Innovation

Project novelty

The SMART-PIV project will introduce significant innovation in the fields of PIV technique, hardware and software for specific biomedical applications. The originality of the proposed work consists of developing a novel interactive integrated PIV system, based on miniaturised optical sensor technology, able to highly improve the detection, mapping and interpretation of critical aspects of the blood flow characteristics of most important biomedical devices. Relevant outcome is to widen its range of applicability by means of miniaturised technology for scanning of complex shaped narrow zones, new efficient computing techniques and overcome their need to be operated by expert users. In particular, major innovations will regard the following items:

inovel miniature optical endoscopes, which are highly advantageous to use for small irregular objects with difficult optical access thanks to their ability to look inside an object using only a very small optical access area of a few mm in diameter

advanced software solutions to improve the quality of captured images before proceeding to their processing and perform image validation and flow structure recognition after the PIV analysis

implementation of efficient parallel computing capacity adaptive to the specific application, allowing significant improvement to software architecture by limiting time storage and data processing

development of numerical computing simulations, which provide crucial information for validation of experimental results within the whole-observed volume

innovative algorithms based on GUI (Graphical User Interface) architectures, developed for data presentation in a user-friendly graphical way, thus providing a significant improvement in the system performance for a diffuse future use of PIV systems, which are today restricted to researchers or professionally trained operators only