Safety Device Against Overcurrent and Overheating in Radiofrequency Hepatic Ablation Equipment

摘要

The E-Mcdical Equipment industry has been gaining momentum since the 1950s and 1960s. With this advancement, the use of innovative technologies has been on a large scale. This fact has brought with it numerous concerns about the safety of these innovations in the health sector. Taking this into consideration, this paper provides an analysis over the main problems that this type of equipment may pre-sent during its operation, and how much these damages may imply and harm the health of professionals and patients who are in contact with these devices. This analysis extends to the case of the hepatic ablation equipment SOFIA, developed by the Laboratory of Biomedical Engineering-LaB, at the University of Brasilia-UnB, with the economic incentive of the Ministry of Health. This equipment doesn't have yet an internal electrical safety module, therefore, a system was developed, which identifies overcurrent and overheating of components by means of specific sensors and the microcontroller PIC16F628A, and so ensure patient safety. The techniques used to develop this project not only impact on the applications for the EEM industry, which has been developing in the country, but can also be applied in several sectors of the electronics industry, as is the case of initiatives that involve the monitoring of critical systems, extreme environmental conditions and control of the drive of various circuits.