the presented method and experimental setup. The preferable values are probably between 0.5-2 g/mm² but the distance between the light sources and the detector shifts this value and changes the length of stabile region of performance as well, however, observed phenomena indicate, that pressure value alone is not enough to normalize results and compare pulse oximetry measuring heads having significant difference in size