Future Considerations
Future Considerations
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Further expansion of catheter
Further expansion of catheter
Currently, our system was only able to be expanded out to 9 electrodes as further expansion was limited by the number of available relay channels. Future work on this project would be able to expand to a full catheter with the addition of additional relay boards. Since our design is modular, in theory, it would be fairly simple to expand the circuitry to support a full 46-electrode catheter system. For expansion, we recommend an alternative microcontroller, perhaps a Raspberry Pi, for more robust and parallel programming that is not limited by the loop nature of the Arduino IDE.
Improve materials and standardize catheter construction process
Improve materials and standardize catheter construction process
Copper tape is used for the electrodes in this prototype, but it is not a long-term solution; while it works for our testing purposes, there are signs of corrosion after prolonged testing in saline. Therefore, future work on this project should place attention on finding an alternative metal and construction approach that maintains or improves the conductivity of the electrodes while also maintaining their quality over a long period of time and use. Based on our research, the ideal metal to use for electrodes would be platinum, but this adds difficulty as it is expensive and would be harder to work with than copper tape.
All catheters were constructed by hand for this project, however, future iterations should prioritize developing a method for machine producing catheters to improve the consistency and safety of the devices. Additionally, a machine-developed catheter would likely increase the accuracy of the device as it eliminates error resulting from non-exact placements and spacings of electrodes.
Greater consideration of patient experience and comfort
Greater consideration of patient experience and comfort
Currently, the tubing utilized for our catheter is both too large of a diameter and too stiff. If this current catheter were to be used on a patient during a manometry procedure, it would be incredibly uncomfortable due to the width and thickness of the tubing. Additionally, this tubing is standard plastic tubing purchased from Home Depot which would not meet medical standards for human, in-patient use. While patient comfort could not be one of our primary goals considering the timeline for this project, moving forward, we would want to prioritize the comfort and safety of patients and make the necessary alterations to our catheter construction process.
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