| abstract |
An optical blood monitoring system to block unwanted light from reaching the sensors located in the sensor hook assembly attached to a blood chamber connected in an extracorporeal blood treatment system. The blood chamber has an internal flow cavity to communicate the extracorporeal blood flow and the viewing windows, to allow the sensor hook assembly to illuminate the blood with the light, as blood flows through the blood chamber in order to monitor the characteristics of the blood. The sensor hook assembly includes opposite heads with LED emitters and photodetectors. In one embodiment, the lenses in the heads are surrounded by protections that extend from the lenses, so that when the sensor hook assembly is fastened to the blood chamber, the protections block unwanted light from reaching the photodetectors. Either alternatively or as a complement to the protections, the blood chamber includes an opaque part or a part with color to attenuate the particular wavelengths of light, to further increase the overall capacity of the blood chamber and assembly of sensor hook, to block unwanted light from reaching photodetectors. |